Opinion: US budget 2026 is all Trump –Severe partisan cuts to non-agenda spending, states, EPA, NASA, etc. are looking grim.

Image: — © AFP Eva HAMBACH

The sheer lack of ideas in the Trump 2026 budget proposal, as described by USAFacts.org is astonishing. The sheer lack of talent and anything approaching realism in governance is worse. The cuts are mainly to non-defense budget items.

Please note: You do need to read this budget outline to see the sheer massive scale of diversion of funds from current spending to see how severe it is. It should also be noted that off-the-books budget measures like riders on legislation can’t be included.

The numbers come from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to Congress. It’s an outline of the Trump administration’s discretionary spending recommendations.

This budget looks like an itemized version of Project 2025. It’s entirely a right-wing wish list, defunding anything remotely related to opposing policies. Those fun folks at the Heritage Foundation clearly had no idea what governments are supposed to do. These budget snippets are proof of that.

If this unsightly, ill-advised mess is accurate and these measures are passed, the acronym USA will have to stand for the Unlikely States of America.  Funding for states is cut by $49.1 billion.

There’s almost nothing for the domestic economy. Funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, which provides rental assistance, is cut by $33 billion. Rental assistance is specifically cut by $26.7 billion, which is to be covered by the states.

That’s after also cutting state funding by $49.1 billion in the same budget. The states are therefore already about $75.8 billion worse off. (Unless the cuts are combined. I wouldn’t trust these figures to make any sense at all.) That’s interesting, because many revenue-negative red states will be the first to hit the wall if this is true.

Also worthy of note is that there’s no indication of any measures to rein in US government debt. This isn’t a budgetary housekeeping exercise in any form, even cosmetically.

To put some balance into this litany of loathsomeness, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is a sort of White House budgetary hot dog stand with souvenirs, is very optimistic about cutting the deficit, improving growth in GDP, and beating the Congressional Budget Office forecasts.

In this case, the expression “balance” is just a bad pun. This budget can’t balance. Simply because of the massive shift in funding and lack of hard numbers for revenue.

Projected revenue is expected to grow 17% of GDP by 2026, according to the CFRB’s statement dated October 2025.  Must have been an interesting two months. This is after tariffs have pulled so much money out of Main Street and businesses. Remember, importers pay tariffs, not the exporters. It’s an all-American gouge.

The problem with that is that projected revenue is never the same as actual revenue. There is also no mention of where this revenue growth will come from. Tariffs definitely won’t and can’t deliver that sort of boost.

Meanwhile, the USA is doing massive and extremely expensive spending in a scattergun cluster of foreign policy initiatives everywhere but the US. There is no indication of any large-scale spending on or within the US domestic economy at any level. There are no budget measures for the cost of living.

Healthcare alone can beggar the US domestic economy in real terms. A country full of sick, desperate people is a sick country. No budget provisions? What a coincidence.  

The good news for America, such as it is, is that this fiscal demolition derby physically can’t go on. There’s no money, just more debt. It’s almost as if someone whose only known hobby is bankruptcy was in charge. If the US dollar takes a real hit, this budget can’t survive at all.

When the last crypto dog biscuit gets dragged screaming out of the US Treasury, the fantasies will end.