Will Trump follow the Constitution? It depends. Everything you wanted to know about the budget...

In typical form, Trump has responded to economic news by taking credit for good news on the economy and blaming former President Biden for the bad news. He seems to have the same approach to the Supreme Court, ignoring rulings he doesn’t like and planning to use rulings he does like as permission to do what he wants. He is not subtle about any of this. He actually said, “I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy, because he’s done a terrible job.” And when it comes to responding to the unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court ordering the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (the Maryland legal resident who was mistakenly deported), Trump was asked whether he must uphold the Constitution concerning deportations. Trump replied, “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.” This has not stopped him from asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling and allow DOGE to have access to Social Security data. We’ll see how all that turns out. What is certain is that we must be very careful about counting any wins as long as we still have losses. A must read is an article in the New York Times on dictatorial precedents for Trump’s legal tactics: “The Frightening Precedents for Trump’s ‘Legal Abyss’.”

Meanwhile, Republican factions in Congress are attempting to settle their differences on how to keep Trump’s tax cuts for the rich from ballooning the national debt while cutting spending on everything they can get their hands on without being booted out of office. The last time around, in Trump’s first term, they reached back to Reagan’s voodoo economics to argue that the tax cuts would stimulate the economy and decrease the deficit. An additional $26 trillion in debt later, the Republicans in the Senate want to ignore the added debt caused by the tax cuts, calling them “current law.” The Senate Parliamentarian called foul, but the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. John Thune, ignored the ruling since the parliamentarian is only an “advisor.” House Republicans objected to the Senate budget resolution, but only because they asked for much lower spending cuts than the conservative faction was looking for. The reconciliation bill they settled on allowed for different recommendations for Senate and House committees for spending cuts and deficit limits, but the Senate promised they would extract more spending cuts than their lower limits. And then, out comes Trump’s wish list—his “skinny budget” that gives partial details on priorities for discretionary spending (that’s spending not including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt). The Trump budget calls for a decrease in the current $1.83 trillion discretionary spending by $163 billion. This includes a $113 increase in defense (to over $1 trillion) and $42 billion in Homeland Security spending (of course). Here’s a look at the breakdown of cuts by agency:

Decreases Increases
Agriculture 18% Defense 13%
Commerce17% Homeland Security 65%
Education 15% Transportation 6%
Energy 9% Veterans Affairs 4%
Housing and Urban Development 44%
Interior 31%
Justice 8%
Labor 35%
State Dept 84% (including international programs)
Treasury 19% (including a $2.4 billion decrease in funding for IRS)

Aside from the usual Republican preference for increased spending on defense and decreased taxes, especially for the rich, the new priorities for ICE and decreased spending on most other discretionary categories are prominent. What is lacking is any method for balancing the budget, even allowing for a proposed $4 trillion increase in the national debt over ten years. To put all of this in proportion, the total US budget is currently almost $7 trillion with an annual deficit approaching $2 trillion. The US pays almost $1 trillion a year on interest on the debt. Obviously, nobody in Washington is interested in fiscal responsibility. The potential effect of any semblance of this Republican budget on top of the turmoil caused by Trumps up-and-down tariffs is frightenting.