The administration's new fiscal blueprint is DOA in Congress, but it's nonetheless revealing.
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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.)
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.