This has nothing to do with trimming waste and everything to do with replacing the government with loyalists from top to bottom. What comes after that isn't going to be pretty.
The reason is that the overwhelming majority of the budget is spent automatically - pensions, medicare, social security, and all of these expenses are unavoidable and in a mandatory expenses category. The remainder of the budget, including military, is considered discretionary. That discretionary spending is the thousands of pages that Congress creates (and fails to read) each year. And it's in that budget that most of the things we associate with government came from - everything from education, to roads, to infrastructure, and also the military.
So by the numbers in 2024 the discretionary budget was "only" $1.7 trillion and after military spending "only" $900 billion was left. "Only" obviously needs to be in quotes but that's indeed only about 13% of the e.g. $6.7 trillion total budget in 2024. And so each time you cut something the amount of money left for the things we generally associate with government skyrockets. So for instance USAID was "only" $50 billion, but that was more than 5% of the entire discretionary budget!
US Federal Workers cost $293 billion [1], and contractors amounted to $760 billion. This is excluding secondary costs/benefits, which are extremely high for government workers, and only direct payments. It also excludes budgeted expenditures that would have been performed by those employees. So that's already $1.05 trillion and we're clearly substantially lowballing the figure. Yet that's already more than the entire discretionary budget excluding military, and certainly far more than 4% of the entire budget (as would be required for cutting 25% to only result in a 1% cost saving, as proposed).
[1] - https://www.afge.org/article/afge-continues-to-debunk-miscon...
Probationary employees means not just the new hires, but any federal employee who changed jobs internally in the last year. Who's going to want to work for the Federal government after this bloodbath? No one with any talent, which I'm sure is either the goal or a happy by-product.
This is about Trump and Co. destroying govt institutions they don't like, and weaponizing other institutions with loyalists. Just look at what's happening in the DoJ.
I mean if debt was an issue why vote for the guy who has increased the national debt by the most in history and whose spending plans were going to increase the debt by almost twice of his opponent?
https://www.investopedia.com/democrats-vs-republicans-who-ha...
- The US parties almost entirely ideologically swapped sometime in the 19th century. Some claim it happened with FDR in the 30s, others claim it didn't "really" happen until LBJ in the 60s. Everybody acknowledges it happened. What a "Democrat" did in 1913 is irrelevant.
- Congress dictates budgets, not the President. The President has veto power (which can be overruled by Congress), but nothing more.
- The modern US economic system enabling us to go arbitrarily far into debt only began in 1971, when we defaulted on our obligations under Bretton Woods.
- The total deficit under Trump was $5.6 trillion, under Biden it was ~7.6 trillion [1]. I assume the author was looking at delta debt and then 'inflation adjusting' it... ugh.
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That's just the basic historic/factual backing. The "stats" are even worse, but enough is enough. In any case, the issue is not what happened in 1913 or even Trump's first term, but what is happening now. Trump's first term he promised to do what he's doing now but instead just mostly carried on the military machine (at least without starting any news wars, which was nice - though he was trying his hardest with Iran) and filled his entire cabinet with political establishment types who did their thing.
Trump 2.0 seems to have genuinely gained some sort of messianic delusions, probably from the attempted assassinations, and is actually doing what he said he would do before. And those current actions are what is really changing the game like nothing that's happened in decades.
Don't worry, they want to cut that too:
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/gop-targets-88...
March is going to be a bloodbath. For who, I can only wait and see.
But it's impossible to cut mandatory programs' spending directly without a law passed which would require a super-majority in the Senate due to filibusters. On that note, consider now how critical the filibuster is. It wasn't long ago that Democrats wanted to end the filibuster to try to roughshod some voting law changes. Had that succeeded then now the Republican party on a super-narrow majority in the Senate would similarly be able to pass literally any law they want. Checks and balances are important because tomorrow will not be like today - a truth that will remain forever.
So in any case, they're going to need to carry out cuts not related to mandatory spending, or indirectly cut mandatory spending which can be done by things like reducing administrative costs, not spending millions of dollars on Politico subscriptions, and so on. But healthcare (or any other mandatory spending) cuts themselves will be impossible unless the DNC is also on board with it.
But despite being a minority, such a budget will be highly unpopular and democratic congress can still use that to push back against it. It's faster for Trump to just force it through, if he's going undeterred.
The effects are going to be felt for a good couple of decades to follow.
