Trump\u2019s budget proposal takes aim at programs that make Americans smarter, healthier and safer. What\u2019s his real agenda? <\/p>\n
The oldest, most enduring cliche about government policy is the one about how budgets are political, not fiscal, documents. <\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s budget proposal for the 2027-28 fiscal year<\/a>, unveiled Friday, seems designed to set a new standard for partisan ideology as a spending standard. <\/p>\n You may have seen news coverage of the budget\u2019s top lines, which call for $1.5 trillion in defense spending next year and cuts totaling $73 billion in nondefense spending. But those figures fail to communicate the raw flavor of the budget cuts or how they\u2019re described in the 92-page document. <\/p>\n It\u2019s an extinction-level event for science.<\/p>\n \u2014 Casey Dreier, Planetary Society, on budget cuts at NASA<\/p>\n Nor do they provide perspective for the magnitude of the defense increase or the damage that would be wreaked upon crucial social programs. <\/p>\n The defense request, for instance, would be a 42% increase over the current year, but it might be better judged as what Todd Harrison of the pro-business American Enterprise Institute describes unhappily as \u201cthe highest level of funding for defense in US history, surpassing even the peak funding during World War II.\u201d <\/p>\n Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik <\/p>\n Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.<\/p>\n By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n Adjusted to today\u2019s dollars, Harrison calculates, the World War II peak was a bit lower than $1.2 trillion. <\/p>\n The administration minimizes the overall budgetary effect of its spending plans by projecting average growth in gross national product at 3% annually over the next decade.<\/p>\n That\u2019s an ambitious goal, to say the least. Over the last 25 years \u2014 that is, in this century \u2014 U.S. economic growth has reached or exceeded 3% in only three years, including a pandemic-era surge to 6.1% in 2021. Last year it was only 2.1%.<\/p>\n On the other side of the ledger, the nondefense budget would be cut by 10%. But programs the White House has specifically targeted for being contrary to its ideology would suffer far more devastating cuts. Some scientific programs, such those concerned with global warming or the social and economic implications of science, technology and healthcare policies would be slashed by more than 50%.<\/p>\n NASA may be enjoying a moment just now, as its Artemis II spacecraft rounded the far side of the moon Monday, preparatory to heading back to Earth in the first moonshot since Apollo 13 last landed men on the lunar surface in December 1972. <\/p>\n But Trump proposes slashing the agency\u2019s budget by $5.6 billion, or 23%. It gets worse: Trump would cut NASA\u2019s science division by $34 billion, or 47%, canceling more than 40 projects, of which about 20 are currently underway. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an extinction-level event<\/a> for science,\u201d Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, told Nature. <\/p>\n Among the programs facing extinction is NASA\u2019s Office of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Engagement, which aimed to interest minority students in those so-called STEM disciplines. <\/p>\n \u201cNASA will inspire the next generation of explorers through exciting, ambitious space missions,\u201d the budget says, \u201cnot through subsidizing woke STEM programming and research that prioritizes some groups of students over others.\u201d <\/p>\n The budget leaves unclear how those \u201cexciting, ambitious space missions\u201d will come to pass, since it also cuts $297 million from NASA\u2019s annual spending on space technology.<\/p>\n The proposed cuts to science programs more generally would be devastating. The National Science Foundation, one of the most important scientific grant-making agencies in the world, would lose $4.8 billion, or 55% of its funding. <\/p>\n The language the budget uses to rationalize such cuts speaks volumes about the drivers of its draconian cuts in nondefense spending: It\u2019s an expression of Trumpian culture war hobby horses such as hostility to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The term \u201cwoke\u201d or its derivatives appear 32 times in the budget document \u2014 as many times as it appears in Project 2025<\/a>, the far-right roadmap for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023.<\/p>\n The $8.5 billion in proposed budget cuts to K-12 spending would include the elimination of the $70-million Teacher Quality Partnership, which the budget describes as a program to \u201ctrain teachers … on divisive ideologies.\u201d <\/p>\n Among those, the budget says, are \u201cinappropriate and divisive topics such as Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion, social justice activism,\u201d and \u201canti-racism.\u201d Nothing in the document explains why any of those things are considered bad; the terms are merely shibboleths<\/a> that Trump\u2019s core audience is expected to accept as gospel.<\/p>\n Services for transgender individuals would take a major hit from the budget: Among the $204.5 million in Treasury Department funding for community development initiatives on the chopping block would be support for \u201cgender extremism,\u201d such as for clinics that provide \u201c\u2018gender-affirming hormone therapy\u2019 and other services to young patients.\u201d <\/p>\n As I\u2019ve reported, Trump has bought heavily into conservative attacks on gender-affirming care, including by spouting claims that I labeled in 2024 as \u201cderanged and despicable,\u201d such as that schoolchildren are being kidnapped by school administrators and subjected to surgery against their will. <\/p>\n Perhaps the most concentrated assault in the proposed budget, as my colleague Hayley Smith reported<\/a>, is the one aimed at research, development, and construction of renewable energy sources. The budget plan contains no fewer than 20 references to what it calls the \u201cgreen new scam.\u201d <\/p>\n This is an infantile reference to what\u2019s typically known as the \u201cGreen New Deal,\u201d a raft of policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables as well as the concept of \u201cenvironmental justice,\u201d meaning efforts to ensure that the transition doesn\u2019t overly burden disadvantaged communities.<\/p>\n Trump has consistently called for more development of fossil sources, including a revival of coal despite its unrelenting and inevitable glide path toward extinction<\/a> as a component of U.S. energy generation. The budget plan doubles down on this policy, calling renewables R&D a \u201cleftist\u201d ideology. This is tied to policies \u201copening up more Federal land and waters for oil, gas, and clean coal development,\u201d the document says. (\u201cClean coal,\u201d which is to say nonpolluting coal, is a myth, as I\u2019ve reported<\/a>.) <\/p>\n The budget plan pays tribute to another Trump obsession, the supposed evils of wind power. Cuts to the Interior Department budget would \u201cput a stop to disastrous offshore wind energy projects that harm hardworking coastal communities, precious wildlife, and American military readiness.\u201d None of these assertions about wind power is supported by reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some cuts appear to reflect a determination to exact retribution from agencies that have thwarted cherished conservative goals. The National Institutes of Health, a consistent target of conservative budget-cutters, would lose $5.9 billion, or 12.5% of its budget. That would include major cuts to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was formerly headed by the respected immunologist Anthony Fauci. <\/p>\n The budget drafters couldn\u2019t resist taking a swipe at Fauci, who has been the target of smears from Republicans who have tried to blame him, absurdly, for the COVID pandemic. The budget document accuses Fauci of steering government funds to the Wuhan (China) Institute of Virology, which it called \u201cthe likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d <\/p>\n There\u2019s no compelling evidence that a laboratory was a source of the virus, as I\u2019ve documented<\/a>: The overwhelming weight of scientific judgment is that the virus reached humans from natural zoologic sources. The budget plan resurrects the long-debunked conspiracy theory that Fauci orchestrated a 2020 scientific paper<\/a> that judged the lab-leak theory to be \u201cimprobable.\u201d The budget drafters assert that Fauci (who retired in 2022) \u201ccommissioned\u201d the paper, which is simply untrue.<\/p>\n Another theme percolating through the budget plan is the need to protect our wealthiest taxpayers from, well, taxes. The budget would cut $1.4 billion from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, reversing a restoration of the agency\u2019s enforcement capabilities undertaken during the Biden administration. Trump cut IRS staffing by 20,000, or 27%. The document asserts that the IRS \u201chas been weaponized against the American people, small businesses, and non-profit organizations.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the Yale Budget Lab, every dollar the IRS spends on audits yields more than $7 in returns. Plainly that\u2019s not coming from average Americans, but from the upper crust.<\/p>\n None of this means that the budget proposal isn\u2019t valuable, to an extent. It\u2019s a convenient one-stop window into Trump\u2019s personal fixations: the elimination of \u201cradical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans<\/a>,\u201d the horrors of \u201cthe globalist climate agenda<\/a>,\u201d the \u201cinvasion\u201d of violent criminals<\/a> from abroad, and so on. In other words, there\u2019s nothing new under the Trumpian sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s budget proposal takes aim at programs that make Americans smarter, healthier and safer. 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