Trump’s budget declares war on a non-existent enemy

President Trump’s budget proposes many things. The plan released Thursday calls for big increases in military and border spending at the expense of diplomatic and domestic programs. And it seeks to transfer modest sums from marginally effective agencies that Trump doesn’t like into marginally effective agencies that he does like.

But mostly what the budget does is declare war on an enemy that doesn’t exist.

The vast, overreaching government bureaucracy — or, as White House strategist Steve Bannon likes to call it, “the administrative state” — is largely a fiction.

In 1970, 1.45% of people in America worked for the federal government, excluding the military.

Nearly five decades later, only about 0.85% do.

In 1970, core government programs made up nearly 62% of federal spending, while benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for 31%.

Today, those numbers are almost reversed. Defense and core government programs make up just 30% of spending, while benefits and other “mandatory” programs account for 63%. (Interest on the national debt accounts for the rest.)

Now along comes Trump, the first president in many years who doesn’t even pretend to be con- cerned about runaway spending on benefits.

By moving $54 billion from domestic programs to security, he thinks he can lay claim to taking bold actions.

His logic has many faults. By promising not to touch programs such as Social Security and Medicare, he is willfully ignoring the drivers of America’s ballooning national debt. And he proposes funding his military buildup by robbing programs that have been stretched far more than defense.

The craziest thing about his proposed budget is that it works against his stated goal of making America safer.

Cutting the State Department by nearly 30% would be counterproductive because America’s diplomats are as vital to national security efforts as its soldiers, sailors and airmen.

And cutting the Internal Revenue Service an additional $239 million undermines the government’s ability to collect money to beef up its defenses.

Trump’s budget isn’t so much bold action as wild flailing. He seems to think that there is political gain in breaking as many things as he can get his hands on. But even a Congress controlled by Republicans is unlikely to agree.

This is not to say there aren’t programs beyond benefits that can be cut. Amtrak, for instance, could be privatized in its profitable corridors and discontinued elsewhere. A sense of realism could be applied to NASA, an agency with an awe-inspiring record of spending on rocket programs that never make it to the launch pad. And a number of tiny agencies live on well past their due dates.

But none of these programs is more than a rounding error to a government that spends $4 tril

lion annually. For example, the National Endowment for the Arts’ $148 million represents about 0.0037% of federal spending. To pretend such programs have anything meaningful to do with deficits is disingenuous.