President Trump’s Savings Target Should be a Floor, Not a Ceiling
It's an opening bid in a consequential negotiation over the future of the federal government.
President Trump released his Fiscal Year 2026 budget request today. Key highlights include a proposed 22.6 percent reduction in non-defense discretionary budget authority worth $163 billion, as well as a proposed $113 billion increase (13 percent) in defense spending.
In normal years, presidential budget resolutions are dismissed as little more than ceremonial messaging documents and “expressions of values” or, more precisely, virtue-signaling.
In the Clinton years, Republicans reveled at offering the president’s budgets as stand-alone measures, which would fail spectacularly.
This budget, however, truly is different. We’re living through a once or twice-in-a-generation moment in which the country is fundamentally re-examining the proper role and scope of the federal government. President Trump’s budget is a statement of priorities, but it is also an opening bid in a consequential negotiation with Congress about the future of the federal government.
The president’s request should be taken as just that. A request. I’m sympathetic to those who want to see more aggressive savings, and more funds redirected from within the Pentagon toward defense. Trump’s savings target should be taken as a floor rather than a ceiling. Congress has every right to go further and leverage the DOGE era to dramatically downsize and reorganize the administrative state.
It’s telling that the base discretionary spending totals in the last two years of the Biden administration ($1.6 trillion) mirror the total Trump is proposing after including the effects of budget reconciliation. While it’s entertaining and titillating to rail against the “deep state,” most of what happens in Washington is by default rather than design. The inertial force of the default state is very hard to redirect but that is precisely what needs to be done.
My recommendation would be to reduce the number of agencies by 437 so we end up with four – the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury and Justice – just as Milton Friedman famously prescribed a quarter century ago. As a compromise, Congress could consolidate everything else into a Department of Interstate Commerce.
The budget request includes five fact sheets that are worth a read:
At Open the Books we’ve released reports that relate to many of these topics. Just a few examples:
However, I would place those White House fact sheets in reverse order of importance. Revitalizing federalism and promoting a commonsense energy policy (i.e. energy abundance) would do the most to both grow the economy and reduce the deficit.
This is a 1989 moment for America – a chance to tear down the bureaucratic wall that has separated We the People from their government for 100 years. Instead of expanding the administrative state and federal agencies, Congress should expand individual agency and the right of free people to pursue happiness on their terms with their resources.
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Need some serious budget cuts, department/agencies cuts, employee cuts, and strict management cuts. After seeing departments and agencies deep dive via DOGE, the amount of waste, fraud, and stolen millions upon millions is hard to swallow.
What a disappointment. The Pentagon is probably the number one place to be cutting the fat. The fact that Trump wants to increase their funding when they continually can't pass an audit, means that he has abandoned his promise to reduce spending.