On Eternal Government Programs and DOA Budgets

The White House released their proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2021 yesterday. Over the course of the next ten years, the budget claims over $4 trillion in savings from dozens of proposed changes to mandatory programs, including some “safety net programs” like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly called food stamps), and disability benefits. The budget also lists almost $50 billion in next-year savings from eliminating or curtailing dozens of smaller “discretionary” programs. Some of those proposed cuts appeared in multiple past budgets, providing further evidence that federal programs remain the “nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth,” as President Ronald Reagan said.               

Nonetheless, opponents regularly deride such proposed cuts as “devastating,” with budget plans including them being dubbed “dead on arrival.” This year’s budget rollout didn’t disappoint on either front.

“Year after year, President Trump’s budgets have sought to inflict devastating cuts to critical lifelines that millions of Americans rely on,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) added, “Everyone knows the latest Trump budget is dead on arrival in Congress.”

Meanwhile, actual spending on safety net programs has been growing in recent years: 

That increased spending comes despite rising work and earnings and falling unemployment and child poverty in recent years. One might assume those factors would yield lower safety net spending, as these programs are ostensibly means-tested, but that has not been the case, despite much rhetoric to the contrary.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) cites “destructive changes to Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and other assistance programs” in the current budget proposal. The broad spending categories in which those programs fall include non-defense discretionary appropriations, Social Security, Medicaid, and “other mandatory spending.” 

The most recent actual spending on those categories (for FY 2019, which ended last September) totaled 12.9 percent of GDP, according to the latest budget. That is slightly higher than the 12.7 percent of GDP the first Obama budget back in 2009 projected would be spent that year on those categories. That reflects how government spending is all relative: What President Obama once presumably considered generous when looking forward to 2019 is now to others not only unacceptably low, but positively “anti-family.”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget hit the nail on the head when it comes to the meaning of contemporary budgeting: “Frankly, budgeting has become pretty much a joke in this country, where budgets are used as messaging documents and an excuse to trade insults.” With trillion-dollar deficits ahead as far as the eye can see, effective budgeting is needed now more than ever. But — especially in a divided government — this would require bipartisan cooperation to succeed, and neither the Trump administration nor its critics seem much interested in that.