By Mel Wilson, NASW Senior Policy Adviser
President Donald Trump’s proposed FY2027 federal budget represents a continuation of the pronounced shift in federal priorities that are clearly designed to substantially reshape the U.S. social safety net. The proposal seeks to reduce non-defense discretionary spending by roughly 10 percent while sharply increasing defense spending and funding for immigration enforcement. The budget reflects the administration’s skewed emphasis on national security to the detriment of critically important domestic programs.
The president’s budget also highlights the growing income disparities in the United States and the sense that the current administration and Congressional Republican leadership’s insensitivity to the struggles of low and moderate-income Americans. We must remind ourselves that income inequality between the richest Americans and everyone else is at its highest since the late 1920s. It was this period that led to creating the social safety-net as national policy – recognizing a federal responsibility for the basic well-being for the least of us.
Therein lies the reason for apprehension about the Trump administration’s fiscal plan. Their budget is not motivated by a governmental sense of obligation to maintain or improve the well-being of its marginalized and vulnerable citizens – in fact, this government seems to be hostile to that notion. That postulation is supported by a Forbes Magazine article describing the administration’s cynical thinking in articulating its budget priorities for FY 2027. A quote from that article is as follows:
“Funding for many domestic programs, by contrast, is slashed, with them being frequently dismissed as ‘woke, wasteful, and inefficient.’ At one point, budget documents promise to eliminate ‘the weaponized rot in our Federal Government once and for all.’ At another, they vow that ‘President Trump is committed to eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans.'”
The Forbes article paints a picture of an administration that views the role of its government – from a budget perspective – as being the protector of interests of the billionaire class. Which is exemplified by astronomical tax cuts – paid for by gutting billions of dollars from social safety net programs. Additionally, the administration is fully committed to growing the already bloated Department of Defense’s (DOD) budget by growing it to $1.5 trillion (a 45 percent increase). This represents the biggest annual increase in the military budget in more than 50 years.
Given those facts, it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that the proposed FY2027 budget is a continuation of what has been described as a ‘reverse Robin Hood’ – robbing from the poor to give to the rich – approach to formulating the national budget. This reference is more meaningfully when we realize that the inequitable FY2027 budget has been introduced on the heels of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which included nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts. Jointly, the OBBB cuts, along with the non-defense discretionary reductions in Trump’s budget, will represent the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.
For the sake of context, some specific safety-net programs that will be cut include:
- Health care, nutrition assistance, and housing programs which are associated with preexisting OBBB cuts in Medicaid, SNAP (food assistance), and related safety-net supports.
- The proposed reductions in the housing safety net are particularly egregious during a time when the country is experiencing a documented national affordable housing crisis. Trump’s budget proposes a 13 percent reduction to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which translates to billions for affordable housing, homelessness programs, and community development initiatives being drastically curtailed.
- Moreover, several programs supporting low-income communities – such as Community Development Block Grants and HOME housing funds – would be eliminated, while rental assistance programs would face new work requirements and time limits.
Relatedly, the FY2027 budget proposes ending the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps households pay heating and cooling bills, and cutting funding across health agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, including major reductions to the CDC and NIH.
The bottom line is that the Trump administration’s budget – if adopted – will rob low- and moderate-income Americans of crucial services. At the same time, the administration will expand the Defense Department’s budget for often unnecessary and wasteful purposes and escalating the unjustified war in Iran.
It is often said that a nation’s budget reflects its values. In accepting the premise of that aphorism, it must be said that the spending priorities in the Trump administration’s FY2027 budget reflects its disregard for the day-to-day struggles of many Americans. This is compared to enthusiastically favoring the 1 percent of our country who own over 30 percent of the nation’s wealth. Most of us would agree that there is something very wrong with those misplaced priorities.
