Senate intel committees chairman burr and vice chairman mark warner, let me quote, based on the Information Available to us we see no indications that trump tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after election day 2016. Let me add to that over on the house side we heard from manu raju in his interview on the rank member adam schiff has had conversations with the fbi chief jim comey and met in closed door sessions and ultimately said he will echo the same sentiments, but quite simply that President Trump was not wiretapped by president obama. All of that said, lets go to our man there in the Briefing Room jim acosta our senior white house correspondence and may i first ask, theyre late. Where is sean spicer . Well, we just got the twominute warning. There you go. Reporter in the last couple minutes. We should point out we got a tenminute warning back at 2 20. I know theres alle i know theres College Basketball on right now, not sure if theyre running out the clock, but there are the wiretapping questions you raised just before the scheduled 2 00 start time. We did see the statement coming from chairman burr and mark warner, saying they havent seen any surveillance at trump tower evidence going on. But also expecting Mark Mulvaney to come out to talk about the budget, a lot baked inside of it presumably there are going to be a lot of questions asked about that as well, but also the president s second attempt at travel bans was held up in the courts last night. So there are no shortage of questions, what we might have is a shortage of patience now that the briefing is now running an hour late, brooke. The president has been uncharacteristically silent. We finally heard with the back and forth with Tucker Carlson with him trying to wiggle his way out of this allegation he made. How do you think sean spicer responds to that because i know or others will ask . Reporter i tried to press sean spicer on this a couple of days and said are we going to see something from the administration to the House Intelligence Committee of evidence to back up the president s claims still so far baseless and sean spicer said yes, but last night you heard the president say in an interview an article or fox news interview might have been the basis for that. Looks like were going to get started we have officials coming in the room. You got it. I dont think we see sean spicer just yet. Okay there we go. Jim, thank you. Thank you. Well you know were getting ready for the season. Sorry for the delay, guys. Its budget day. I was supposed to kick this off with director mulvaney. Hes still on a call with the governors continuing to host a ton of briefings with Key Stakeholders so my goal as we finish up director mulvaney will walk in the room right on queue and then he will talk to you a little bit about the budget and walk through q a on that so hopefully this all works. Im going skip past the part where i say thank you director mulvaney. As the director will say the president s blueprint promises to keep security, policies that restore and respect for sincitis hard earned tax dollars, there were nonbudget event. The president had a meeting with the of ireland. There are important economic ties. The president was honored to host him in the oval office and commit to Strong Social and Political Economic rielationshis through the United States and ireland. This traditional luncheon committing peace and security in ireland was started in 1983 by president reagan and speaker oneal. Has been attended by every president , speaker of ireland since. Right now the Vice President is swearing in dan coats in his ceremonial office. He has clearly demonstrated the subject matter expertise and sound judgment required to lead our Intelligence Community and the president is finally glad to have him on board as part of his team. Later this evening the president along with kenny will attend the st. Patricks day reception and participate in the annual shamrock certifica shamrock ceremony. Come to the white house where they present a bowl of shamrocks as a symbol of lasting relationship between the two countries, the president and he will make remarks. First i wanted to share with you guys a letter that should be going out shortly if it hasnt already that the president signed this morning wishing ray chavez the oldest living survivor of pearl harbor a happy 150th birthday. Our nation owes mr. Chavez a great legacy of gratefulness and thanks. We extend our warm wishes to ray and his family as he celebrates his 105th and wishing he hopes to have several more birthdays to come. The president announced his attempt to keep robert daigle, elai elai elaine mccluster, david nor queques norquest, kenneth conno, patrick shanahan, and david joel trackenberg as principal secretary of defense. The president is glad to have these men and women on board as secretary mattis under takes the great rebuilding our nations military. The president ordered federal assistance for the areas affected by severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides this january. Announced second lady karen pence will lead the president ial delegation to the 2017 Special Olympics world winter games in austria. Approved the American Health care act moving the acha forward. Were working with the house for the movement and confident this will lead to legislation that reforms our health care making it more affordable and accessible to every erk manien. Since we wont have a chance to meet tomorrow, want to walk you through the president s schedule. Tomorrow the president will welcome german chancellor merkel to the white house. Rescheduling from the snow inclement weather from the other day, the president and the chancellor have a series of meetings and host a roundtable focussing on Vocational Training on both american and german business leerds, a press conference in the afternoon, details later this afternoon. Also tomorrow the president will attend a listening session with Veterans Affairs and v. A. Secreta secretary shulkin. Its incredibly important to the president we reform the v. A. System to fulfill the promises to the men and women who risk lives for our nation. He looks forward to improve the administration. And meeting the cofounder of microsoft. Later that afternoon the prt will welcome the Prime Minister of iraq. On wednesday the president has invited all 49 members of the Congressional Black Caucus for a meeting. The president looks forward to welcoming what he hopes will be a productive discussion and remind via twitter that the lottery for the 139th easter egg roll is open until this coming saturday. Everyone interested in attending can go to recreation. Gov for details. The president addressed the decision by the Federal District court in hawaii to block his lawful executive order. The president said last night quote the law and the constitution give the power the president the power to suspend immigration when he deems it to be necessary in the national interest. The court didnt even bother to quote the relevant statute in its opinion which shows the president clearly has this authority. You have heard it before, let me quote it again, 8 u. S. Code whether he ever the president finds the entry of any ialiens r class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental into the United States he may by proclamation deem as necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem appropriate end quote. The department of justice quote strongly said in a statement they strongly disagree with the Federal District courts reasoning which is dplaflawed i reasoning. It fell squarely within his authority in seeking to defend our nations security. The department is exploring all available options to vigorously defend this executive order. We intend to appeal the flawed rulings. Currently the department of justice is determining the timing, expect action time soon to seek clarification of the order prior to appeal in the ninth circuit. The danger is real and the law is clear. He will continue to exercise his Constitutional Authority and president ial responsibility to protect our nation. Before i get to your questions an then introduce director mulvaney, i want to followup on a couple of questions, john decker asked multiple times on the president s executive order to restrict lobbying activities which includes a fiveyear ban on lobbying agassi agency, each head is tasked with working with theet ethics, should a violation be determined the executive order authorizes the department of justice to enforce the order through several mechanisms, these would restrict an individual or his or her entities, seeking a injunction for lobbying for ten years, the five years plus an additional five years, or Civil Penalties commensurate with the violation. The president fully expects the department of justice to vigorously enforce this executive order. Yesterday several asked where the house is with regard to additional legislation as outlined in the third prong of the acha. And the president s plan to Reform Health care. Im pleased to note last night leader mccarthy and the house introduced pieces of legislations that will lower costs and increase access. The representative hr 372 which eliminates antitrust insurance provider so americans are not left with just one choice for health care coverage, hr 1101 allo allows Small Businesses to band together and lower prices, hr 1215 unnecessary lawsuits and hr 1304 which protects workers to get coverage by providing a backdrop on catastrophic losses. And in terms of following up yesterday in regard to the d. O. J. s indictment of Russian Hackers on yahoo data this demonstrates the commitment to identifying criminals, no matter where they are and look i said yesterday, this is a lawful enforcement action, anything beyond that i would direct you to the department of justice and the fbi for further details. Before i continue let me turn it over to director mulvaney to talk a little bit about the budget. Director. Thanks very much. Good afternoon and happy day before saint t. Patricks day al known as budget day. We will remind you what we are calling the America First budget. America first candidate now America First president and shouldnt surprise anybody we have a America First budget. You have seen the details, last week 54 billion of additional defense spending. We have details where that money is going. Seeing increases at the v. A. Increases within the department of justice invisas within the department of homeland security. Including border security, immigration controls. Increases within the department of energy to deal with Nuclear Triad and corresponding reductions in similar amounts offsetting dollar for dollar in other programs. The largest reduction if you have seen the budget all right is 31 reduction within the Environmental Protection agency, the next largest on a percentage basis is with the department of state and other are reduced in lesser amounts. I think the smallest reduction is nasa just less than 1 and with many agencies you will see certain line items. This is the message the president wanted to send to the public, the press. Capitol hill, he wants more money for Law Enforcement, more money generally, more for the vets, more money for School Choice and offset that elsewhere so all isnt done with an additional dollar added to the deficit. This does not balance the budget. It simply reallocates and spending as any family or business would do. This budget does not, does not address the big picture item such as policy changes, revenue flows, tax policy, this is simply the top line spending budget. Its why we call it the budget blueprint. The full budget which will contain the rest of the pieces and parts will be released in may. Before i take questions im going to do something i dont ordinarily do, call on the New York Times because theyre in trouble. Apparently is there a wheres my the New York Times guy, matt flavor and they printed this morning that i am the father of 17yearold triplett girls. My 17yearold daughter really wishes that had happened but my two 17 year old sons are really upset, so if you could clarify that, that would be great and ill give you the first question if you have got one. Not great at math obviously at the New York Times. It was actually the gender that was wrong. Candidate trump talked about the National Debt which reached around 20 trillion you mentioned in your budget message this morning. Is there a plan as the president talked about last Years Campaign to actually eliminate the debt in eight years. He said it would be actually ee ea easy to eliminate the debt in eight years. Is this something he is doing . Its not the right time for the question. The blueprint does not deal with the debt or even the deficit. It is simply the first part of the appropriations process. Well sends this up to the hill, the appropriations of the house, the senate, congress controls the power of the purse and this will be the first step in that process. We will start to dra es the issues of the longer term deficit. And deal with mandatory spending, tax policy, revenue flows. Its a fair question just not the time. I know youre leaving a lot of discretion to people in charge for implementing these cuts but how much is allocated to come out of the foreign aid . A lot of it. As i said before one of the reasons youre seeing such a dramatic reduction on a percentage basis is not that the president done think diplomacy is important, nothing could be fath farther from the truth. The president believe ifs diplomacy and we believe this protects that core function of the state department. It just so happens that much of the foreign aid that the president talked about in campaign. Much of the money that goes to climate research, green energy are in the state Department Budget if those line items had been in the department of commerce you would have seen the department of commerce gone down by a similarly large percentage so the answer to your question is most of the cuts within the state department try to focus directly on foreign aid. The budget showed a. 8 decrease in nasa but also talked about the Administration Using private companies such as spacex for more of that. Is some of this going to be shifted over to the private sector and show a commitment on the administrations part towards science and nasa. It does, if you go back to the speeches the president made and talking about his prioritiespriorities and he said im still interested in the United States being involved in Space Exploration, but individual line items that deal with specifically Space Exploration is up. And part of it is to promote what you just talked about. Experience in the house tells you that a lot of these cuts havent been voted for before, do you consider this budget an opening bid and do you expect a lot of pushback from republicans on the specificity and the size of these cuts secondly to take your word on the president s words said he didnt want to touch social security, medicare, the fact its not in the budget is that a signal that those are going to remain untouched and ignores 70 of spending an 90 of growth . The president is absolutely going to keep the promises made on the campaign trail. You will see no reference to medicare, medicaid here or any of the mandatory programs what some people call entitlement. The alphabet soup of government. You would never see in blueprint social security, medicare and medicaid. The other question about not being popular on the hill. I can recognize that. Ive been on the hill to know some of these are very unpopular. Ive been a member of congress, represented 700,000 people in south carolina, senators represent an entire state. Were always dealing with special interests from back home. Dealing with lobbyist back home. The president is beholden to none of that. The president drafted a budget for the entire nation because thats who he sees himself representing. He did not ask lobbyists for special input and didnt focus on how these programs might impact a specific Congressional District but we know that going into it and the message we are sending to the hill is we want more money for the things the president talked about National Security at the top and dont want to add to the deficit. If congress has another way, were happy to talk about it. The United Nations says the world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis, 20 Million People in just four countries facing starvation or famine and yet youre cutting funding to the u. N. Foreign aid budget. Are you worried that some of the most Vulnerable People on earth will suffer as a result . We are absolutely reducing to the foreign aid and u. N. , that should come to no surprise, the president said hundreds of times, im going spend less