Despite What You’ve Heard, Trump’s Budget Doesn’t ‘Slash’ Spending — It Barely Trims It > I & I Edit

[mystery-ak]

Despite What You’ve Heard, Trump’s Budget Doesn’t ‘Slash’ Spending — It Barely Trims It
I & I Editorial Board
May 3, 2025
Add comment

President Donald Trump did something extremely rare in Washington on Friday. He offered a budget plan that proposes actual, honest-to-goodness cuts in spending next year. Which helps explain the hysterical reaction from the usual suspects.

Normally, White House budget proposals claim to be cutting spending when all they are doing is slowing the growth in spending. Or they promise spending cuts far down the road while boosting outlays in the short term.

But the budget outline Trump released Friday does none of that. In sticking with Trump’s “revolution of common sense,” when it says it cuts spending, it cuts spending – meaning spending less next year than this year.

Trump wants to reduce spending on domestic programs by $163 billion next year – which would be almost 23% less than the federal government will spend this year on things such as education, the environment, energy, transportation, foreign aid.

So, it’s not surprising to see headlines that scream that Trump’s is a “scorched earth” plan that “slashes spending,” makes “drastic cuts,” and – our favorite headline from the New York Times – proposes “Slashing Domestic Spending to the Lowest Level of the Modern Era.”

more
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/03/despite-what-youve-heard-trumps-budget-doesnt-slash-sending-it-barely-trims-it/

[Free Vulcan]

Get back to me when we start talking T's here.

[mountaineer]

Get back to me when we start talking T's here.

Wouldn't it be great to hear the federal budget has been cut in half?

[Hoodat]

Wouldn't it be great to hear the federal budget has been cut in half?

At the very least, cut the deficit in half.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

 

It's a start. Nobody said this would happen overnight. I don't like the guy (Trump), but fair's fair.

[roamer_1]

It's a start. Nobody said this would happen overnight. I don't like the guy (Trump), but fair's fair.

No it's not a start. It's barely an incidental adjustment. Hardly even remarkable.

Any moron should be able to trim 10% out of an organization that ain't worried about bookkeeping and has had unlimited credit cards for twenty years... Without hardly harming anything - just by improving efficiency.

MEH. I am not impressed.

[roamer_1]

Thats the thing. Y'all are whooping, and hollering, and high-fiving, and shaking your asses at the Democrats like something great is happening...

When really it's way less than remarkable, and far far less than needs to happen or we're all doomed.

Y'all are way too easy, as always. 

[Hoodat]

Trump wants to reduce spending on domestic programs by $163 billion next year –

So what's the bottom line here?  Does this statement mean that next year's budget will be $163 billion lower than this year's budget?  Or are they trying to sugar coat yet another increase in overall spending?

[Hoodat]

No it's not a start. It's barely an incidental adjustment. Hardly even remarkable.

Oh come now, @roamer_1 .  All they have to do is repeat this eleven more times in a row, and the budget will finally be balanced by 2038.  (Provided we don't ever have to pay interest on the additional $11 trillion in debt that we take on over that 11-year period.)

[roamer_1]

Oh come now, @roamer_1 .  All they have to do is repeat this eleven more times in a row, and the budget will finally be balanced by 2038.  (Provided we don't ever have to pay interest on the additional $11 trillion in debt that we take on over that 11-year period.)

Four years... nearly everything by EO now... Let's wait for the EOY report.. But if they (he and they) can't take a half a $T out of the overage, they really ain't done nothing.

And even if they DO, that ain't much.

[Hoodat]

Four years... nearly everything by EO now... Let's wait for the EOY report.. But if they (he and they) can't take a half a $T out of the overage, they really ain't done nothing.

And even if they DO, that ain't much.

Agreed.  $500 billion should be the bare minimum.  That is, a FY 2026 budget that is $500 billion below the baseline for 2025.

[Smokin Joe]

It's a start. Nobody said this would happen overnight. I don't like the guy (Trump), but fair's fair.

Any real cut is progress. Not just a reduction in the increase (what Democrats call "slashing" funding, but an actual reduction--virtually unheard of in my lifetime at the Federal level, and I was born in the '50s.)

[Bigun]

Any real cut is progress. Not just a reduction in the increase (what Democrats call "slashing" funding, but an actual reduction--virtually unheard of in my lifetime at the Federal level, and I was born in the '50s.)

The last time there was an actual cut in federal spending the President was Calvin Coolidge.