WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said a temporary freeze on certain discretionary spending announced by his administration a day earlier was meant to give time to the government to identify instances of improper spending.
“As was explicitly stated, this in no way affected Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other entitlements that Americans depend on,” Trump said at an event at the White House.
“We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where it has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse.”
He said the pause froze $1.7 billion in payments to foreign organizations.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Ryan Patrick Jones; editing by Kanishka Singh and Deepa Babington)
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