President Trump and his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, released a budget last week that, for the first time since the Gingrich budget era of the mid-1990s, actually cuts non-defense, non-discretionary spending programs. For the first time in a while, we are back to the politics of budget-cut hyperbole.
Everything that is wrong with how liberal members of the media think about federal spending can be summed up in this one phrase from a New York Times article reacting to the Trump administration’s budget release: “Trump went after a relatively small pot of money, discretionary spending.”
The $1.1 trillion portion of the federal budget for discretionary spending is a “small pot of money”? That “small” amount is larger than the entire GDP of Indonesia, a nation of 250 million people. Spendaholics in Washington consider not only the massive total spending of $1.1 trillion as a small amount but consider any subtraction from whatever was decided in the last fiscal cycle, no matter how profligate or needless, as a huge “hole.”
The budget reflects Trump’s campaign promises and exhibits Trump’s signature: He doesn’t go for the political half-measure. He doesn’t merely nick low priorities but zeroes them out. While not changing topline $1.1 trillion spending, the administration’s budget makes meaningful changes in spending account, and specifically targets needless, ineffective and wasteful programs, even to the point of abolishing a number of (albeit minor and unimportant) independent agencies. The cuts in non-defense discretionary spending amount to $54 billion to exactly balance a $54 billion increase in defense spending and maintain level spending.
Those who depend on the federal government’s largesse hyperventilate that any program cuts cause intolerable trauma.
One claim is that people will starve because “Meals on Wheels” will get defunded. In reality, there is no federal “Meals on Wheels” program to cut. Rather, the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program in has shown itself to be wasteful, corrupt and ineffective, so the budget proposal cuts it. A small part of the $3 billion CDBG program funds a tiny level of support to some community “meals on wheels” programs, yet those programs are mostly funded by state, local and private sources.
Meanwhile, the Trump budget funds federal nutrition assistance programs overall at levels approximately double what they were 10 years ago. Trump’s budgets funds the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program at $6 billion and funds SNAP at more than $70 billion. SNAP spending and participation ballooned from 27 million participants costing $35 billion in 2007 to 46 million participants costing $80 billion in 2015. The large Obama-era spending increase in these programs remains in place.
So it is with other areas: Trump’s budget finally ends the pointless taxpayer funding of media outlets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS. This subsidy is long-since obsolete in the era of Netflix, YouTube and 500 cable channels.
We will be told loudly that Big Bird is on the chopping block — just remind everyone that Big Bird is not owned by PBS and its owner, Sesame Workshop, now works for HBO.
Trump is reversing course from Obama-era spending increases in climate science and climate mitigation projects, restoring spending back to better reflect its real importance. It is called “anti-science” to focus more on core science projects, rather than spending billions across several agencies on multiple climate models (that overstate warming). Yet even if the climate science is worthwhile, one agency should suffice to conduct research, not half a dozen.
In Washington, the best and boldest conservative initiatives get the most flak. Every serious budget cut leads to howls of outrage, scorn and fear-mongering from the spendaholics, including even some Republican appropriators. Consider the overreaction a sign that this proposed budget is on to something good. If the pigs are squealing, someone’s keeping them from the trough.
Patrick McGuinness is an entrepreneur who lives and works in Austin, Texas.
If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
