Trump’s Shutdown Gambit
Every shutdown promises a turning point in federal spending that never turns. Don’t expect the current shutdown to end any differently.
Former President William Jefferson Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union Address announced that “the era of big government is over.” Federal expenditures for fiscal year 1996 were $1.5 trillion.
A President Donald Trump-backed continuing resolution to keep the government open after Oct. 1 projects annual federal spending for fiscal year 2025 at a staggering $7 trillion, a nearly 400% spike since Clinton’s “small government” policy 30 years earlier.
Rumors of the death of Leviathan government by Trump seem vastly exaggerated. True enough, Democrats crave even more lavish federal government spending. But that does not make Trump parsimonious. The latest budget bill on Trump’s watch jumped the national debt ceiling by another $5 trillion, which would have been superfluous if real government downsizing were intended.
Trump is expanding, not diminishing, the government footprint: soaring already bloated defense spending past $1 trillion annually, investing government funds in private enterprise indistinguishable from socialism, multiplying immigrant detention centers and the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and assembling dossiers on every American using artificial intelligence.
To be sure, the agendas of Trump and Democrats in Congress are not interchangeable. Their spending priorities differ. But neither wishes to place the federal government on a diet to end annual $1 trillion-or-more deficits as far as the eye can see. Trump champions a sovereign wealth fund that would institutionalize European-like socialism. Only ingenues believe the fund might avoid capture by the incumbent president to advance a partisan political agenda.
But half a loaf is better than none. Trump should seek legislation to terminate useless federal departments. First on the chopping block should be the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Energy and Agriculture. All fail a cost-benefit test by a country mile. Second should be closing more than 800 military bases abroad and bringing home special forces in scores of countries irrelevant to the nation’s invincible self-defense. Third should be terminating the Office of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, whose spy missions are worthless.
The foregoing, however, is as improbable as finding a unicorn under a Christmas tree.
A federal government shutdown began on Oct. 1. We’ve seen this rodeo before. Since 1980, the federal government has experienced 14 shutdowns. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, a partial shutdown continued for five weeks. Every shutdown promises a turning point in federal spending that never turns. Don’t expect the current shutdown to end any differently.
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