Trump's Spending Cuts 'Are Totally Imaginary'

Writing for Reason, Veronique de Rugy explains that President’s Trump budget for the fiscal year 2019 was “dead before it even arrived. It was doomed by the horrendous budget deal that was made by congressional Republicans and Democrats — and then signed by Mr. Trump himself.”

She continues:

The administration just signed a budget agreement that busted the non-defense budget caps and increased funding for this category by more than 10 percent. This makes the proposed cuts in non-defense spending laughable. The administration would concentrate $1.5 trillion in cuts over ten years exclusively on the non-defense side if the budget, while defense spending would grow by $800 billion over that same period of time. Even if the administration was serious about fiscal restraint, the imbalance between defense and non-defense would make the cuts politically impossible.

Just because the administration’s budget outlines some potential ways to cut spending, one shouldn’t actually believe that spending is going to go down. It won’t.

The government plans to spend $4.4 trillion in FY2019. That’s bad enough, but wait, it gets even worse. In FY2028 spending will have risen to $6.1 trillion. This increase is caused by an increase in defense and non-defense spending.

De Rugy rightfully concludes that the budget’s proposed spending cuts are, therefore, “totally imaginary.” The only outcome that Americans can count on is that the “promised savings won’t materialize.” The math behind the administration’s claim that deficits will drop to $363 billion in FY2028 and the privately held federal debt to GDP level will recede to 72.06 percent (from 80.3 percent) is, she argues, extremely “fuzzy.” There are no major changes to the root causes of America’s massive debt, namely Medicare and Social Security. But somehow, those issues are supposed to magically disappear.

As De Rugy points out, the sad truth “is that the budget deal signed by President Trump is the latest evidence” that the era of big government is far from over. “And the administration’s latest budget proposal, despite all its gimmickry and practical irrelevance, is proof that this administration doesn’t even care to pretend otherwise.”

And that’s, of course, exactly why Senator Rand Paul was right to oppose the deal between big-spending Democrats and Republicans. As he said so eloquently, Republicans rode a Tea Party wave into a congressional majority in 2010, accusing Obama of overspending. “We talked endlessly about them. We had a hundred thousand people rally on the Mall in Washington.” Now that Republicans control all branches of government, however, they’ve suddenly lost interest in this matter. Overnight, they’ve become the biggest spenders in American history. And they’re proud of it too.

The sad part is that future generations will be left with the bill. But hey, at least Republicans can claim they’re “bipartisan.”