Soon, I will be focusing on my next trip abroad. Be forewarned, therefore, that my political rants may slow down for a while, which I am sure will devastate many of you 💔 🙂.  This upcoming ocean trip will take me to several stops in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. Let me assure you, however, there is no truth to the widespread rumor that I will be claiming these lands in the name of King Donald I. While he asked for this small favor, I turned him down flat. I’m more worried that our friendly Canadians and Greenlanders will recognize my American accent and stone me upon stepping ashore. The term ugly American has taken on an entirely new meaning since last fall.

Our plummeting reputation around the globe does reflect one positive note stemming directly from the Trump Presidency. Yes, I’ve actually stumbled upon something positive about the Donald. His behavior and policies are so awful that other nations are turning away from extreme right-wing candidates. In effect, Donald is a walking advertisement for an authoritarian disaster. In both Canada and Australia, heavily favored conservative candidates suddenly and inexplicably suffered easy defeats. Thank you, Donald.

The heavy hand of MAGA extremists may well turn the tide in the U.S. as well. The most significant bell weather election in the early reign of Donald the First took place a little more than a month ago in Wisconsin. A pivotal state Supreme Court race wound up costing almost $100 million dollars, with Elon Musk throwing in some $20 to $25 million behind the hard-right candidate. The election took place one day before Prince Donald announced his liberation day tariffs, an ill-considered policy thrust that wrought immediate havoc across the economy and in the equity markets. Still, what had been considered a toss-up election in a decidedly purple state became a route for the liberal candidate. This is quite surprising given that the Donald had won in the Dairy State just 5 months earlier. Thank you again, Donald

We all have our favorite theories to explain such unexpected reversals of fortunes. It is, however, hard to ignore the possibility that our wannabe King/Dictator (or is it now Pope) has ruled with such capricious incompetence that parts of his base now are appalled. Consider the furious turnouts of furious residents in Congressional Republican town hall sessions. Can you imagine what soy bean farmers in Wisconsin are thinking now that their hero is tanking their livelihood with tariffs that are drying up their foreign markets and that virtually all mainstream economists consider to counterproductive at best and likely ruinous in the extreme.

More recently, his minions are threatening to arrest Wisconsin’s popular twice elected Democratic governor simply for suggesting that state officials check with lawyers before cooperating with demands by ICE (the American Gestapo). I mean, the man at the top, Prince Donald, explicitly stated that he was not sure whether he was required to uphold the Constitution. Think about it! The presidential oath of office explicitly calls for the chief executive to uphold the Constitution. But Donald remains unsure about this. It seems reasonable that the chief executive of a state guarantee that standard constitutional protections are applied to his state’s citizens. Apparently, the whims of an authoritarian are sacrosanct.

Let me move on to the topic crowding in on my beleaguered brain … budgets and what they ultimately mean. In discussing the most recent GOP budget proposal, Public Policy professor Don Moynihan (University of Michigan) noted that all budget documents are morality tales. What we support as public goods including how much we are willing to pay, whom we tax to finance these expenditures, and how costs are allocated across programmatic areas ultimately reflect our collective values. Every policy wonk knows this core truth in an intimate way. That is one of the inescapable facts that make the doing of public policy so consequential, so compelling, and ultimately so fractious. I know! I was intimately involved in the welfare debates of the 80s and 90s. Few public policy issues were as normatively contentious as that one.

Budgets also reflect our fundamental world views in stark ways. Simplifying everything to the extreme, there are three dimensions to the budget process. As suggested above, these are (1) how much to spend, (2) how resources are allocated across competing interests, and (3) who will foot the bill. Like I said, this is really a simplified discussion.

How much to spend? The optics of MAGA’S early days suggest that federal outlays will be down substantially. Elon Musk’s DOGE effort promised at least $2 trillion in savings. Ron Johnson, my Republican Senator (and prime candidate for the dumbest member in the Senate, though the competition for that honor is fierce) asserts that we will need $5 trillion in savings to fund the aggregate tax cuts the MAGA crowd desires. As with all previous Republican tax initiatives, this one is highly schewed to the uber-wealthy. Moreover, conservatives love programs that kill people. They are willing to spend big bucks to see that happen. The defense budget will soon exceed $1 trillion for the first time. Moreover, the Donald has other whims. He wants to expand and refurbish the former Alcatraz Prison (now tourist site) which was closed in the 1960s for being too expensive to operate. Apparently, cost is no object when you are erecting new concentration camps.

Alas, when all is said and done, it is likely that more will be promised than delivered. Musk and the DOGE operatives never defined waste and fraud. MAGA cult members erroneously thought waste and fraud meant cuts in prograns they did not use. Oops, not true! Thus, all those outraged attendees at town hall meetings even in red political jurisdictions.

Moeover, other reversals are emerging to these wholesale budget cuts. Initial reductions are being quietly reversed; the courts are applying legal brakes; and some staff cuts (e.g., IRS) will cost plenty down the road. Moreover, we see Donald the First employing the usual misdirection ploys to obfuscate any expected bad news. Negative economic outcomes suddenly are Biden’s fault even though he left us with an economy that The Economist, a centrists and highly respected publication, stated was the ‘envy of the world.’

Who will pay the bills? In a prior blog, I waxed eloquent about the notion of fairness in deciding how to allocate the tax burden among various population groups defined by income and wealth status. I won’t repeat that entire discussion here. Let us simply say that the MAGA crowd (the leaders, not the slavish cult followers) remain true to several core Republican principles of the past six or seven decades.

The wealthy, either because they have the power to do so or because it comforts with their view of fairness, should pay less than working folk, at least according to the GOP braintrust. Less usually means being exposed to a proportimally smaller tax burden than those who actually work for a living … those who labor for their wages (thus Warren Buffet’s common observation that his secretary had a higher tax rate than he). This is called a regressive tax strategy.

In recent years, their greed is unbounded, marked by systemic efforts to pay less even in absolute terms. Thus, the GOP dream of expanding and extending Trump’s earlier tax cuts is a classic example of their twisted logic. It would add $5.8 trillion to our deficit while giving those at the top of the wealth pyramid at least a $180,000 annual windfall (on average) and virtually nothing to the bottom two quintiles.

The bottom line is this. Working class stiffs will continue to carry a proportionally larger tax burden while receiving fewer public benefits for their outsized contribution. And, the elite will continue to work assiduously to enhance their privileged position. It was estimated that 100 top billionaire families invested $2.6 billion dollars toward federal campaigns in 2024. That is up some 160 times since the Citizens United decision opened up our elections to an unlimited flow of money. The future role of ordinary folk in our political process is dim indeed.

The allocation exercise … where morality plays out in defining the PUBLIC GOOD.

If anything clearly defines our moral stands in the budget process, it can be found in which programs win and which will lose. That is, comparative outcomes are very illuminating with respect to our dominant values. Let us look at how various federal agencies fare under Trump’s most recent GOP budget document (note, this is a reconciliation bill and not a law):

The big losers are international assistance programs … down a whopping 84 percent. This reflects a retreat from global concerns and the return to extreme isolationism. One consequence, some 25 million more deaths (many children) in the next few years when medical outreach disappears as America retreats from its former international role

The National Science Foundation are on the block for a 54 percent cut. America became the preeminent scientific center in the world in the 1930s as Fascism destroyed Europe’s intellectual community. Post-war federal investments then made U.S. universities the envy across the globe. We attracted the best and the brightest to our shores. These and related cuts will reverse all that. Already, the EU is investing over a half billion dollars to lure top scientists from our universities to their institutions of higher learning across the pond.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to see a 54 percent cut in support. Think about this. The globe is poised on the brink of no return as we face a climate apocalypse. Yet, America is turning its back on one of the existential crises of our time … a kind of environmental Armageddon.

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and the Small Business Administration are on the block for cuts ranging from 33 to 44 percent. Many of these programs serve average people, smaller entrepreneurs, workers, and those looking for housing in increasingly expensive markets. This directly attacks the very people who flocked to Trump for support and who looked to him as their savior. (In retrospect, a foolish decision to depend upon a pathological narcissist.)

The Department of the Interior will see budget reductions in the neighborhood of some 30 percent. This includes drastic cuts to what has been called America’s greatest idea … our national parks. What is ironic about this is that the park service, like most federal programs, is run on a shoestring. In recent years, total personnel fell from 22,000 to about 19,000 while park attendance increased by 17 percent. Despite DOGE claims, there was little waste here nor in many other programs being slashed.

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to face a budget cut of some 26 percent. Major cuts are anticipated in both the provision of health care and the prevention of disease and infections. The CDC and the FDA are prime targets here. As old diseases like measles spread and the world yet recovers from the Covid catastrophe, the MAGA crowd simply wants to ignore dire threats to the public’s safety and well-being. Bill Gates has listed future pandemics as a leading apocalyptic possibility, an eventuality for which we are increasingly unprepared.

Finally, NASA faces a 24 percent cut in federal support. Again, science and technology are to be sacrificed. So many technological breakthroughs have been made as we explored our universe. But no more. America risks becoming an intellectual backwater since the MAGA crowd harbors deep suspicions of intellectuals and the institions that train them.

Who will be the winners …

The Department of Defense will see a 13 percent increase. The military budget will see increased support, pushing total funding past the $1 trillion dollar mark. This will happen even while America shrinks from its historic support for Western values and democratic principles as it abandons the Ukraine and NATO.

The Department of Homeland Security is on tap for a whopping 65 percent increase in support. Are we facing new terrorist threats from Islamic extremists? No! This expansion will be the cost of riling up the MAGA base toward imagined threats from GOP created political scapegoats … illegal aliens from Central and South America or, more generally, people who don’t look like us. This will be the cost associated with the MAGA attempt to initiate a modern era of the American ethnic cleansing policy.

So, how do we sum up our moral scorecard?

The winners and losers are clear. Investments in human capital, in the health and wellness of most Americans, in the infrastructure we all depend upon, in science, in children (and thus our future) are all losers. Some projections put the nation’s total debt at $50 trillion in about a decade or less. And, since the pressure in Republican politicians is to come up with the next tax break favoring the super rich, that may be an underestimate. Who will ultimately bear these enhanced fiscal burdens … our children.

We can only guess at the economic instability being introduced by a sociopathic leader who has few restraints and absolutely no moral compass. Of one thing can we be certain … our collective destiny will pay a huge price for today’s greed and profligacy.

Intead of a rational political debate about critical global issues like climate change and the socio-economic consequences of the AI revolution, we focus on whether our wannabe dictator will honor his oath to abide by the Constitution. We look on in dismay as he insists on a military parade to honor his birthday … an over-the-top extravaganza that will include 6,600 soldiers, 7 bands, 150 vehicles, and 50 helicopters. The anticipated cost of this glitzy show is close to $100 million. We look on in horror as the institutions upon which democracy rests and upon which a free people rely come under increasing attack and persecution. The bad news continues with an unending urgency.

There is a new work titled Peak Human by Johan Norberg. While Donald Trump essentially argues that the way to make America great again is to erect big, beautiful barriers to keep out foreign goods and people. Donalds vision, after all, is fortress America … a self- contained island floating supremely and independently in a hostile and competitive globe. Norberg argues the opposite. The historical great powers became such precisely because they opened themselves up to foreign ideas and people. They became petri-dishes in which ideas and innovation were spawned through exchange and intense interactions.

He notes many examples. The ancient Song dynasty in China exploded with growth and new ideas as Europe stagnated. For example, the movable-type printing press was introduced in the eastern kingdom several centuries before Gutenberg stumbled across the same concept. The subsequent Ming dynasty turned inward, and China inevitably declined as a world power.

America needs to do some serious soul searching. It is on the cusp of losing its preeminent position in the world. Much more importantly, it is on the cusp of forfeiting its moral center. That may well be a defeat from which recovery can not be assured. Empathy, after all, is a key moral attribute, the core of any civilization worth sustaining over time.