President Trump is out with his FY 2018 budget blueprint. The first “skinny” budget is remarkably scant on the details, even for a first-term president.

What’s clear is that Trump has proposed historic cuts to domestic spending priorities to fund his $54 billion expansions to defense and security related spending, with double digit percentage cuts to the budgets of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development. The budget takes square aim at the heart of anti-poverty programs, eliminating the community services block grant and community development block grants and zeroing out the Low Income Heating Assistance Program.

While it has not been the focus of pre-budget attention, the Department of Labor (DOL) is slated for one of the largest cuts of any agency. The budget would be slashed by 20.7 percent, second among domestic agencies to the Environmental Protection Agency (cut by 31.4 percent) and on par with the Department of Agriculture (cut by 20.7 percent).

The budget blueprint for DOL is short on details about how the administration proposes to shrink the budget by $2.5 billion dollars. Its largest targets are the employment and training programs of the Department of Labor, with the administration proposing a budget that “decreases federal support for job training and employment service formula grants, shifting more responsibility for funding these services to states, localities, and employers.” The budget also cuts programs that are smaller in scale.

The Largest Labor Cuts of Trump’s Budget

Smaller Labor Programs Impacted by the Budget Cuts

The sum of these reductions is to scale back the nation’s commitment to those Americans currently marginalized in the economy. These programs can have a particularly high impact in today’s growing economy, helping employers more willing to take a risk on less experienced and recently trained workers to meet their demands in a tightening labor market.

The sum of these reductions is to scale back the nation’s commitment to those Americans currently marginalized in the economy.

The populations served by these programs include core parts of Trump’s constituency—such as individuals who have lost their jobs due to plant downsizing and globalization. The large labor cuts to run directly counter to President Trump’s pledge to be the voice for working Americans. But something deeper is at work. Trump has singled out the programs within the DOL that do the most for the most disadvantaged among us—low-income seniors, out-of-school youth and Americans struggling with poverty. Adding to the cuts to other agencies, Trump’s Department of Labor budget ultimately goes a long way in reversing the federal government’s critical role in combatting poverty and providing opportunity in every community urban and rural.