Trump’s Budget: Cruelty, Contempt, and Endless Debt

The headline number from the Trump Administration’s fiscal 2027 budget, released last week, was the eye-watering $1.5 trillion demanded for the “Department of War.”

But that’s not the only problem in this flaming dumpster of a document. If budgets are meant to be blueprints, what Trump is building is a mausoleum for America’s future.

First, let’s be clear: Trump’s budget has no chance of passing Congress as is. In fact, Congress flatly rejected many of the cuts proposed in last year’s plan, such as a 40 percent decrease in funding for the National Institutes of Health. Trump’s 2027 budget proposes similar reductions, and Congress will likely balk again.

Nevertheless, budgets have political and symbolic worth. They communicate a president’s vision and values, as reflected in their spending priorities. President Barack Obama themed his fiscal 2015 budget “Opportunity for All,” while George W. Bush’s 2003 request—in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—called for “Securing America’s Future.” Budgets are also meticulous documents meant to convey the seriousness with which the nation’s chief executive undertakes his constitutional duties. They typically include a presidential message to Congress, along with hundreds of pages of detailed tables, spreadsheets, and line-by-line accounting of programs, receipts, and outlays. (Manna for budget nerds; torture for the rest of us.)

Subscribe to the Washington Monthly Substack to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday morning.

Trump’s 2027 budget, in contrast, is the equivalent of a giant middle finger, with few details and little care. It does, however, convey a vision—of a pitiless America that beggars its treasury to beat up other countries and the vulnerable. And it reflects the administration’s values—of contempt for Congress and American taxpayers.

Cruelty is still the point.

To feed the machine of war, Trump’s budget calls for merciless cuts in vital safety net programs, including those that undoubtedly benefit his supporters. Among the administration’s targets for elimination is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides $4 billion a year to help families pay for utilities. Forty percent of LIHEAP households include a senior, and more than a third include someone with a disability. With home heating and cooling bills already soaring, thanks to Trump’s war in Iran, ending LIHEAP would cause serious financial hardship and even risk lives.

Casual cruelty is the throughline of Trump’s budget; compassion has no place in Trump’s America. As another example, the administration proposes to cut $529 million in housing assistance for people with HIV. And too bad if someone ends up homeless as a consequence. Trump would cut $393 million in homeless assistance programs too.

Predictably, the budget reserves its worst vitriol for immigrants. It proposes an $819 million cut in aid for unaccompanied alien children and wants to eliminate the Refugee Resettlement Program altogether. (At the same time, it proposes $28.5 billion for immigration enforcement, including $2.2 billion for detention.)

Bigotry is elevated to virtue.

Trump’s budget gestures at clothing itself in the righteousness of ending “waste.” But it generally makes little effort to disguise its naked racism and transphobia. It flings the word “woke” as an all-purpose slur—the word appears 34 times in 70 pages. It also systematically targets any federal program it deems solicitous of minorities or transgender Americans.

For instance, it cuts $64 million from the Fair Housing Initiative Program because of grants to “woke nonprofts that promote radical equity policies.” (The program helps enforce the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination.) It also proposes to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency, which assists minority entrepreneurs, and the Minority-Serving Institutions program—an important source of support for historically Black colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions. At the same time, the budget proposes an additional $1.3 million “to eliminate discriminatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in public institutions.”

The administration moreover repeatedly scapegoats transgender Americans to justify slashing research grants, housing aid, and other programs. For example, the budget cuts $254 million from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, citing “gender extremism” as the rationale. The primary purpose of the fund, in fact, is to help banks invest in low-income areas. Since its creation in 1994, it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

Deficits? What deficits?

Underneath all the posturing and invective, Trump’s budget is not even a budget at all. Unlike every other budget submitted to Congress (including those submitted during Trump’s first term), the 2027 plan offers no information on how to pay for things like the $1.5 trillion literal war chest proposed for defense, and what impact this spending will have on the nation’s already bleak finances. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget points out, the budget “presents no summary figures for debt or deficits.” It instead offers overly rosy estimates of projected economic growth, presumably to imply that Trump’s plan will somehow pay for itself. (The budget assumes an average real GDP growth rate of 3.0 percent—a benchmark that’s been matched just once since 2005, according to budget expert Eugene Steuerle, and is now even less plausible given the war.)

The administration is either hiding the ball on the cost of its agenda, or it assumes the current GOP-controlled Congress lacks the temerity to ask any questions. It could also simply be unserious, like the president’s one-page “Great American Healthcare Plan.” Even by Trump standards, the 2027 budget is thin gruel. Its summary budget request for the Small Business Administration, for instance, is a single page with three bullet points for the programs the administration wants ended. Regardless of the explanation, the budget’s obvious incompleteness betrays the administration’s highhandedness and lack of care. It’s an insult to both taxpayers and Congress.

But if Congress does indeed swallow Trump’s budget wholesale, it will have earned the contempt Trump has shown.

New at the Monthly…

Hungary’s pivotal test. Hungarian voters head to the polls today to pass judgment on President Viktor Orbán, and the odds of his electoral survival seem bleak. “Large majorities now associate 15 years of Orbán’s Fidesz party rule with the deterioration of health care (67 percent); a growing gap between the rich and poor (63 percent), deterioration of the education system (63 percent), and worsening of the economy (57 percent),” writes Academy of International Affairs Fellow John Austin. Austin also writes that bad news for Orbán also likely spells bad news for Trump, who followed the Hungarian strongman’s playbook and now faces similar voter discontent. Read here.

Genuine insanity. Generous observers may yet ascribe Trump’s threat this week to obliterate Iran as a master stroke of his “Madman Theory” of diplomacy: Act crazy enough, and the other side will always blink first. Politics Editor Bill Scher, however, argues that there’s no method to Trump’s madness. Trump is in fact just honest-to-God, off-his rocker nuts. “I can’t tell you if Trump has early-stage dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy, or some other cerebral affliction,” Bill writes. “But we don’t need a specific diagnosis to recognize with our eyes and ears than he is not in a sound state of mind and should not be trusted with command of the United States military.” Bill’s recommendation? Congress needs to grab the keys from Grandpa. Read here.

How Democrats can regain their mojo on education. Republicans have been gaining trust with voters on education—an issue where Democrats have historically had the edge. Internal conflicts between progressives and centrists have allowed this shift, argues FutureEd Executive Director Tom Toch. To heal this rift—and address public education’s very real problems—Tom offers a new consensus agenda Democrats could adopt. Among his ideas: embracing “school choice” through strategies like charters and promoting achievement on the basics. Read here.

The Apprentices. A centuries-old tradition might be the answer to future-proofing tomorrow’s workers from the disruption of AI: apprenticeships. While entry-level white-collar jobs are disappearing by the thousands, apprenticeships can provide a valuable first rung on the ladder, argues the Progressive Policy Institute’s Bruno Manno. Bruno also argues for the restoration of apprenticeship as a vital components of the nation’s “civic infrastructure,” i.e. “systems designed to expand access and prevent opportunities from being limited to the well-connected.” “When the labor market fails to reliably offer an initial foothold, restoring it becomes a civic duty,” Bruno writes. Read here.

Baristas with BAs. More than 40 percent of recent college graduates are “underemployed,” according to the New York Federal Reserve, meaning that they’re holding jobs that do not match their credentials. These over-educated and underpaid workers are the subject of a new book by New York Times journalist Noam Scheiber, Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class. Scheiber argues that the rise of this group could bring fresh energy to organized labor, but reviewer Ken Baer sees something even more consequential: the possibility of meaningful higher ed reform. “Higher education, as an industry, has become too expensive, too mercenary, and too irrelevant for far too many,” he writes. Read here.

Plus…

Journalist and Monthly Advisory Board member Clara Bingham reviews Amy Littlefield’s eye-opening new book, The Killers of Roe, on the decades-long fight to end abortion rights. Politics Editor Bill Scher weighs in on the controversy over lefty streamer Hasan Piker’s involvement in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primaries. Bill argues Piker is the wrong litmus test for Democrats. Sara Bhatia reviews a new biography of Judy Blume, the author of Forever… and other books that thrilled and scandalized Gen X teens during the Pleistocene Era. Monthly Editorial Intern Samantha Powers reveals how innovations in school discipline have become another casualty of Trump’s ill-considered cuts to education funding. Stand Together’s Ryan Stowers challenges the orthodoxy of “college for all.” University of North Florida professor Bart Welling marvels at the success of the Artemis II mission—achieved despite an administration that doesn’t value competence.

Coda (state of higher ed edition)…

This year’s college acceptances are all officially out, and America’s most elite schools seem to be having a banner year. Yale recently announced that this year’s applicant pool was the second-largest in its history, while Columbia University set an all-time high of 61,031 applications. The University of Virginia said it received a record 82,118 applications this year, while UCLA garnered about 178,000 (including transfers)—making it the most applied-to college in the country.

Yet recent headlines betray the troubles brewing below the surface. Trump’s relentless attacks on higher education are taking a toll, as are his restrictions on immigration. Add to that a weakening economy and a demographic dearth of 18-year-olds (a consequence of the Great Recession), and the landscape of higher ed looks increasingly bleak:

“The Fortress Falls.” Princeton University—whose endowment per student exceeds Harvard’s—recently announced salary freezes for tenured faculty, a 1 percent increase in staff pay, and departmental budget cuts of up to 10 percent, according to EDULedger.com. University President Christopher Eisgruber also warned of further cuts to come. “‘These are tough times,” he said. Major shifts. Indiana’s public colleges are dumping more than 200 degree programs due to low enrollment, reports Chalkbeat. Among the majors on the chopping block at various schools: special education, women’s studies, philosophy, foreign language studies, fine arts … Meanwhile, New York University announced this week the “suspension” of its master’s in journalism program because of “declining enrollment.” International losses. Schools like Columbia and Harvard aren’t the ones that are suffering most from Trump’s crackdown on international students. Rather, it’s places like Lewis University, a tiny Catholic college outside Chicago. The New York Times reports that international students used to represent nearly one-fifth of Lewis’s enrollment and were a welcome resource both in diversity and dollars. Now their number may drop below 500, bringing both a sharp decline in enrollment and tuition revenues. It’s a scenario that many smaller schools across the country are starting to see.

There’s no question Princeton will survive its current crisis, but Lewis University may not. And students attending Indiana’s Purdue University may get a very different—and potentially limited—education compared to the alumni of previous generations. Left unchecked, the trends beginning to emerge in higher education could lead to a variation of the K-shaped bifurcation we’re seeing with the economy: Elite schools hold and even grow their edge, while the schools that actually serve the vast majority of American students decline.

Thanks as always for reading and have a great week!

Anne Kim, Senior Editor

The post Trump’s Budget: Cruelty, Contempt, and Endless Debt appeared first on Washington Monthly.