President Donald Trump might initiate a budget sequester and allow $125 billion in cuts for both defense and non-defense spending if Congress does not agree to his 2020 budget, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Thursday, according to The Hill.
"The president has indicated, if the spending caps going all the way back to the 2011 deal are not met, then we will sequester across-the-board, both defense and non-defense, excluding entitlements, but we will run by those rules," Kudlow told The Hill's Newsmaker Series event Thursday. "That's tough stuff. I think that's appropriate."
The spending caps must be raised by Congress at the risk of a 10 percent spending cut in 2020, dropping defense spending $71 billion and non-defense spending $54 billion, according to The Hill.
Trump's 2020 budget sticks to the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), but $96 billion of defense spending would come from an off-budget account that would have to be approved by Congress, according to the report.
Thus far, Democrats have proposed to increase spending caps by $17 billion for defense and $34 billion for non-defense, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is going to meet with congressional leaders to discuss spending, perhaps outside of Trump's budget request, per The Hill.
If Trump does not agree to the bipartisan congressional deal that works around his budget, and not with it, he can veto raising the caps, shut down the government, and force the government into sequestration by mid-December, according to the report.