Trump seeks plan to cut Cabinet budgets by 5 pc

Trump said he would keep the defence budget to USD 700 billion.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked his Cabinet colleagues to come up with a plan to reduce their respective budgets by five per cent, however, he indicated that the military could be an exception to his new policy.

"I'm going to ask each of you to come back with a 5 per cent budget cut from your various departments, whether it's a secretary, an administrator, whatever. I'm going to ask everybody to come back with a 5 per cent cut for our next meeting. I think you'll all be able to do it," Trump told his Cabinet colleagues at a meeting at the White House.

"There may be a special exemption perhaps. I don't know who that exemption would be. If you can do more than 5 -- some of you will say, hey, I can much more than 5," he said chairing a meeting of his Cabinet colleagues around the huge table.

Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, who announced her resignation recently was not present in the meeting. She is still part of the Trump Cabinet and would be leaving her position by the year-end.

Trump said he would keep the defence budget to USD 700 billion. In the first two years of his administration, Trump increased his defence budget to USD 700 billion and USD 716 billion. Retaining it at USD 700 billion would be a reduction of less than five per cent.

"I'd like to have everyone sitting around the table, your incredible domains that you preside over so brilliantly in some cases -- in some cases very well, some cases brilliantly -- I would like you to come back with a 5 per cent cut. Get rid of the fat, get rid of the waste, I'm sure you can do it. I'm sure everybody at this table can do it. It'll have a huge impact," Trump said.

The US military, he said, is in the process of being fixed. "Planes are being made. Boats are being made. Ships are being made. Missiles, rockets, everything. Our nuclear is being brought to a level that nobody else could even imagine," he said.

"Pray to God we don't have to use it, but there will be nothing like what we have, and there is nothing like what we have, and that's why I did that. I made deals with the devil in order to get that done because we had to improve our military," he said in an apparent reference to the opposition Democrats.

Observing that the American military was depleted when he took over, he said it was in bad shape.

"Great people in the military hadn't received a wage increase in more than 10 years. Now they're getting an increase, the first time in more than 10 years. So I wanted to do that, and in order to get that done, because the Democrats won't vote for the military; they don't like the military; they don't like law enforcement; they don't like borders," he said.

Trump asserted that his administration will stop people coming up in caravans and planning to illegally enter the US.

"We have to stop them, even though the laws are terrible. The laws are terrible. Our laws are terrible. They are a laughing stock all over the world. And we're supposed to stop people with laws that aren't very good, but we are doing better than anybody else could possibly even think about," he said.

(With inputs from agencies.)