An Obscene Budget

Spectator

We’ve had a couple of interesting weeks. We started and ended and restarted a war of choice against Iran, though we still await the evidence it was necessary. We experienced extreme and destructive weather events and we have been warned more will happen. We did not get the remaining Epstein files which are still not forthcoming.

Tucked among all of this while our attention was elsewhere was President Donald Trump’s recommended 2027 budget. It’s a beauty lifted almost directly from the pages of Project 2025 by Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (Vought would like us to forget about those “completely innocent” pictures of him on Epstein’s island.)

The details are discouraging, but you get a pretty good idea of where Trump and Vought are heading with comments made by the former at a private luncheon at the White House on Easter weekend with some of his billionaire pals. As reported by NBC News and multiple other outlets, Trump said, “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, and all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. The states should pay for it, too.” He went on to say our only priority should be national security because we’re “fighting wars.” (Note the use of the plural “wars.”)

Well, isn’t that special? The states can’t pay for projects created to be specifically federally funded because the states have nowhere near the budgetary capability of doing so. For example, 2.2 million Michiganders are enrolled in Medicare, and the feds provide just under $20 billion annually for Medicaid. State taxpayers would be responsible for all of it with no federal help under Trump’s proposed budget.

A 20 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would eliminate what the current administration labels as “Green New Scam” projects like renewable energy credits, grants, and tax breaks; energy research; any and all training programs; technical assistance for utilities; USDA field offices; and the complete elimination of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Apparently, this administration believes sustainable agriculture efforts are “woke.”

Michigan relies heavily on USDA assistance and recently received nearly $890 million for rural development, and our farmers receive about $143 million annually in direct subsidies. A 20 percent cut would be a disaster.

The budget proposal continues to attempt to defund the Department of Education (DOE), though their efforts have been slower than anticipated. The DOE provides $120.3 billion annually to public education, with $3.7 billion of it, or about $2,590 per student according to the Education Data Initiative, here in Michigan. Clearly the loss of those funds would be devastating to local school districts, a potential loss of more than $22 million to TCAPS alone.

The budget proposal also cuts 12 percent of the budgets of the Offices of Inspectors General—you know, the watchdogs we count on to make sure our government and our employees are playing by the rules. Alas, this is not an administration that wants people to even know the rules they regularly choose to ignore, so eliminating guardrails allows them even more extralegal freedom.

The budget would also eliminate, almost entirely, food assistance to low income pregnant women, infants, and toddlers and low income seniors. It also significantly reduces utility payment financial assistance to low income families and low income seniors. Housing assistance? Nope.

And a 23 percent cut to NASA.

There will be some good news for some Americans, and it’s a good bet you could guess who. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reminds us one of the elements of the funding bill euphemistically called the Big Beautiful Bill is yet another tax break for the top 1 percent of income earners. Yes, the top dogs will be paying $132 billion less in federal income taxes in 2027. Major corporations get another tax break under the Trump proposal, too. You and I might get some tax break crumbs but not much.

The big winner in all of this slashing and destroying will be the Department of Defense (there is no such thing as a Department of War, nor is there a Secretary of War), the budget for which would increase an astonishing 44 percent. The Pentagon’s budget would increase to an eye-watering $1.5 trillion, a wartime budget looking for wars.

We must be running short of munitions thanks to our injudicious bombing of Iran. Trump has said, right out loud, Cuba is next, though one has yet to hear how that could be justified since Cuba poses exactly zero threat to us…but maybe we’ll bomb them, too.

The good news is this obscenity of a proposed budget has little chance of getting through Congress since most politicians would prefer not to deliver alarmingly bad news to their constituents in an election year.

View On Our Website