Will Congress Restrain a Profligate President?

For starters, he wants to cut taxes—"big league." The Tax Foundation estimates that the Trump plan would reduce federal revenues by $4.4 to $5.9 trillion over the course of a decade. Under dynamic scoring, whereby the growth of the economy is factored into the analysis, that number drops to somewhere between $2.6 and $3.9 trillion.

Trump also wants to spend more on infrastructure. Last week, McClatchy published a list of about 50 projects that the Trump administration envisions as public-private partnerships. The total price tag is estimated at $137.5 billion—a lot of dough for Uncle Sam, even if the private sector picks up some of the tab. Trump also promised to increase funding for the Veterans Administration and suggested that veterans should be treated by any doctor that accepts Medicare—an idea that sounds great, but would be expensive. Trump intends to end the military sequester, which has a 10-year price tag of about $1 trillion. In a September speech, he promised to "ask Congress to fully offset the costs of increased military spending."

But where will such savings be found? The good news is that Trump has nominated Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina congressman and noted budget hawk, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Perhaps he will be a rigorous steward of the public finances. The bad news is that the administration already seems to have taken entitlement reform off the table. A few days before the inauguration, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told ABC News, "There are no plans in President-elect Trump's policies moving forward to touch Medicare and Social Security." This is despite the fact that these programs are the main drivers of our long-term debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office's 2016 long-term outlook, by 2046 the shortfall from these two entitlements alone will total nearly 6 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. That is an astounding sum—yet Trump has no desire to rein in these costs.

Sure, the president has talked about eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" from our entitlement system, as well as generating such outstanding economic growth that our fiscal hole will fill itself. This elides the fundamental problem, however, especially with Medicare: People receive a lot more in benefits than they ever pay in. According to Chris Conover of the American Enterprise Institute, by 2030 a high-earning couple will receive nearly $360,000 in lifetime Medicare benefits, for just over $180,000 in lifetime payments. This is not a social insurance program; it is a social welfare program.

If Trump is not going to cut entitlements, he is not going to find the money he needs. Slashing the National Endowment for the Humanities might drive some nice headlines on conservative blogs, but it is basically a rounding error in the federal budget. The main drivers are military spending, which Trump wants to increase, and entitlements, which Trump wants to leave unchanged. He could, alternatively, call for tax hikes to pay for increased spending, but instead he wants massive tax cuts.