President Trump’s second annual address to Congress passed Tuesday night without him mentioning a sole word about entitlement spending, continuing a deviation from the economically conservative Congress he inherited.
As a candidate, Trump was against entitlement reform, focusing instead on the generic “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Social Security invoked by politicians fearful of offering actual bold policy. He’s remained consistent. In his first speech inside the House chamber last February, Trump brought up Medicaid in the context of Obamacare once, but did not mention Medicare and Social Security. Combined, mandatory spending on health insurance and retirement programs such as these make up about half of federal spending. On Tuesday, he did not mention anything about them.
Both addresses ran about 5,000 words.
The most recent, technically his first State of the Union, comprised rhetoric on border security, gang violence, the opioid crisis, trade protectionism, and tough diplomacy: markers of his “America First” agenda he pushed during the campaign. He governed on those issues only a bit last year, which was overrun by a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare and a hard-won tax reform package approved before Christmas.
Trump’s discussion of his agenda, including his prominent speeches to the public, has included no scrutiny of entitlements, a sharp break from the priorities of House Speaker Paul Ryan. They’re priorities he retains to this day, as he told THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s editor in chief Steve Hayes in December:
