Trump’s Budget Is Designed to Impress, Not to Pass
The plan is cheap currency for the president to buy the goodwill of a crucial part of his base.
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The most common reaction to the austere budget released by the Trump administration on May 23 is that it can’t possibly get past Congress. President Donald Trump himself may be fine with that. In its current form, his budget looks more like a sop to the far-right wing of the Republican Party—cheap currency to buy the goodwill of a crucial part of his base.
Trump has already scored a meaningful political victory—meaningful to him, at least—by eliciting the right responses from the right people. Americans for Limited Government praised the plan as “sober,” while former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, a Democrat, called it “simply ludicrous.”