It’s easier to make promises than to make tough decisions
ALL presidents over-promise and underdeliver. We’ll see how Donald Trump does on the delivery side, but indications are that the gap between promise and fulfillment will be wider than ever.
Which brings us to the new president’s first budget proposal, considered so unviable that it’s likely not to fly even with his own political party controlling Congress. Trump means well: He really does intend to keep his promises, such as building a border wall that someone else pays for.
He really does want to rein in federal spending, but good intentions don’t move the needle. A sincere promise is just that — a promise made with sincerity.
Trump’s budget proposes a 13.5 percent cut in federal education spending and major cuts to the Medicaid program. To reconcile his $4.094 trillion budget, he would cut spending on food stamps and other antipoverty initiatives.
Naturally, the budget drew immediate fire from Democrats and others who never met a federal cash spigot they didn’t like. But these same Trump critics won’t castigate him for essentially ignoring Social Security and Medicare.
The unsustainability of these programs has long been known, yet they remain the third rail of politics. Unlike previous Republican presidents, Trump has made a show of protecting Social Security and Medicare.
While putting anti-poverty programs on the cutting-room floor, Trump’s budget takes off the table nearly all of the $2.4 trillion spent on Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest on the federal debt. Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian M. Riedl notes that Trump would allow these costs to grow by 77 percent within a decade.
Entitlements have long been the 800-pound gorilla menacing the future. Instead of facing the music, Washington keeps whistling in the dark. Trump would cut spending on programs with constituencies that have powerful allies in Washington. As to those who warn of dire consequences from growing entitlements, well they’ll likely just stay home and worry. How bad is it? Writing in The Hill newspaper, Riedl said Trump’s proposal to cut 2027 non-defense discretionary spending by $260 billion below the currently projected level would pay for just 33 days of Social Security and Medicare that year.
“As Social Security and Medicare costs continue to soar,” Riedl wrote, “lawmakers would run out of other programs to cut — leaving only escalating tax increases. In other words, there is no escaping the necessity of Social Security and Medicare reform. Delays only make the inevitable reforms more drastic on seniors.”
Consider the cost of adding 77 million retiring baby boomers to the Medicare program. The system collects $140,000 in lifetime taxes from a typical retiring couple, then provides them with $422,000 in benefits. This is sustainable only if discretionary spending is cut to the bone, Riedl notes, or by dramatically increasing taxes on younger, working Americans.
This is a ticking time bomb, but it’s so much easier to make promises — sincere or otherwise — than make hard decisions.
That’s not a knock on Trump. It’s a realpolitik view of Washington, D.C.
At least Bill Clinton, no fan of entitlement cuts, made no secret of promise insincerity. Clinton, aide George Stephanopoulus famously said, “kept all of the promises he intended to keep.”