Budget Hysteria: Blah Blah Blah

I was planning to spend $100 on groceries this morning, but then I decided to slash my grocery budget, so the amount I actually spent on groceries plummeted to just $99.97, plus a small eight dollar supplemental on previously deferred grocery needs, bringing the total to a shockingly parsimonious $107.97. These major cuts caused serious alarm in my household.

Donald Trump, Politico warns, is scorching the earth:

This is the common theme everywhere, as the administration offers the first not-very-detailed hints about its plans for FY ‘26 discretionary federal outlays. The Huffington Post concludes that Trump is pulling out the BUZZSAW:

The Federal News Network sums up the size of the hit, and compare the topline number to the language about scorched earth and buzzsaws:

Overall, the administration is looking to increase national security spending next year by 13% and decrease non-defense discretionary spending by 7.6%, meaning the White House is asking for $1.7 trillion for the discretionary budget down from $1.83 trillion this year.

While the White House plans don’t get into the subject of total federal spending, focusing narrowly on discretionary spending, the implication is that federal spending overall will go from about $7 trillion to about…$7 trillion. But TBD.

You can read the entire White House proposal for discretionary funding here. Trump is proposing deep cuts in some federal departments and programs, but is also proposing to offset those cuts with sharp increases in military spending and “homeland security,” meaning border security and sending poor gentle immigrants to places where Chris Van Hollen will fly to stare into their beautiful eyes.

The up-here, down-here approach is more or less a wash, and implies a very large federal deficit in FY ‘26. I agree with Politico that the Trump budget plans are looking like a disappointment, but we don’t mean the same thing by that.

Now go read the Politico story that I linked at the top: With $37 trillion in federal debt, congressional Republicans are very angry…that Trump is proposing cuts.

President Donald Trump is seeking massive, unprecedented funding cuts across the federal government, unveiling a budget blueprint asking Congress to slash non-defense programs by more than $163 billion while keeping military funding flat. Already, Republicans in Congress are alarmed.

The proposal released Friday pressures Republican lawmakers to cleave more than 20 percent from federal coffers Trump has already been freezing without their approval since Inauguration Day. Congress isn’t accustomed to cutting anywhere near what Trump is proposing, amplifying tension between the White House and congressional Republicans as GOP leadership works to fund the government before the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

“Congress isn’t accustomed to cutting anywhere near what Trump is proposing…” Yeah, we know.

There’s a piece of framing here that YOU MUST NOTICE AND REMEMBER, which is that it’s devastating and bizarre and wholly unprecedented to cut any form of federal spending, and Trump is trespassing dangerously into horrifying new territory. But first, remember this as the absolutely critical context:

Total federal spending was $4 trillion as recently as 2017, then very slowly nudged above that line for a few years, and then the pandemic bomb went off. We’re headed rapidly for $8 trillion in federal spending, which puts us on track to double spending in less than a decade.

Proposing HUGE CUTS that might dribble toward two or three percent of total spending, as a best case scenario, isn’t an emergency. The emergency is the opposite: the failure to get federal spending under real control, quickly and aggressively. We continue on the path toward our Susan Collins Memorial National Fiscal Suicide.

But it’s early, yet, so we’ll see. Not looking great.