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Trump budget proposes $50.7M for Tinian divert
WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Donald J. Trump sent his fiscal year 2019 budget proposal to Congress yesterday, including a request for $50.7 million for the Tinian divert airfield project.
The President’s budget also funds the important Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water programs that have brought some $60 million to the Marianas over the last decade. But the President proposes less for these programs than in last year’s budget.
Also cut is the basic Title I grant for low-income schools, which means less money for the Marianas Public School System.
And the Office of Insular Affairs at the Interior Department, which provides targeted funding to the Marianas, will have its budget chipped away under the President’s proposal.
“We will be taking a closer look at what the President has said he wants,” Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) said, when the budget was released. “And we will be pushing back to keep those programs that the Marianas uses and needs, when the appropriation committees begin taking input from members, as is done each year.”
Even as the President begins the funding cycle for fiscal year 2019, Congress has still not funded the government for fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1. Currently, most of the government is operating under a continuing resolution that ends on March 25. (PR)
