A government budget is a moral document, a statement of values and priorities. The 2025 federal budget that the congressional Republicans are proposing (as commanded by Donald Trump) is cruel. It takes more public money from the poor and working class and other low- and moderate-income Americans and gives it to the rich by cutting the social safety net. Social Security is also being targeted for large cuts in services and benefits.
In all, the statement of values the Republicans are making is a direct one: The poor and working class (and increasingly the middle class) are “takers” in American society and thus deemed “surplus” and “social parasites” while the rich and affluent are "makers" who should be subsidized and their wealth and power increased even more at the American people's literal expense.
To that point, a new report from the Yale Budget Lab warns that if enacted, the Republican Party’s 2025 proposed budget “would be regressive, shifting after-tax-and-transfer resources away from tax units (members of a household filing a tax return together) at the bottom of the distribution towards those at the top.”
Here are some specifics. The proposed Trump-Republican budget includes $4.5 trillion in tax reductions that would mostly benefit the richest Americans alongside $1.5 trillion in cuts to benefits for the public. The Trump-Republican budget punishes the poor by cutting approximately $230 billion in food assistance (SNAP), with $880 billion also cut from Medicaid.
The Republican Party’s proposed cuts to an already weak social safety net and other supports for poor and moderate-income Americans will shorten lives, make the public less healthy and less happy, more insecure and therefore less able to exercise their agency and freedom in a democracy.
The Republicans' proposed federal budget is also a profound moral hazard where the richest Americans — including Donald Trump and the members of his plutocrats’ Cabinet as well as the millionaires and other wealthy members of Congress — will be able to use the law to further expand their personal and dynastic wealth. When combined with Trump’s global tariff program (which is estimated to cost the average American household $3,800 a year), the impact of the 2025 Republicans' budget on poor and other vulnerable Americans — and the public at large — will be devastating.
Brendan Duke is the Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He previously served as a senior policy adviser at the Biden-Harris White House National Economic Council, a volunteer on the Biden-Harris transition team and the Senior Director for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress.
In this conversation, Duke explains how the Republicans' 2025 budget will hurt the average American and negatively impact their daily lives. He also highlights the larger political and historical context of how these draconian cuts are the next step in a decades-long right-wing “conservative” project to gut social democracy. Duke exposes several of the standard right-wing propaganda myths and talking points about the federal government’s budget, deficits and spending.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How are you feeling given the destruction being caused by the Trump administration’s shock and awe campaign against American democracy and society? How are you managing day-to-day?
I feel shocked but not surprised. These are the same old goals that conservatives have been talking about for decades. But I didn't foresee whole government agencies being illegally dismantled. It's upsetting that we have a president and administration that doesn't play by the rules.
I'd obviously rather be fighting to give more Americans health insurance and a secure economic footing than fighting to protect their health insurance and dignity. But there's no fight I'd rather be in because I think, for most Americans, it's common sense that we can afford to provide health insurance and basic needs for low-income Americans since we are a really rich country. There's all of the extra stress that comes along with Trump, but I consider myself fortunate to work on a policy issue that's the bread and butter of American politics: How do we pay for basic investments in people?
What is it like in Washington, D.C. right now?
Lots of federal employees are worried about their livelihoods, which is understandable. And even more are upset that the Trump administration is systematically wrecking the work that they spent decades doing, whether that be fighting for consumers, researching public health or helping Americans get the benefits they're entitled to. I've been to parties where there's a ban on people talking about current events because people just want to forget about it for a few hours, since this is all anyone thinks about during the day.
"The single most indefensible component of the tax bill congressional Republicans are trying to renew is a cut in the estate tax. They want to increase the amount a married couple can pass on to their heirs without paying a cent of estate tax from $14 million per couple to $28 million per couple."
Everywhere you look, you see an attack on core government functions. The Trump administration is trying to degrade the Social Security Administration's ability to provide elderly and disabled Americans the benefits they're entitled to. They are firing people working at the National Weather Service who provide the data for the weather report you see on your phone. They're hamstringing billions of dollars of cancer research by putting on leave the people who make sure that the research dollars go to cancer researchers.
The goal is not to let all of the horrible things distract you from doing your job, though. It's critical that people whose job it is to protect the programs that low- and moderate-income people rely on focus on the threats and opportunities that are appearing.
The Trump administration is following through on Project 2025. This was announced before the 2024 campaign and should not in any way be a surprise. How much of what we are seeing with the Trump administration’s assaults on democracy, the very idea of government itself, and the social safety net is actually new and/or novel? What is the larger context?
The plans being talked about right now, such as cutting Medicaid and SNAP to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, are part of the standard conservative playbook. The difference is that our fiscal situation has gotten worse over the last 25 years — we're a long way off from the Clinton budget surpluses — so they feel pressure to cut programs instead of putting tax cuts for rich people on the credit card.
We need your help to stay independent
We're still at the stage where they aren't providing specifics of how they're going to cut these programs, but the House Republican budget sets them on a course to cut Medicaid by 10 percent and SNAP by 20 percent. Those are enormous cuts. Some of the goodies they are planning to give to rich people include allowing high-income business owners to write off 20 percent of their profits, doubling the amounts the heirs of the largest estates can inherit tax-free from $14 million to $28 million per couple, and enacting hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks for businesses that don't need a tax break.
The Yale Budget Lab recently completed an analysis of the Trump-Republican 2025 proposed budget, highlighting how it disproportionately serves the richest and most powerful Americans, corporations, and other interests at the literal expense of the public, specifically the poor and the working class.
Normally, when we talk about tax cuts, we just talk about tax cuts. And it may be the case that Americans across the income spectrum get tax cuts. Perhaps low-income Americans' tax cuts are smaller than high-income people's, but they're getting a tax cut, so why should they complain?
The Budget Lab analysis is revealing because it shows that we should consider more than the tax cuts. We should consider how they're being paid for. In the case of the Republican House budget, it's being paid for through massive cuts to health care and nutrition for low- and moderate-income people. Americans in the bottom 40 percent would be worse off from this so-called tax cut bill because the cuts to programs are so deep and concentrated on support for low- and moderate-income Americans and their tax cuts are so small.
At the same time, high-income Americans get large tax cuts. This isn't shared sacrifice. This is income redistribution from the poor to the rich.
What are some specific examples of “welfare” for the rich in this proposed budget?
The single most indefensible component of the tax bill congressional Republicans are trying to renew is a cut in the estate tax. They want to increase the amount a married couple can pass on to their heirs without paying a cent of estate tax from $14 million per couple to $28 million per couple. This literally only benefits the heirs of 1 in 1,000 estates. And again, it's indefensible to do this while cutting health care and nutrition assistance for low-income people. People will go hungry or not get the right cancer treatment while we give a huge tax cut to the heirs of the wealthiest estates.
Budgets are the single clearest way to see a politician's priorities — there are numbers and policies behind those numbers. In cases like the House Republican Budget, I would say there's very little magic and trickery behind this one. They have been extremely clear that their goal is to cut health care and nutrition assistance for low- and moderate-income Americans and use those savings to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. The gaslighting comes from what they say — where they say a cut isn't a cut and won't result in anybody losing health or nutrition benefits when we know that the reason these cuts will generate savings is by cutting benefits.
What are some of the greatest and most dangerous myths about the federal budget and spending (and government more generally) that you see propagated by the Republicans?
The most persistent untruth is the suggestion that tax cuts pay for themselves. We're seeing many different flavors of this, such as comparing actual tax revenue to projections of revenue before the tax cuts, but not accounting for the fact that those pre-tax cut revenue projections didn't foresee the 20 percent increase in prices we got because of the pandemic. The simple fact is that tax cuts don't pay for themselves, even conservative economists don't think added economic growth reduces the cost of tax cuts by much more than 10 percent. That's far from the 100 percent being asserted.
Another is that tax cuts for rich people and corporations will trickle down to workers. The economy's growth rate in the two years following the 2017 tax cuts was practically the same as the years preceding the tax cuts. And when you look under the hood, you see the main reason why GDP growth held steady was an increase in government spending under Trump. The growth rate of consumption and investment — the mechanisms by which the tax cut is supposed to help the economy — fell.
The federal government runs a persistent deficit and that's OK, especially over the business cycle, since running large deficits during recessions is a way to shorten them. Generally, as long as those deficits are smaller than our economic growth rate — i.e. our ability to pay that debt — the debt and deficit outlook is sustainable. The problem now is that we've had 25 years of deficit-financed tax cuts and deficits are noticeably higher than our growth rate. The solution is to bring back the revenue levels we had under Bill Clinton, which would allow us to meet national needs while keeping the growth of our debt in check.
Here is a second myth and right-wing talking point. The government is like a business and should make a “profit.”
Running the government like a business is a mistake. In my view, the biggest difference between a government and a business is that businesses fail all the time, and that's fine. That's how capitalism works. But we can't just start over if our government fails. That's why it's vital that Social Security checks go out in a timely manner and Americans get service when they need it. For example, they can't go to the Canadian government if they're not satisfied with the service. One of the most important roles of government is insuring against risks such as becoming too old to work (Social Security), losing your job (unemployment insurance), or becoming poor (SNAP). The fact that it protects some people who aren't "profitable" is a core function.
If the American government is a business, then where are “the profits” for the middle, working class, and poor? Most of “the profits” are being hoarded by the wealthiest (the submerged state and the top 20 percent), and the rest of us are stuck with the risk and expenses.
The key thing is the House Republican budget views low- and moderate-income families as a cost that we need to keep in check by cutting programs like Medicaid and SNAP that help people afford health care and groceries, while tax cuts for rich people, which also increase the deficit, are necessary. And just as importantly, the House budget likely adds something like $3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years despite massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. That means that this budget and eventual tax bill are just the first set of cuts to programs helping low- and moderate-income people they are enacting. The same legislators who are putting trillions on the national credit card to cut taxes for rich people are going to say that the ensuing deficits are too high and that's why we need to further cut Medicaid, SNAP, and eventually Social Security and Medicare.
If Donald Trump and the Republicans and the larger right wing get their way with this proposed 2005 federal budget as part of their larger plan to gut government and the social safety net what will America look like?
More Americans would not have enough to eat and fewer will get the medical care they need when they get sick. Even worse, by adding to deficits the House Republican budget would increase pressure to enact further cuts whether it be to the same economic security programs it's slashing or Medicare and Social Security. Wealthy Americans, on the other hand, would have a larger share of the economic pie.
Shares