The American public is having economic nightmares. Anxiety grows over the price of eggs, uncertainty about tariffs, inflation and tens of thousands of workers being fired. At the apex of the anxiety sits the proposed 2025 federal budget.
If the Trump administration is running a publicity campaign to spread fear about the federal budget, they are succeeding beyond Trump’s wildest imagination. The Trump budget is the bludgeon of MAGA anger.
Elon Musk falsely said, “Social Security is the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.”
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., in an outburst of haughty rhetoric, said, “To my friends who are upset … call somebody who cares.”
He added during a Fox News interview: “You know, they better get used to this.”
What’s this? A modern translation of “Let them eat cake.”
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick made a seemingly off-the-cuff statement about missing Social Security checks: “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month.”
“Fears about the future of Social Security are indicative of enlarged fears about cuts in benefits in the Trump 2025 budget.”
Among those who depend on Social Security — their own money, by the way, not an “entitlement” — the emotional reaction to Lutnick is the equivalent of a 1934 run on a bank. People are scared. They are not thinking about all the alleged good Musk is doing. They are no longer giddy about cutting all that waste and fraud. People losing their jobs? No big deal. But where’s my damn Social Security check?
Fears about the future of Social Security are indicative of enlarged fears about cuts in benefits in the Trump 2025 budget.
The elephant in the room
On Feb. 25, the House of Representatives passed its Concurrent Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 2025, which lays out topline spending and revenue goals for the federal budget between fiscal year 2025 and 2034.
According to Yale’s Budget Lab, the MAGA plan to dish out $4.5 trillion in tax cuts paired with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts will disproportionately affect the poorest swath of the population.
Three committees tasked with some of the largest changes to the federal deficit in the resolution are:
- The Committee on Agriculture, which oversees federal farm programs and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps), which is instructed to propose deficit-reducing changes of at least $230 billion over 10 years.
- The Committee on Energy and Commerce, whose Subcommittee on Health oversees significant portions of Medicare and all of Medicaid, which is instructed to propose deficit-reducing changes of at least $880 billion over 10 years.
- The Committee on Ways and Means, the House’s chief tax-writing committee, which is instructed to propose changes that would increase the deficit by no more than $4.5 trillion over 10 years.
Yale researchers Harris Eppsteiner and John Ricco explain the MAGA budget’s $230 billion in cuts to the SNAP over 10 years is combined with an $880 billion gutting of Medicaid in the same time span.
“The overall effect of these policy changes would be regressive, shifting after-tax-and-transfer resources away” from households at the “bottom of the distribution towards those at the top,” Eppsteiner and Ricco wrote in their analysis.
“The proposed budget plan would transfer a massive amount of wealth from the poorest 40% of Americans to the richest 1%.”
The proposed budget plan would transfer a massive amount of wealth from the poorest 40% of Americans to the richest 1%.
The proposal includes an across-the-board reduction of 30% in federal spending on SNAP and an across-the-board reduction of 15% in federal spending on Medicaid. The biggest proposed cuts include a $230 billion reduction for the Committee on Agriculture over the next decade, a $330 billion reduction for the Committee on Education and Workforce and an $880 billion reduction for Energy and Commerce.
The elephant in the room: The stated Trump goal of cutting $2 trillion from the budget can’t be accomplished without cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Experts agree there is no way to finance the budget plan without such cuts. It’s like telling a lost traveler on the frontier, “You can’t get there from here.”
Robin Hood in reverse
The legend of Nottingham Forest stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Now, instead of legends, we are dealing with cut-throat, bottom-line garden variety thieves who are happy to take from the poor and give to the rich.
The Trump budget contains a double whammy: tax cuts for the rich along with budget reductions for the poor in SNAP, Medicare and Medicaid.
A graphic from the Yale study illustrates how people will be impacted:
A budget written by billionaires always was going to be skewered in favor of the billionaires. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As historian Robert S. McElvaine points out: “The share (of wealth) going to the richest 10% shot up from 1979 to 2007 by a very significant 45%, but the share going to the richest 1% far more than doubled — and that taken in by the hyperrich, the top one one-hundredth of a percent, more than tripled in less than three decades after the launch of the Reagan Revolution. This is to say that while the rich were getting richer and everyone else was at best stagnating, the very rich were getting very richer and the very, very rich were getting very, very, very richer.”
MAGA’s mixed messages
The mixed messages rolling out of the Republican brain trust are an emotional gusher of misinformation, lies and confusion.
President Trump’s consistent campaign promise was, “We will not touch Social Security.”
This has not been the message of Musk, however. His Department of Government Efficiency is moving to downsize the Social Security Administration with office closures, cutbacks on phone services and new rules requiring in-person visits for some prospective beneficiaries to register.
Musk has ignited a five-alarm fire on Social Security by himself. The image of Musk prancing around on the stage with a chainsaw is not comforting. He can’t wait to take his chainsaw to the budget.
“Republicans have insisted Musk is wrong. And yet there he is still cutting Social Security’s workforce.”
Musk attacked Social Security: “The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements, so that’s the big one to eliminate,” he said.
Once again, with feeling: Social Security is not an entitlement. Workers pay into the fund with their own money that is saved and invested and later returned to them. The billionaire Musk seems not to understand this.
Republicans have insisted Musk is wrong. And yet there he is still cutting Social Security’s workforce, closing offices and shutting down phone lines.
“First, we are not going to cut Social Security benefits. Secondly, we need to be so cautious (about) how we cut the workforce because customer service is inadequate now as it is,” said Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska.
Democratic Rep. Norma Torres of California counters: “The Republican budget isn’t about ‘fiscal responsibility’ — it’s about rigging the system for the wealthy. They’re planning to cut Medicare, Social Security and public schools — all while handing billions to their donors. This isn’t about making smart policy decisions; this is about lining their pockets at the expense of Americans.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressing the nation.
Trump’s goal remains the same
Pundits have argued Trump intends to destroy the legacy of President Barack Obama. I believe Trump’s resentment and revenge go back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The cornerstone of the New Deal was Social Security. It at last inscribed into American law and culture an acknowledgement of a modicum of societal responsibility for the care of the aged, unemployed, handicapped and impoverished. It also was important as a symbolic gesture to demonstrate that Roosevelt’s heart was in the right place.
“As much as Trump desires to destroy Obama and Biden’s legacy, the real target is FDR and the New Deal.”
We are still fighting the same economic battles of the Great Depression. As much as Trump desires to destroy Obama and Biden’s legacy, the real target is FDR and the New Deal.
Trump’s 2025 budget takes direct aim at FDR’s legacy. For almost 100 years the American people have treated Social Security as a “sacred trust.” Now, in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy, Musk sees Social Security as expendable. The importance of this distinction is more apparent than ever.
When President Lyndon Johnson led the fight for civil rights, he warned Democrats would lose the South for more than a generation as a result. He was right. Now, a similar prognosticator will say if Republicans reduce or eliminate Social Security, they will lose the nation for more than a generation, maybe forever.
This is a “sacred cow” more important to the American people than the goose that lays the golden eggs is to the American wealthy.
And lying about it while lining the pockets of the uber-wealthy is something even the most devout rural Republicans will not abide.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.