Not That Joni Ernst And Senators Like Her Give A Rat’s Ass, But Trump’s Budget Will Kill Americans

Russ Vought disciple in Iowa

Señor TACO strikes again! Near Pittsburgh Friday evening, Trump claimed he will double tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, from 25% to 50%. Kris Maher and Bob Tita reported that “Trump’s move risks angering U.S. trading partners. The European Union said the tariff increase undermines its ongoing trade negotiations with the U.S. and could trigger retaliatory tariffs. 

And the crazed tariff announcements aren’t the only thing riling the markets. Yesterday Andrew Ackerman and Jeff Stein reported that Wall Street bankers and executives are warning Trump aides that the GOP tax bill could jolt bond markets by stoking investor anxiety about rising deficits, pushing up U.S. borrowing costs and damaging the broader economy. “Experts warn that too much government borrowing could send already-elevated interest rates soaring, as investors demand higher yields to cover the increased risks that the United States might eventually default. Even before it becomes law, the tax bill has helped to fuel a spike in Treasury yields, with the 30-year bond recently surging past 5 percent… The U.S. government has run large deficits for decades, but concerns about borrowing are intensifying because interest rates are at their highest in years, making it more expensive to service the debt. And neither Trump’s tariffs nor attempts to cut spending in Washington appear likely to change the overall fiscal trajectory. One member of the panel of private financial institutions that advises Treasury on its borrowing, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, characterized the tax bill as a ‘poisoned chalice’ that is raising anxiety levels in the bond market as debt-service payments crowd out other forms of government spending. Eventually, there might not be enough demand among investors to buy a glut of new debt, requiring the government to pay even more interest to attract buyers— driving up borrowing costs across the economy, the official said… “[T]he concerns have reached Senate Republicans, who are trying to pass the legislation before Congress leaves town again for July 4. While the legislation is expected to enjoy support across the GOP caucus, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has said he plans to vote against it for now, citing concerns about rising borrowing costs tied to the bond market. ‘We’re having trouble selling long bonds. The investors are telling us we have too much debt, we have too much deficit,’ Scott said in an interview last week. ‘The bond market is telling us we have to get our fiscal house in order. And if you care about the voters of this country— they want inflation under control, they want lower mortgage rates, they want lower car payment rates, and they want lower interest rates on their credit cards.’”

The banksters (and bond investors) may not be happy with Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” but basically they are pressuring the Republicans to make it even worse. They are demanding even more people be kicked off Medicaid and out of the food stamps program. Never think the banksters are ever on our side. They like the lower taxes on the rich but they want more— lots more— pain and suffering for the middle and working classes. Yesterday, Tony Romm reported that on Friday, in response to this kind of pressure, the Trump regime “unveiled fuller details of its proposal to slash about $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year, offering a more intricate glimpse into the vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs that would be hit by the deepest cuts.” The regime’s reaction at budget, primarily drawn up by Project 2025 architect Russ Vought underscores his and Trump’s “desire to foster a vast transformation in Washington. His budget seeks to reduce the size of government and its reach into Americans lives, including services to the poor. The new proposal reaffirmed the president’s recommendation to set federal spending levels at their lowest in modern history, as the White House first sketched out in its initial submission to Congress transmitted in early May. But it offered new details about the ways in which Trump hoped to achieve the savings, and the many functions of government that could be affected as a result.”

It will be up to this knee-jerk Congress to pass the final budget, although its weak leaders aren likely to try to give Trump (Vought) everything he wants. Romm noted that “The updated budget reiterated the president’s pursuit of deep reductions for nearly every major federal agency, reserving its steepest cuts for foreign aid, medical research, tax enforcement and a slew of anti-poverty programs, including rental assistance. The White House restated its plan to seek a $33 billion cut at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, and another $33 billion reduction at the Department of Health and Human Services. Targeting the Education Department, the president again put forward a roughly $12 billion cut, seeking to eliminate dozens of programs while unveiling new changes to Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for college. The maximum award would be capped at $5,710 for the 2026-7 award year, a decrease of more than $1,600.

Trump also targeted the nutritional program for women, infants and children, which helped about 6.7 million poorer recipients last year afford food. His budget proposed to roll back a policy that had increased the benefits low-income families receive for fruits and vegetables under the program.

Georgia Machell, the president of the National WIC Association, which represents providers, estimated in a statement Friday that the move would result in breastfeeding mothers seeing those monthly benefits drop to $13 from $54, while for young children, the monthly allowance would be reduced to $10 from $27.

As part of a reorientation that is working to slash federal health spending, Trump proposed chopping funding at the National Cancer Institute by more than $2.7 billion, nearly a 40 percent decrease, drawing a sharp rebuke from cancer research supporters late Friday. ‘For the past 50 years, every significant medical breakthrough, especially in the treatment of cancer, has been linked to sustained federal investment in research’ by the institute, the American Cancer Society Action Network said in a statement. ‘This commitment has contributed to the remarkable statistic of over 18 million cancer survivors currently living in the U.S. today.’ The cut to cancer research is part of a roughly $18 billion reduction at the National Institutes of Health that Trump revealed earlier this month, as the White House aims to consolidate health agencies and their research centers.”

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the chamber’s appropriations panel, described the blueprint as a “draconian proposal to hurt working people and our economy, and it is dead on arrival in Congress as long as I have anything to say about it.”

The White House did not include some key details in its updated budget, including estimates of tax revenues, and it did not offer a full set of spending proposals for the Pentagon, though it promised those in June. The omissions also angered Democrats, who said the timing and nature of the administration’s blueprint— released late on a Friday— only served to highlight the magnitude of its proposed cuts.

Trump and his budget director, Russell Vought, “are clearly hiding their policy goals, because they would hurt the middle class, the working class and the vulnerable,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who leads her party on the House Appropriations Committee.

Republicans are also racing to advance a package of tax cuts that could include additional reductions in federal spending. And the White House plans to send Congress a separate request next week to claw back about $9 billion in funds that lawmakers previously authorized, predominantly targeting money for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

Vought described the spending targeted for rescission this week as “waste and garbage,” and signaled the administration would seek to rescind other funds. He said the focus is on funds identified by the Department of Government Efficiency, the team of aides known as DOGE until recently overseen by the tech billionaire Elon Musk.

“We are doing everything we can to make the DOGE cuts permanent,” Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget, told Fox Business this week.

Vought added that the president could also try to halt some enacted funding on his own, using an authority known as impoundment to bypass Congress on spending. The budget director said that option was “still on the table.” But using it could presage a major battle over the power of the nation’s purse, which the Constitution affords to lawmakers.

The very suggestion that any president— let alone a pocket-lining crook like Trump— could unilaterally nullify Congress’ power of the purse through “impoundment” is an authoritarian fever dream dressed up as budgetary maneuvering. It’s not just unconstitutional, it’s a naked attempt to gut one of the most fundamental checks on executive power. Congress holds the purse strings for a reason: to prevent exactly this kind of imperial presidency, where one man decides which laws to enforce and which to sabotage by starving them of funding. If a president can simply refuse to spend money that has already been duly appropriated and signed into law, then the legislative process becomes meaningless theater and we cease to be a government of laws.

This isn’t a creative interpretation of executive authority; it’s an attempted power grab that would make Richard Nixon blush. In fact, Congress explicitly outlawed this tactic with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 after Nixon tried the same stunt. To revive impoundment now is to trample decades of legal precedent and democratic principle in service of raw, unilateral control. It's not fiscal responsibility, it's governance by fiat. If this president— or any president— can flick away Congress’s spending decisions like lint from a lapel, then the Constitution might as well be used as a paperweight in the Oval Office. The same Republican hypocrites who once howled about Obama’s supposed overreach are meekly handing Trump the scissors to cut off their own balls. These so-called fiscal conservatives, these self-styled defenders of the Constitution, are sitting on their hands— maybe a few grumbling under their breaths— while Trump tries to short-circuit duly enacted laws and weaponize the budget process for his own political ends. They’re not just betraying principle— hilariously, they’re betraying themselves. If they let him get away with this, Congress won’t just be irrelevant. It’ll be neutered, hollowed out, a rubber stamp for the whims of a coterie of billionaire reactionaries Trump sold pieces of the government to. They’ll have no one to blame but their own cowardice— and we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves it we don’t eviscerate them in the midterms.