Tangle - Trump's "skinny" budget proposal.

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

On Friday, the Trump administration released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2026. The White House recommends budgeting $557 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, $163 billion (22.6%) below current levels, with significant cuts to foreign aid, scientific research, and environmental programs. It also proposes $1.01 trillion for defense spending, a 13% increase. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of the budget proposal? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. It is Monday, May 5th Cinco de Mayo. I'm just realizing, I hope anyone who's celebrating is enjoying the day. I'm here in Philadelphia. The whole Tangle team's here.

We've been together all weekend in New York and Philly. We're in the lab. We got a lot of good stuff coming. I am very excited about the future, more excited than ever. And yeah, nothing else to say for now, but some exciting stuff coming down the pike. Before we jump into that, I gotta remind folks who maybe missed it that last week,

we published part one and two of our review of Trump's first 100 days in office. Part one is totally free. It's in our podcast feed and on our website. And you can go listen to it or read that right now. Part two is partially free and then paywalled about halfway through. But I think there's enough good info, even in the free version,

for those of you who aren't yet members yet to go check it out. And if you want to hear my take and some arguments from the right and left about the first hundred days that we collected, then you'll have to become a member, which you can do on our website at reedtangle.com forward slash membership. Today, we are covering President Trump's skinny budget, which as those of you who follow politics closely know, it's mostly aspirational, but I think there's a lot of good information in an administration's goals contained in these budgets. And this one is interesting.

I've got some strong feelings here and there, but I'm gonna pass it over to John so you can hear him break down the main story and I'll be back for my take. ["The Big Game"] Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Hope y'all had a refreshing and wonderful weekend and can take some of that good energy into your week.

And if you see an opportunity to help someone out today, take advantage of the joy that it will bring to both of you. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the Israeli Security Cabinet unanimously approved a new war plan to expand military operations in the Gaza Strip, including occupying the territory. The Israeli military also announced it will be calling up tens of thousands of reservists to bolster its operations in Gaza. Separately, the Houthi rebels in Yemen struck near Israel's main airport in a missile attack that injured eight.

Number two, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. Separately, the Justice Department sued Hawaii, Michigan, Vermont, and New York over climate actions conflicting with federal authority. Number three, a federal judge permanently blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to expedite Venezuelan deportations from the Southern District of Texas. Separately, a federal judge invalidated President Trump's executive order targeting the law

firm of Perkins-Cooey, finding that the order violated free speech and due process protections. 4. President Trump said he would only accept total dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program as a condition of a nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran. And number five, seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll jobs increased by 177,000 in April, exceeding economists' expectations. Additionally, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.2%. And we're learning some new details about the White House's 2026 budget proposal.

President Trump's wish list is topped by $163 billion in spending cuts to education, foreign aid and environmental protection. It also includes a massive 13% boost in defense spending. On Friday, the Trump administration released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2026. The White House recommends budgeting $557 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, $163 billion, or 22.6% below current levels,

with significant cuts to foreign aid, scientific research, and environmental programs. It also proposes $1.01 trillion for defense spending, a 13% increase. The proposal is a skinny budget, an aspirational document that outlines a president's spending priorities for the following fiscal year. While rarely enacted in full, skinny budgets are a starting point for budget negotiations in Congress.

Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought said, the recommendations in Trump's budget proposal proceed a forthcoming comprehensive fiscal plan. Any appropriations bill requires 60 votes to advance through the Senate, and the stopgap spending deal the Trump administration approved in March

expires on September 30. We previously covered Joe Biden's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, and you can check it out in a link in today's episode description. In a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, introducing the proposal, Vought said OMB arrived at the budget recommendation through a rigorous line-by-line review of fiscal year 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions

of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life. Outside of defense spending, these were the top cuts and increases the Trump administration recommended. A $49.1 billion cut to state and international programs. A $33.6 billion cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A $33.3 billion cut to the Department of Health

and Human Services. A $42.3 billion increase to the Department of Homeland Security. a $42.3 billion increase to the Department of Homeland Security, a $5.4 billion increase to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a $1.5 billion increase to the Department of Transportation. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, which previously clashed with Republican leadership over spending priorities, praised a proposal, calling it a paradigm shift. Representative Chip Roy, the Republican from Texas, said the budget realigns federal spending

to the priorities of the people, a secure nation making America healthy again, a Justice Department combating crime and not weaponized against the people, and common sense. However, some Republican members of Congress criticized the proposal for not actually increasing defense spending. Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican from Missouri, argued that since the administration counted a defense increase in a separate reconciliation bill, defense spending in the appropriations bill, which is roughly the same as fiscal year 2025 allocation, would effectively decrease due to inflation.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats criticized the budget's cuts to federal programs. Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, "...this budget proposal would set our country back decades by decimating investments to help families afford the basics, to keep communities safe, and to ensure America remains the world leader in innovation and life-saving research." Today, we'll share arguments from the right and the left on President Trump's budget proposal, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right supports the budget outline, suggesting it follows through on Trump's campaign promises.

Some call on Congress to embrace the bulk of the spending cuts. Others say the proposal targets some bloat, but questions some of its increases. The New York Post editorial board wrote, Trump's big, beautiful budget plan delivers for America. The plan slashes billions from corrupt Biden-era climate outlays, reining in federal subsidies for campus bureaucracies pushing woke ideologies, and ending foreign aid that doesn't address real U.S. security needs, the board said. Contrary to Brang by congressional Democrats, Trump's spending reductions do not touch Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, though some program reforms can slow the growth of Medicaid

and bring savings by reducing fraud. Among the desperately needed investments in national defense, development of Golden Dome next-gen missile defense system, ramped- up funding for naval yard ships, sixth-generation F-47 next-generation combat aircraft, plus modernization of its U.S. military nuclear deterrence. It's sending a message of peace through strength. Trump's bold plan pushes the federal government in the direction Republicans have wanted for decades now, but lack the resolve to pursue. It aims to cut off special interests and insiders who've fed too long from the public purse,

get the government off the back of the productive private sector, and reverse the long decline in the nation's defenses. It's now up to the House and the Senate to follow through. In Cato, Romino Bochia and Dominic Lett argued Congress should embrace the cuts in Trump's skinny budget. In many respects, the budget enshrines the priorities of the Department of Government efficiency such as agency consolidation, workforce reductions, and federal divestment from state and local functions.

Congress should embrace the spending reductions in the budget and act on them, Bochy and Lett said. Note that this is a partial skinny budget, so it makes no real attempt to restrain the primary drivers of the deficit – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Without changes to these age-old retirement and health care programs, the U.S. will remain hurtling toward a fiscal crisis. In addition to acting on the President's spending cut proposals, Congress should adopt binding 10-year discretionary spending caps with a 2% annual spending growth

limit. Imposing transparent resource constraints should motivate legislators to prioritize core government functions and more carefully examine the tradeoffs inherent in all spending decisions. Likewise, Congress should also implement offsets for any new emergency designations deterring phony and wasteful emergency spending. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the budget offers useful reform. The press is portraying the administration's budget as a starvation diet, but non-defense

discretionary spending has increased by 45 percent in the last six years, nearly twice as much as inflation. The budget's proposed cuts would hold spending flat, the board wrote. The much needed reforms include turning housing rental assistance programs into state-block grants with two-year eligibility caps for able-bodied adults to ensure most of the money goes to the elderly and disabled. The budget also proposes consolidating sundry worker training programs and eliminating the job corps, which has lousy outcomes.

Another successful budget reform is eliminating harm reduction substance abuse programs that provide safe smoking kits and supplies and syringes for drug users. The administration plans to cut $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health, which could hurt innovation, though the agency currently spends too much on overhead and social science research, the board said. A disappointment is the defense proposal, which could be something of a bait and switch. It advertises a $119.3 billion increase, but that also includes a $150 billion one-time in Congress' reconciliation bill that we touted earlier this week. Alright that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left criticizes the proposed cuts to federal agencies, arguing that they would harm millions

of Americans. Some say the budget would undermine critical programs like cancer research. Others worry Trump is teeing up a broader spending clash with Congress. For the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Shannon Parrott wrote, Trump's budget plan continues his agenda of hurting those he pledged to help. During the campaign, President Trump said, as soon as I get to office, we will be making housing much more affordable. But his budget proposes a devastating cut to rental assistance, which makes rent affordable

for 10 million people, reducing funding by $27 billion below the amount provided in 2025 across five programs. This would cause millions of people to lose assistance they need to pay the rent each month, placing them at risk of eviction and homelessness, Parrott said. These cuts would likely grow even deeper over time, since the budget would also consolidate multiple rental assistance programs into a block grant that would be more vulnerable to cuts in the future. In addition, the budget proposes several cuts to other housing programs, such as sharply

reducing funding for housing and other services for people experiencing homelessness, cutting housing resources for indigenous people, and eliminating funding for local agencies protecting people from housing discrimination and other fair housing violations, and block grants that fund affordable housing and community development at the local level," Parrott wrote. Most fundamentally, the budget fails to propose a serious agenda for the U.S. economy or for people who haven't been included enough in the country's overall prosperity. In MSNBC, Dr. Jalal Begg said Trump's cuts will devastate cancer research. The administration's assault on cancer research is part of a larger effort by the Department

of Government Efficiency to trim the fat on federal programs, Begg said. Instead, the Trump administration proposed cutting and capping NIH's payments for indirect costs – rent, electricity, specialized lab equipment, support personnel, etc. – at 15 percent. These facility and administrative fees associated with research can range from anywhere between 10 and 80 percent of a grant and are negotiated between the NIH and individual institutions. Countless Americans depend on the continued programs of cancer research to save lives and improve cancer care.

Without it, many potential insights and treatments needed to propel oncology forward will never be realized, Bayeg said. The progress of cancer research is rarely linear. While most ideas do fail, some will lead to seismic breakthroughs. Adding widespread budget cuts to this already difficult scientific process will not only dissuade future scientists from entering the country's labs, but it will also unconscionably swing the pendulum from life to death for many hopeful patients.

In the New Republic, Hafiz Rashid suggested Trump's proposal threatens to take over Congress' powers. The proposal would slash nearly every federal program by $163 billion, except for defense spending, which would remain flat. Many Republicans are already unhappy with it, but the White House may not heed their concerns. One official in the Office of Management and Budget told Politico that the administration wouldn't rule out impoundment or overriding Congress's decision by withholding funding

it has already approved, Rasheed wrote. Such a move would violate the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Trump and his allies have called unconstitutional. Trump hinted at bringing back presidential impoundment authority while campaigning for president, making his attempt to seize appropriated funds a real possibility despite the Constitution clearly stating that the authority over government spending lies with Congress, Rasheed said. So will the president try to impound funds, and will Republicans stand up for their own constitutional authority if he does?

The GOP has not shown much, if any, resolve in standing up to Trump, and Democrats have little they can do as the minority in the House and the Senate. It seems that if Trump tries to seize funds, the court may be the only check on his power. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the right of saying, which brings us to my take. So first of all, I'm not surprised by anything in this proposal. In a term that, as we talked about on Friday, has already been marred by a shattering of norms and an abuse of executive power, President Trump is proposing a budget of pretty standard Republican fare. Military spending up, social services cut, no plan to meaningfully address our annual

deficit. Raise your hand if you've seen this before and everyone's hand should be going up right now. Which is why I'll repeat the exact same thing verbatim that I said about Biden's skinny budget proposal from last year. I genuinely believe we are in a perilous moment with our debt and deficit. And I don't see anything in this budget that is new,

innovative or helpful in the way we'll need to escape said peril. In fact, I think the debt and deficit situation is actually worse now than it was under Biden. That is not exclusively Trump's fault, obviously. It is the straightforward product of successive administrations increasing the federal budget and not collecting enough tax revenue to pay for it. Trump is like every other 21st century president who has continued and worsened at least one element of that one-two combo, though it should be said

he might be the only one who has both massively increased our spending and past tax cuts that have reduced the amount of revenue he was bringing in. Every president faces a dual challenge in trying to control our fiscal situation. First, voters hate tax increases, so raising new revenues is incredibly hard. Second, they face a media that, as the Wall Street Journal editorial board puts it, portrays every spending cut as a starvation diet.

The Journal's editorial board is right to point out that our non-defense discretionary spending, that is, the spending Congress approves annually that is not mandated by law, has increased 45% in six years. That's twice as much as inflation. Trump's proposed budget holds that spending flat, which in this political climate is about the most you can expect. To get there, Trump followed the modern Republican playbook of scorched earth cuts paired with increases for defense and homeland security.

I'll lay out my big reactions to these individual proposals, starting with the small stuff and then getting to the big stuff. I support a lot of the smaller individual cuts and increases. For instance, moving housing and rental assistance programs into state block grants and capping them for able-bodied adults

so the money primarily goes to the elderly and disabled is a good example of more efficient governing, not the heartless rug pulling of social services. While I don't support Trump targeting specific news organizations with executive orders, I'm also totally fine with cutting federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, given that government money is often a fraction of public media organizations' budgets and I fundamentally oppose the government funding the press in principle. On the flip side, I'm glad to see suggested increases for air traffic controllers and updated systems at the Federal Aviation Administration, which is a nice change of pace from the absurd

slash and burn policies of DOJ. I also conditionally support more money to fund Homeland Security, provided it means more funding for immigration judges and asylum officers at the border, a proposal I have been screaming into the void for many years now. And naturally, I positively hate some of Trump's recommendations. For instance, the skinny budget proposes devastating cuts to an already struggling National Park Service, which makes no sense to me. The NPS is a great example of a federal program

doing a lot with a little, and the system has already been upended by the erratic and disorganized Doge cuts, which cost it some 2,500 employees. I know a lot of NPS workers, and I've been to many of our parks, quintessential American treasures, and I strongly believe they are underfunded, not overfunded.

Yet the administration is now forcing many parks to close, suspend tours, cut hours, and limit camping reservations. The park system, actually, is almost the complete opposite of the Pentagon. Which brings me to the big stuff. The Department of Defense is a massive, ever expanding composite of waste that consistently fails audits and regularly evades oversight. So naturally, Trump is putting forward the first ever trillion dollar military budget and bragging about increasing military spending. Interestingly, and as several of the writers we quoted above mentioned, Trump's proposal

would not actually do that. The short story is basically that Trump is keeping military funding flat now while promising to boost spending in his massive reconciliation bill, which is supposed to come later, something key Republicans are already expressing displeasure about. They're right to. It's a budgetary gimmick to pretend this proposal boosts military spending. But I'm glad it doesn't. In this era of runaway federal deficits, we shouldn't be boosting spending on an already bloated military when we know it isn't using In this era of runaway federal deficits, we shouldn't be boosting spending on an already bloated military when we know it isn't using all those billions of dollars efficiently. All of this brings me to my final point. Politicians talk a lot, often telling specific audiences what they want to hear.

But when push comes to shove, a budget proposal like this is the way to best understand the president's priorities. In Trump's case, it looks like his aim is to slash funding for foreign aid, climate initiative, science research, and housing programs, while boosting cash for the border, veterans, air safety, charter schools, and Mars exploration. And yet, I still feel like all of this is just noise. Trump, in his final term, has a real golden opportunity

to do the truly courageous thing, which would be to grab the political third rail of addressing Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending. But this administration, like all the ones before it, appears to be keen to look the other way. Rather than taking any of the many great options to reform these programs, Trump appears to want to take credit for reining in spending while forcing our attention elsewhere,

the debate about the ethics of slashing biomedical research or education programs for Americans living in poverty. Just like Biden and Democrats, Trump is absolutely petrified to touch the things that matter most. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Christina in Purdy, Washington.

Christina said, why hasn't Trump gotten rid of the penny? He suggested it and I would bet that it is a nonpartisan issue. Canada did it years ago. Seems like a no brainer. Is eliminating the penny too easy and too non-controversial for Trump's palate? So he has gotten rid of the penny. Kind of. It's complicated. First, the reason to remove it. Making every one cent coin cost the US Treasury 3.69 cents or nearly $10 million a month. A penny has cost more to make than it's worth for a long time.

And the opposition to minting the coin goes back to the 1980s. Also notably, the Treasury Department has discontinued coins in the past, like the half penny, two cent coin, and the Trime, which was the three cent coin. So it makes sense not to make these cents. And in February, Trump ordered Treasury Secretary Scott

Besson to halt production on new pennies. Legally, whether the president can do that is a little unclear. Besson has the authority to print the coins he decides are necessary according to the US code. So Besson seems to have the authority to just set that number to zero. That would mean a couple things.

Existing pennies are still recognized as legal tender and another president or treasury secretary could decide differently and mint new ones again. Permanently banning the penny from new minting or circulation would likely require an act of Congress. So, limiting the penny isn't actually too easy to do permanently. It also isn't too non-controversial.

Some critics believe that eliminating the penny would have costly knock-on effects, annoy consumers by forcing rounded transactions, and actually be unpopular to a majority. And as every article we quoted gets into, others say Trump isn't going far enough with the penny. A nickel costs 14 cents to mint, so why not get both? Ultimately, it looks likely that you won't see any new pennies during the Trump administration, but you can still spend the ones you have,

though both those statements are subject to change. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm gonna send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has spearheaded significant headcount reductions and spending cuts at various federal agencies.

But many of those actions could prove temporary once Musk steps back from his role. Several Republican lawmakers have signaled that their colleagues may balk at codifying cuts to foreign aid and other programs as the party prepares its forthcoming budget reconciliation bill. Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, said Dozier's attempts to eliminate foreign aid programs will be an interesting debate in Congress, adding, If we get off the field completely and there's a void, then our adversaries will fill it. Separately, Representative Thomas Massey,

the Republican from Kentucky, suggested that much of the spending will be reinstated. We write strongly worded letters, we express righteous indignation at hearings, and then we just rubber stamp everything we did last year, he said. Notice has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

The Number of Days Until September 30th, when the current deal funding the government expires, is 148. The percent change in funding for state and other international programs in President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal is minus 83.7 percent, the largest percent change for any program or agency. The percentage of Americans who think that federal government spending on foreign aid should increase and decrease respectively is 20 percent and 49 percent, according to a February 2025 YouGov poll. The percent change in funding for the Department of Homeland Security in President Trump's

budget proposal is plus 46.9 percent, the second largest percent change for any program or agency. The percentage of Americans who think that federal government spending on border security should increase and decrease respectively is 60 percent and 11%, according to a February 2025 YouGov poll. The average reduction in funding for federal agencies among those targeted for cuts in Trump's proposed budget is 35%. The number of independent agencies whose funding would be eliminated in Trump's budget proposal

is 23. And of those 23, the number of agencies that Trump sought to eliminate in his 2018 budget during his first term was 14. Alright, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. A charity established in 2009 has now trained over 2 million truckers to spot and report signs of human trafficking. With millions of professional drivers on the road, truckers against trafficking identified the unique position of truck drivers to help save lives by keeping watch on highways, at truck stops, and at gas stations.

The organization has expanded to include energy companies, local couriers, and bus drivers. Positive news has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off.

Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lope. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Tasperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dyett75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.