{"id":10997,"date":"2017-11-21T11:50:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T16:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=10997"},"modified":"2017-11-21T12:06:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T17:06:25","slug":"will-trump-slash-federal-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/21\/will-trump-slash-federal-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Trump Slash Federal Spending?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a><\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Will Trump Reduce Federal Spending?<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>

Donald Trump\u2019s first proposed budget took a step towards draining the swamp in Washington. His proposal was the first one since the Reagan era in which a president has sought a wholesale demolition of boondoggles. On the other hand, Trump\u2019s defense and homeland-security spending increases will squander bounties that should be reserved for taxpayers, not bureaucrats.Regardless of whether Trump can cajole Congress into buying into the cuts, Americans should welcome candor on an array of federal programs that should have been decimated or abolished long ago.<\/p>\n
    \n
  • The Housing and Urban Development budget takes one of the biggest hits \u2014 down $6 billion or 13 percent. Trump proposes abolishing Community Development Block Grants, which would save $3 billion a year. A Heritage Foundation analysis noted that CDBG \u201cgrants have been diverted to wasteful parochial projects, which include funding a pet-shampoo company and issuing risky business loans.\u201d The administration aims to sharply cut spending on Section 8 rental vouchers, which are notorious for redistributing violent crime from public-housing projects to previously safe urban and suburban neighborhoods. HUD\u2019s flagship HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which provides grants to states and localities is also in the budget crosshairs. That program is such a fiasco that HUD was not even aware that hundreds of projects it was bankrolling had not been built until a Washington Post investigation compiled hundreds of aerial photos of empty lots.<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • Trump calls for abolishing both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The vast majority of spending for the arts comes from private pockets. America does not need a culture commissariat to give federal seals of approval to efforts that please Washington bureaucrats. There is no justice in taxing dishwashers in Arkansas to subsidize programs such as Synetic Theater\u2019s \u201cSilent Shakespeare\u201d \u2014 in which actors gyrate and grope in lieu of delivering the richest bounty of the English language. Brooklyn theater director David Marcus notes that subsidies cause \u201cperverse market incentives\u2026. The real way to succeed as an arts organization is not to create a product that attracts new audiences, but to create a product that pleases those who dole out the free cash. The industry received more free money than it did a decade ago, and has fewer attendees.\u201d<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • Trump recommends abolishing federal subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would save almost half a billion dollars per year. Liberals were aghast and started a #JusticeForBigBird campaign on social media. But when federally financed television and radio began in the 1960s, there were vastly fewer options on the television and radio dial. Now, there are 500 television stations and networks and an endless array of radio options. Scholar Howard Husock, who is on the CPB board of directors, noted that National Public Radio \u201cboasts that some 58 percent of NPR listeners are college graduates, and that its listeners are \u201874 percent more likely to earn more than $100,000.\u2019 One NPR slide deck boasts that its programming reaches \u2018cultural connoisseurs\u2019 likely to drink four glasses of wine per week.\u201d Considering the bounty that technology is delivering, there is no excuse for spending $485 million a year for news and cultural programs that are consistently biased in favor of big government.<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • Trump proposes a 17 percent cut for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service \u2014 which nowadays prefers to play therapist instead of giving taxpayers the best information available. In March, the Weather Service realized that it had greatly exaggerated likely snowfalls from winter storm Stella but refused to correct itself because it feared \u201cconfusing\u201d folks. A headline from the New York City\u2019s Gothamist website summarized that debacle: \u201cNational Weather Service: Sorry, You\u2019re Too Stupid To Trust With The REAL Forecast.\u201d That article suggested that \u201cthis \u2018lie of caution\u2019 was just a piece of Steve Bannon\u2019s larger plan to engender a total lack of trust in the state. That wouldn\u2019t be minor at all.\u201d Only in libertarian dreams. Actually, European weather forecasts are far more accurate than American forecasts, in part because the National Weather Service is a technological laggard.<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • Trump calls for slashing spending for Food for Peace, America\u2019s most destructive foreign-aid program, by $1.5 billion a year. For decades, foreign farmers have been bankrupted when U.S. government agencies dump crops in their nations at harvest time. American food dumping sparked an uproar in Haiti last year over a plan to deluge that nation with surplus U.S. peanuts \u2014 a dire threat to Haiti\u2019s 100,000+ peanut farmers. But the program works out well for the farm lobby, the merchant marine, and nonprofit groups, and its foreign victims have no lobby in Washington.<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • The Homeland Security budget proposes to fritter away a couple of billion dollars on a border wall \u2014 a monument to Trump\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign that will have little or no impact on curbing illegal immigration. On the bright side, the budget favors slashing Urban Area Security Initiative grants \u2014 a howler of a program that has paid for a latrine-on-wheels in Fort Worth, Texas, sno-cone machines in Michigan, and a \u201cZombie Apocalypse\u201d show at a training seminar. Also targeted for cuts is the Transportation Security Administration\u2019s goofily-named VIPR program (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) \u2014 which dispatches TSA teams to pointlessly hassle bus and train passengers in \u201csecurity theater\u201d at its most absurd. Unfortunately, the budget does not call for radical downsizing of the TSA itself \u2014 which is one of the most onerous federal agencies that Americans deal with on a daily basis.<\/li>\n
  • <\/li>\n
  • Another bright side of the Trump budget proposal, as Politico noted, is that \u201cthe possibility of wholesale elimination of departments terrifies government workers, as well as the unions that represent them.\u201d Federal employees are mostly overpaid and many of them have only a distant acquaintance with vigorous labor. Trump\u2019s budget proposal is probably working out very well for Washington-area therapists.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The media responded to the Trump budget proposal as if it heralded the end of Western civilization. A CNN headline warned of \u201cTrump\u2019s plan to dismember government.\u201d But \u201ccombined U.S. federal, state, and local government expenditures have zoomed from around $3.2 trillion in fiscal year 2000 to north of $7 trillion this year,\u201d as Reason\u2019s Matt Welch noted. Welch noted the \u201cthree iron rules of political-class reactions to any whiff of budget cuts: 1) Every previous budget ratchet will be ignored, yet taken as the minimum acceptable baseline. 2) If even 1 percent of a to-be-reduced bloc of spending can be described as keeping granny from starving to death, that will be precisely how the whole bag of money is characterized. 3) It will all be about the president, even though the president writes no budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Downside<\/strong><\/p>\n

    And then there is the downside of the Trump budget. Trump proposes to devote almost all of the savings from cutting domestic programs into the Pentagon, whose budget would rise by $52 billion, roughly 10 percent. Since 9\/11, the Defense Department has been Washington\u2019s ultimate sacred cow \u2014 regardless of how badly U.S. military interventions abroad have turned out. Presidents and Congress pour money into the military and then take victory laps \u2014 regardless of whether the spending makes America safer.<\/p>\n

    A Pentagon advisory panel recently documented $125 billion in bureaucratic waste. The Washington Post reported, \u201cPentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Pentagon leaders had been complaining for years that their budget had been cut to the bone and the study did not help their tin-cup rattling on Capitol Hill. The study revealed far more outsiders on the payroll than previously suspected. For instance, \u201cthe Army employed 199,661 full-time contractors\u201d which \u201cexceeded the combined civil workforce for the Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development.\u201d The report also revealed that \u201cthe average administrative job at the Pentagon was costing taxpayers more than $200,000 [a year], including salary and benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Defense spending has been out of control for at least 15 years. The Pentagon Inspector General reported that the Army made $6.5 trillion in erroneous adjustments to its general fund in 2015. But multi-trillion dollar \u201cerrors\u201d have failed to hold the attention of Congress.<\/p>\n

    There is a schizophrenia at the heart of the Trump budget and entire approach to governance. The administration makes noises about wanting to reduce federal controls at home at the same time that some administration officials sound as if they lust to lead a crusade to free the world from radical Muslims or whatever. But as American experience since 9\/11 shows again, crusades abroad are not compatible with limited government at home. Killing masses of innocent civilians abroad \u2014 as Trump\u2019s stepped-up bombing campaign in Syria is doing \u2014 could eventually spur terrorist attacks here at home.<\/p>\n

    The specter overhanging Trump\u2019s budget is the possibility that he could jettison his campaign promises and plunge the nation more deeply into foreign conflicts. There is already talk of another troop \u201csurge\u201d to Afghanistan despite the dismal results of the prior 16 years of U.S. fighting in that land. If Trump plunges or blunders into more wars abroad, federal spending will quickly soar out of control, as it did in the George W. Bush administration. What is the point of draining the swamp if all the savings are poured down other budgetary rat holes?<\/p>\n

    A Washington Post article fretted that, under Trump\u2019s budget, \u201cgovernment would be smaller and less involved in regulating life in America.\u201d Actually, there was an election in November 2016 and the people who did not want their lives micromanaged by federal agencies won. But it remains to be seen whether Trump will honor his campaign rhetoric.
    \n
    \nThis article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of <\/em>Future of Freedom.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u00a0Future of Freedom Foundation Will Trump Reduce Federal Spending? by James Bovard November 21, 2017 Donald Trump\u2019s first proposed budget took a step towards draining the swamp in Washington. His proposal was the first one since the Reagan era in which a president has sought a wholesale demolition of boondoggles. On the other hand, Trump\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,1237,1240,1236,1239,212,294,1238,1023,611,855,1025,708,76,1242,833,1241],"class_list":["post-10997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afghanistan","tag-arts-endowment","tag-big-bird","tag-cdbg","tag-corporation-for-public-broadcasting","tag-food-for-peace","tag-hud","tag-humanities-endowment","tag-noaa","tag-npr","tag-peanuts","tag-pentagon","tag-trump","tag-tsa","tag-vipr","tag-washington-post","tag-weather-service"],"yoast_head":"\nWill Trump Slash Federal Spending? - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/21\/will-trump-slash-federal-spending\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will Trump Slash Federal Spending? - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0Future of Freedom Foundation Will Trump Reduce Federal Spending? by James Bovard November 21, 2017 Donald Trump\u2019s first proposed budget took a step towards draining the swamp in Washington. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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His proposal was the first one since the Reagan era in which a president has sought a wholesale demolition of boondoggles. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10997"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11006,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10997\/revisions\/11006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}