All power to the president: the 2026 budget

 

Gordon L. Weil

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said during the 2024 campaign.  For a person who knew nothing, he went on to assert, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” 

Either he was dissembling or he is a quick learner.  He named Russell Vought, chief architect of Project 2025, to head the Office of Management and Budget, and Vought has just issued Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. Project 2025 permeates it.  With a straight face, Vought says it’s pure Trump.  It’s a chicken-or-egg proposition. Which plan came first, Trump’s or Project 2025?

Vought just sent the budget to Senate Appropriations Committee chair Susan Collins.  She promptly found a lot wrong with it.  That’s not surprising, because most presidential budgets are not adopted by Congress.  Members favor appropriations that help them win elections, so their priorities differ from the president’s.

The budget reveals the essential elements of Trump’s thinking about government.  It confirms virtually everything included in his torrent of executive orders.  It formally recognizes that Congress decides federal spending, but really expects it to issue a seal of approval on what he has already done without its approval.

Any change in the proposed budget is accompanied by a note explaining the reasoning behind the subtraction or addition.  In some cases, the statement is anecdotal, with a general policy growing out of a single person’s experience or opinion.

Here are seven keys to the proposed budget.

1.  It is aimed at eliminating whatever Joe Biden did.  It reads less like a proposal for funding the appropriate priorities for the U.S., and more like a campaign manifesto.  It would reshape the government, which Vought sees as socialist, but instead of looking forward, it keeps looking backward.  Pointless, since Biden won’t be back.

2.  It’s based on the theory that because he won the election, Congress should leave policy to him. The budget focuses on carrying out President Trump’s aims, providing Congress with a checklist of items to approve. 

This may constitute progress.  At least, instead of government by executive order, it recognizes the need for congressional action.  Still, the underlying assumption of presidential policy supremacy is far from the Constitution that says Congress (Article I) makes policy and the president (Article II) executes it.

3. Congress should transfer legislative power to the president.  Many items in the proposed budget would give the president power to legislate through executive orders.  That could eliminate court challenges, which now claim Trump has exceeded the powers given him by law.  No more fighting about executive orders, he implies, just authorize them.

Here’s an example. Should Congress decide on U.S. participation in the United Nations? Not here. The budget would create a $2.9 billion America First Opportunity Fund.  Foreign policy and UN dues would be paid out of this fund, entirely at Trump’s discretion.  It could become a tool for his “art of the deal.”

4.  Trump gets revenge.  Trump defunds what he sees as hostile agencies. The budget would cut $18 billion from the National Institutes for Health, punishing the agencies for having failed to agree with him on the origins of Covid-19.   The FBI is severely cut, paying for having investigated him.  But Homeland Security gets almost $44 billion more to build the Wall and keep mass removals growing.

5. The crusade against “woke” continues.  Any activity that even faintly looks like help for any group that has suffered from discrimination must go.  In some cases, the host agency itself is also swept away.

6.  Much health care and scientific research disappears.  But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy gets $500 million for “Make America Healthy Again.”  When was America healthy?  The amount seems to be a round number without a cost basis.

7. The bipartisan deal balancing military and non-military discretionary outlays is gone.  Now non-military, like health, education and low-income help would be cut by $163 billion, more than one-fifth, while military spending breaks the trillion-dollar level.  Even then, GOP senators think that Trump did not go far enough.

Many of these Trump priorities are likely to make it into the final budget.  That will create challenges for targeted states and individuals, plus Republicans in toss-up districts, and Democrats who want to find a way to take control of Congress.

This is Trump’s budget, thanks to Project 2025. The first question is whether congressional Republicans will endorse it or retake legislative control of their party’s agenda. 

But it also challenges the Democrats to come up with their own budget.  Their choice goes beyond taking potshots at the budget. They could come up with a comprehensive alternative. Both parties could seek compromise, thanks to the cooperative relationship between Collins and Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic committee vice chair.