{"id":2590523,"date":"2026-04-14T08:32:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trumps-modest-budget-cuts-mean-nothing-if-he-wont-touch-rampant-entitlements\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:36:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:36:31","slug":"trumps-modest-budget-cuts-mean-nothing-if-he-wont-touch-rampant-entitlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trumps-modest-budget-cuts-mean-nothing-if-he-wont-touch-rampant-entitlements\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Budget Cuts Mean Nada If Trump Won&#8217;t Touch Entitlements"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftrumps-modest-budget-cuts-mean-nothing-if-he-wont-touch-rampant-entitlements%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2590523&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>the article critiques the Trump administration\u2019s FY 2027 budget submitted to Congress on April 3 as late, incomplete, and narrowly focused. It argues the budget is like a family\u2019s budget that ignores big, ongoing expenses such as the mortgage, college costs, and taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Key points:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The budget is officially 92 pages, but much of it is blank or nonessential, leaving only about 60 pages of content and roughly four pages of summary tables.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; While thousands of pages exist in the full submission, the summary shows few new fiscal policies, presenting a \u201cbudget on autopilot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Mandatory spending (social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) is largely untouched, with only a buried footnote proposal to cut Obamacare\u2019s Prevention and Public Health Fund, a move described as minor and insufficient to affect the nearly $2 trillion annual deficit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The administration does propose a 10% cut in non<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/conservatives-rally-against-1-5-trillion-omnibus-spending-bill\/\" title=\"Conservatives Rally Against .5 Trillion Omnibus ... Bill\">-defense discretionary spending<\/a> across several departments, but the overall impact is limited because most spending remains in mandatory programs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The piece contends the budget avoids meaningful reforms to root out fraud, waste, or subsidies and avoids considerable changes to major entitlement programs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The author suggests the administration is trying to minimize political fallout before midterm elections, even as debt concerns grow, resulting in a document that is small, cautious, and few in policy changes.<\/p>\n<p>The article concludes with a note about Chris Jacobs, founder of Juniper Research Group.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Would your family try to balance the books without considering the cost of the mortgage, college education, or taxes? Most people wouldn&rsquo;t allocate household expenses like that, not least because any such budget wouldn&rsquo;t stay balanced for long.<\/p>\n<p>That analogy resembles the &ldquo;budget&rdquo; the Trump administration delivered to Congress on April 3. Not only did the document come two months late &mdash; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/for-five-states-to-stop-counting-on-election-night-is-absolutely-unprecedented-sidney-powell-lays-out-evidence-of-rampant-election-fraud-in-latest-interview-audio\/\" title=\"\u201cFor Five States to Stop Counting on Election Night Is Absolutely Unprecedented\u201d \u2013 Sidney Powell Lays Out Evidence of Rampant Election Fraud in ...st Interview (Audio)\">federal law requires<\/a> the president to submit his budget on the first Monday in February &mdash; but it also came incomplete, ignoring some of the largest and fastest-growing elements of the federal fisc.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Small Document<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Officially, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/budget_fy2027.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">budget document<\/a> clocked in at 92 pages. But 22 of those pages consist of the title page and blank pages between the document&rsquo;s (very short) chapters and sections. Take out things like the table of contents and list of contributors, and the budget shrinks even further to about 60 or so pages.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, the document I refer to only summarizes a much more fulsome budget submission. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and various Cabinet agencies and sub-agencies submit many thousands of pages to Congress, including historical charts, granular details, and technical appropriations language for lawmakers to consider when drafting legislation.<\/p>\n<p>But the budget summary encapsulates the sum total of the policies OMB sends to Congress. Normally, the back of that document also contains a series of summary tables listing the various proposals suggested by the administration. But this year, rather than totaling dozens of pages, the budget&rsquo;s summary tables run to only about four pages &mdash; because the administration doesn&rsquo;t have many fiscal policies to propose.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Mandatory Spending (Largely) Untouched<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>With at least one small exception, the administration proposed no changes to mandatory spending &mdash; i.e., spending that Congress has put on &ldquo;auto-pilot&rdquo; and which will continue <em>ad infinitum<\/em> unless lawmakers act to rein it in. This category of spending includes entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/03\/12\/we-could-completely-get-rid-of-social-security-and-it-still-wouldnt-balance-the-u-s-budget\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">far exceeds<\/a> the discretionary spending on which the budget focused.<\/p>\n<p>Some in the press <a href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2026\/04\/white-house-budget-proposes-cuts-to-mental-health-and-gender-affirming-care-00857329\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">originally claimed<\/a> the administration had not proposed any changes to mandatory health programs. That isn&rsquo;t quite right: The budget would eliminate Obamacare&rsquo;s Prevention and Public Health Fund. But this proposal got buried in a footnote on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/fy-2027-budget-in-brief.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">page 37<\/a> of the Department of Health and Human Services&rsquo; budget in brief. And while other similar nuggets may exist in other departments&rsquo; submissions, the size of these types of minor proposals will not make a major dent in our nearly <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/03\/12\/we-could-completely-get-rid-of-social-security-and-it-still-wouldnt-balance-the-u-s-budget\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$2 trillion annual deficit<\/a>. Furthermore, burying the proposals in footnotes suggests they aren&rsquo;t a priority.<\/p>\n<p>The near-total silence on the lion&rsquo;s share of federal spending makes about as much sense as a family drawing up its budget without examining its largest sources of spending. With all the current focus on <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/03\/11\/labor-dept-has-done-nothing-to-recover-half-a-billion-dollars-in-suspected-covid-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fraud<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/04\/01\/your-medicaid-taxes-paid-for-an-autism-therapy-execs-2-5m-beach-home\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">abuse<\/a>, could OMB not come up with a single policy change to fight fraud in Medicare or abuse of the disability system in Social Security? Or anything to <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >claw back wasteful spending<\/a> on agricultural subsidies that, by artificially lowering the price of sugar, increase the incidence of chronic disease? Or ask federal bureaucrats to pay a bit more in pension contributions?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Less Domestic Spending<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>On the plus side, the fiscal document did propose a sizable 10 percent decrease in non-defense discretionary spending. That includes double-digit percentage reductions to the discretionary portions of eight Cabinet departments: Agriculture, Commerce, HHS, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, and Treasury.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, however, the portion of the budget excluded from these reductions dwarfs the share to which they would apply, assuming Congress even enacts them. While the budget proposes less than current-year spending for non-defense discretionary appropriations, it also is less than meets the eye in the literal sense. The Trump administration&rsquo;s unwillingness to contemplate reductions in the meat of the federal budget makes the document smaller and less relevant than in prior years.<\/p>\n<p>Doubtless, the administration wished to avoid political attacks about Republicans &ldquo;cutting&rdquo; Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security before the midterm elections &mdash; doubly so while simultaneously proposing a sizable increase in defense and military spending. But with our &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-silent-price-youll-pay-for-our-mounting-national-debt-federal-reserve-powell-doom-loop-interest-healthcare-11664484369\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">debt bomb<\/a>&rdquo; rising ever higher, the perpetual avoidance techniques will only worsen the political pain needed to get our fiscal house in order when that bomb finally detonates.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and author of the book &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisjacobsHC\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A family can&#8217;t balance a budget ignoring major costs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":2590524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Trump-Signing-P20260316MR-0406.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,33651],"tags":[74639,53231,73714,70882,3634],"class_list":["post-2590523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","category-the-western-journal","tag-budget-cuts-2","tag-entitlements","tag-fiscal-policy-2","tag-government-spending-2","tag-trump"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Trump-Signing-P20260316MR-0406.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2590523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2590527,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590523\/revisions\/2590527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2590524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2590523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2590523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2590523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}