> Surely we all agree on medication and life-saving care for children.
That is absolutely not a given. The currently in-power minority earnestly believe that people are only due the level of healthcare they can personally fund and afford, period.
> These are real questions that Americans are trying to answer right now.
Which Americans? There's no grand debate happening right now, just a table-flipping tantrum.
It's a fun exercise to do the chin-stroking thing of asking about efficiency and tax rates and so on, but it's so disconnected from the reality of the federal budget that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a cynical tactic.
Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending, and there are effectively no limits to it. Meanwhile, extremely high-leverage foreign aid (like the HIV-related treatments that have been mentioned) are always first on the chopping block, along with things like school lunches and early childhood education that have been demonstrated to be effectively free in terms of how much spending on remediating bad outcomes later in peoples' lives.
The "grand debate" happened, Americans voted, and now the guy who won is delivering on his campaign promises. Whether you agree with Trump or not, this should not be a surprising outcome. He told us he was going to do this.
>Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending
This is so wildly wrong and easily disproven that I really can't take the rest of what you say seriously.
But he isn't. This isn't framed as a "we need to bring down costs and stop paying for things and that's just going to be hard" initiative. This is framed as a mechanism of eliminating DEI programs.
In the US spending is controlled by Congress. The Congress was voted on by the people. The idea that Trump throwing bombs into the federal budget is democracy but following Congress' passed budget isn't is ridiculous.
The idea you have is nice, but congress doesn't pass real budgets any more. That means that there is a lot more ability to make the money slosh around.
We are wildly far beyond strict constitutionalism. This has been a trap for conservative causes for a very long time. We are now playing the game the same way the left does: win and govern.
Laws have never encumbered humans. We're governed by social norms and those have been destroyed: massive immigration, sexual mutilation of children, and wanton spending of US taxpayer dollars.
>This is framed as a mechanism of eliminating DEI programs.
Did we watch the same campaign? Trump absolutely campaigned on ending DEI too. The electorate hates DEI programs. Cutting spending and DEI programs is what got him the popular vote.
Fox brainwashed viewers hate DEI.
1% (vote margin of win, roughly)
electing a person to an office does NOT equal a popular mandate for any particular policy and its silly to claim that the voters hate what you apparently hate.
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>His first act was eliminating institutionalized racial practices with employment, aka "DEI" initiatives.
The purpose of the narrative that DEI is "institutional racism" and the goal of its elimination is to normalize the belief that non white straight male and able-bodied people are inherently less qualified for any position, and to allow legal systemic discrimination against such people.
Which is racist, yes. And sexist, and homophobic and transphobic and ableist.
Right, but that's not what this order does. People were locked out of Medicaid payment portals today because of this, how is that shutting down DEI? It seems that they really had no idea what they were shutting down with this, order.
Maslow's hierarchy would tend to suggest that when you shut down the trough to progressive leaning aid recipients they and their reps will tend to negotiate away other mere desires. Not saying you should do that, but Trump is transactional and not above using blunt tactics.
>> Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending
>
> This is so wildly wrong and easily disproven that I really can't take the rest of what you say seriously.
Defense accounted for $805B out of a total discretionary budget of $1.7T. The next largest category (using the CBO's classifications, not mine) are veteran's benefits @ $131B, and it goes down from there. If you want to quibble with what "overwhelming majority" means, I guess you can do that, but I doubt that's interesting to anyone.
I'll wait for you to 'disprove' the above.
tbc, I am not surprised by any of this (as you say, he was very clear about his intentions), but let's not pretend that there is any policy-specific valence to the outcome of any vote in the current electoral system. People vote as they do for their own (usually terrible, and usually unrelated to policy) reasons, and the people that win get to do what they will with the power bestowed upon them. Insofar as Trump's and Republicans' actions make life for the bottom ~80% harder, don't be surprised as buyers' remorse sets in pretty heavily. And so goes the "debate".
Defense spending is absolutely a priority of this administration. SecDef Hegseth's whole thing is about reorienting the Pentagon back to American defense as the priority. Remember that getting Hegseth confirmed was a major push for the brand new admin.
So spending won't go down but will hopefully be spent more effectively.
"Effective for what?" is always the key question. Various unhinged "proposals" (invading greenland, invading panama, an iron dome-like system to cover basically all of north america to shoot down...whatever Canada and Cuba will launch at us??) suggest nothing other than full funding++, used in dumb ways (which I suppose is better than circa 2002 WoT defense spending?).
Until last November, Hegseth's "whole thing" was being a frat anchor / defense witness for Fox. Talking about him being anything like a serious figure is absurd.
That is absolutely not a given. The currently in-power minority earnestly believe that people are only due the level of healthcare they can personally fund and afford, period.
> These are real questions that Americans are trying to answer right now.
Which Americans? There's no grand debate happening right now, just a table-flipping tantrum.
It's a fun exercise to do the chin-stroking thing of asking about efficiency and tax rates and so on, but it's so disconnected from the reality of the federal budget that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a cynical tactic.
Military spending is the overwhelming majority of non-discretionary spending, and there are effectively no limits to it. Meanwhile, extremely high-leverage foreign aid (like the HIV-related treatments that have been mentioned) are always first on the chopping block, along with things like school lunches and early childhood education that have been demonstrated to be effectively free in terms of how much spending on remediating bad outcomes later in peoples' lives.