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Trump's Budget Exposes the Cruel, Immoral Rot at the Heart of the Republican Party
If we judge President Trump’s values by this budget, we could reasonably conclude he values only Pentagon bloat and aggressive assaults against the most vulnerable people in society.
Apr 24, 2026
Presidents release their federal spending priorities annually in the form of a federal budget proposal. This is a moral rather than a practical document—the president’s budget virtually never passes Congress as written. Instead, it expresses the values of presidents and how they want to see the nation’s revenues raised and investments spent. It’s a blueprint for the kind of country they want us to be.
These priorities fluctuate depending on which administration and party is in power. The fiscal year 2027 budget proposal from President Donald Trump is a shocking departure from values most Americans hold.
The budget proposal builds on the values legislated through Trump’s so-called “One Beautiful Bill,” passed last year, which stole from the rest of us to give tax breaks to the uber wealthy and the richest corporations.
If we judge Trump’s values by this budget, we could reasonably conclude he values only Pentagon bloat, aggressive assaults against immigrant families, and stripping rights from transgender people. Meanwhile, families and communities are essentially thrown to the wolves.
We must demand robust investments in family, community, and basic human needs. These are our national values, not war and the prosecution of immigrant children.
The most eye-popping number is the proposed $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon—a huge increase over the already astronomical $1 trillion spent this year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has brazenly abused immigrants and US citizens, would also get billions more—over and above the unprecedented sums it got in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
What wouldn’t get an increase in Trump’s budget? Programs that actually help people. This budget proposes a 10% cut to all non-Pentagon discretionary spending.
The Department of Health and Human Services is cut by 12.5%. The Department of Agriculture, 25%. The Department of Labor is slashed by 26%, and the Environmental Protection Agency is cut in half.
Jobs Corps for young people and work assistance for seniors are eliminated. After-school programs and food assistance for children are slashed. The federal government’s signature housing program, HOME, is zeroed out entirely.
At a time when families are navigating rising living costs, stagnant wages, and a tight job market, this budget proposes deep cuts to the programs that help them get by. Education, food and housing assistance, home energy assistance, and worker rights—all either zeroed out or drastically reduced. Even the children’s summer food program and the fruit and vegetable benefits of food stamps are cut.
Mind you, all this would come on top of the historic $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs under the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Those cuts aren’t a proposed blueprint—they’ve already been passed into law.
Children feel these effects the most. Reduced access to Head Start and school-based nutrition and disability services doesn’t just affect the present moment—they shape lifelong outcomes. Food insecurity, unstable housing, and a lack of early education create barriers that no child should have to try to overcome.
Transgender people, already under aggressive attack, are targeted in this budget—for example, historic cuts to the National Institutes of Health include eliminating research on the health of trans people.
The document also repeatedly scapegoats the trans community for cuts to programs that have virtually nothing to do with them. For instance, university programs that support vulnerable students were eliminated because the administration claims they fund “clothing needs for transgender people.” Cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association were justified, in part, because the agency allegedly held a workshop for transgender people.
These disinvestments destabilize entire communities and local economies. Public health suffers and income inequality increases.
A nation’s strength is not measured solely by its military spending or economic indicators. It is measured by whether its people—especially its most vulnerable—have what they need to live with dignity. This budget fails that test.
We know what works. Investments in education, nutrition, health, housing, care, income, and work supports. These investments stabilize communities and improve the economy. Choosing to cut these programs is not inevitable. It is a policy decision whose adverse effects will be felt for generations.
We must demand robust investments in family, community, and basic human needs. These are our national values, not war and the prosecution of immigrant children. Because when we disinvest in people, we all pay the price.
This op-ed may be republished with attribution to InsideSources.com.
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Big Military Spending; Lower Taxes—Trump Budgets Like Reagan and Bush
His latest spending proposals build on his history of overseeing significant reductions in taxes and dramatic increases in defense spending, in line with core conservative goals.
Apr 07, 2026
Since Donald Trump first broke onto the national political scene, there has been a serious debate among Republicans regarding his commitment to conservative principles. His style was, in a word, flamboyant. His morality was questionable. And his behavior and language were outrageous. None of these behaviors could be identified with the staid “buttoned down” behaviors on display in conservative circles.
In recent decades, Republicans have latched onto a range of social issues like gay marriage, transgender rights, and abortion, or cultural matters like xenophobia and opposition to affirmative action. None of these issues, however, were central to textbook conservatism, which historically has been encapsulated in the mantra “lower taxes, smaller government” and the insistence that the principal role of government ought to be “securing the national defense.” Despite not being cut from the same mold as Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, President Trump has proven his bona fides on advancing these core conservative goals. Mimicking the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, President Trump in his first and second terms has coupled significant reductions in taxes with dramatic increases in defense spending either to expand the Pentagon’s already bloated budget or to underwrite foreign wars fought by us or allies.
This week’s rollout of Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 looks like a conservative’s dream come true. He is asking for a $500 billion increase in the defense department’s budget, amounting to the largest increase (44%) and the largest overall military budget since World War II. This 2027 increase is on top of the $350 billion supplement requested for 2026, presumably to offset the increased costs resulting from the US-Israel war on Iran.
The 2027 budget request also includes increases for Veterans Affairs and the Justice Department (to cover the costs of immigration prosecutions). But the 2027 budget also makes cuts in 10 other government agencies, with sharp reductions for the State Department and international programs; renewable energy projects; research grants in healthcare; and a number of social, educational, and medical programs. When asked by reporters about the impact of these reductions specifically on Medicare, Medicaid, and daycare programs, the president replied: “We’re fighting wars. It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things.”
Because mainstream Democrats have shied away from criticizing past and present wars and excessive defense spending, they’ve allowed Republicans to use the issue of budget deficits to play innocent and instead attack Democrats as “big spenders” who are recklessly spending the US into a hole.
What makes this problematic is that these dramatic increases in defense spending have been coupled with a sharp reduction in revenues resulting from Trump’s signature legislation—the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—that passed last year. That bill included reductions in taxes totaling $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. In other words, “lower taxes, smaller government” and a singular focus on defense spending—the conservatives’ dream budget.
Two additional benefits to Republicans result from this pairing of decreases in revenues and increases in defense spending. On the one hand, it sharply increases budget deficits, which Republicans have effectively used to call for more spending cuts to social welfare spending. Because mainstream Democrats have shied away from criticizing past and present wars and excessive defense spending, they’ve allowed Republicans to use the issue of budget deficits to play innocent and instead attack Democrats as “big spenders” who are recklessly spending the US into a hole. In reality, however, it was Ronald Reagan’s irresponsible massive tax cuts and huge increases in military spending that caused the budget deficits of the 1980s. And while during the 2012 election Republicans made an issue of the growing national debt, no one pointed out that it was George W. Bush’s tax cuts and the war in Iraq that rang up a bill of trillions of dollars with no new revenues raised to offset the outlays for the war and its aftermath. To date, that war has cost over $7 trillion. Now Trump is following in the footsteps of Reagan and George W. Bush.
There is still another way, that Trump, like Reagan, will try to exploit the crisis created by a skewed budget to his advantage. This week, when reporters asked the president about his budget proposal’s impact on daycare programs, Medicaid, and Medicaid (which will experience cuts or strains), he replied:
(We can’t) send any money for daycare because theUnited States can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do that on a state basis.
By recklessly reducing the federal government’s revenues and then forcing cuts in needed social programs to make way for increased defense spending, Trump, like Reagan, is forcing the financial cost of daycare, Medicaid, education, etc., down to the state level. Then when Democratic governors are forced to raise taxes to cover these increased costs, Republicans will pounce, criticizing them for raising taxes.
If this president’s policies over the last decade haven’t convinced the conservative elite that he's really one of them or voters that he’s not the radical populist his rhetoric made him out to be, then his 2027 budget should be all the convincing they need.
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'A Moral Obscenity': Trump Budget Pairs Record Military Boost With Billions in Cuts to Social Programs
"To pay for his endless wars, he wants the biggest increase to military spending in 70 years," said Rep. Greg Casar. "Hell no."
Apr 03, 2026
President Donald Trump's White House released a budget proposal on Friday that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare, climate, and housing programs.
Trump's budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress, includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while boosting military outlays by 42%—or nearly $500 billion—compared to current levels.
Programs cut or eliminated in the proposed budget—under the guise of slashing "woke programs" and "ending the Green New Scam"—include the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Justice program, Community Services Block Grants, electric vehicle charging subsidies, renewable energy initiatives at the Interior Department, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing.
The budget proposal also calls for cuts to the already-depleted Internal Revenue Service, without offering specific figures.
One budget expert noted that, if enacted, the White House's requested cuts would bring nondefense discretionary spending to "its lowest level in the modern era."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in response to Trump's request that "to pay for his endless wars, he wants the biggest increase to military spending in 70 years."
"How does he pay for it? Cuts to 'education, health, housing, and more,'" Casar added. "Hell no."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement that "the Trump-Vought budget proposal is a moral obscenity," referring to Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"The $500 billion annual increase in proposed Pentagon spending—if it were instead deployed humanely—would be enough to solve or meaningfully address the nation's great problems, from healthcare to daycare, from the climate crisis to affordable housing, from improving schools to making college education affordable," said Weissman. "Instead, Trump and Vought propose to spend an unfathomable amount on a Pentagon that can't even pass an audit to further empower an out-of-control and incompetent leader in Pete Hegseth."
"As usual, the priorities of the people are simply unimportant to this administration as they think about spending our taxpayer dollars," Weissman continued. "Republicans and Democrats in Congress should treat this proposal with all the care it deserves and immediately hit delete."
"Trump said that our country cannot afford to help families with childcare or healthcare—but his own budget proves what a ridiculous farce that is."
The White House unveiled its budget request days after Trump said it is "not possible" for the federal government "to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things" because "we’re fighting wars," comments that observers viewed as a stark summary of the administration's priorities.
"Trump is telling the American people our country somehow can’t afford childcare, Medicaid, and Medicare, but is never too stretched to fund wars of choice," Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Friday. "He is wrong. We are the wealthiest country in the world and can absolutely afford to both defend and invest in the American people."
"The president is now demanding a massive increase in defense spending, including a $350 billion slush fund for his reckless war with Iran, while cutting billions from healthcare, education, housing, and more. This budget represents ‘America Last,'" said Boyle. "I will be demanding answers from White House OMB Director Russell Vought when he testifies at the House Budget Committee on April 15."
The Trump White House is calling on Congress to approve a significant chunk—roughly $350 billion—of its proposed military budget increase via the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to push the funding through without any Democratic support. The new budget request also calls for a "historic investment" in the Department of Homeland Security, which has been partially shut down for more than a month as Democrats push for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"This funding would come in addition to the $170 billion passed just last year that has enabled the deaths of migrants in detention centers, the detention of children, and the deaths of US citizens at the hands of mass deportation agents," Lindsay Koshgarian, program director of the National Priorities Project, said in response to the budget request.
“The president looked at the country, with our rising gas prices and nearly half of us struggling to afford basic necessities, and decided what we really need is a bigger war budget," said Koshgarian. "Not healthcare or childcare or relief from high prices or expensive housing, but a nearly bottomless budget for whatever wars his cronies and the contractors dream up next."
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No Money for Healthcare, But Another $32 Billion for the Pentagon?
There's still time to stop the madness, but lawmakers will not change directions without an outpouring of opposition.
Nov 21, 2025
The government shutdown ended with a failure to solve the problem of steeply rising health insurance premiums.
The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed programs like Medicaid and SNAP to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and a $1 trillion Pentagon, allows tax credits that reduce these health costs for ordinary people to expire at the end of this year.
As a result, millions of Americans who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will see their health insurance premiums double (or worse). Democrats demanded a fix for the problem, but ultimately ended the shutdown without one.
But even in the midst of the shutdown, Senators were still busy. They approved a $32 billion increase for the Pentagon on a bipartisan basis, approving the increase by a vote of 77-20 as part of a larger bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.
Yet the same Senators couldn’t agree to extend those health care subsidies by even a single year to save millions of people from devastating premium increases. The price tag for a single year of extending the subsidies would be about $35 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office — about the same as the Pentagon increase they just overwhelmingly approved.
Now millions of Americans are facing decisions about how — or even whether — to maintain their health insurance given the huge price increases they face. These expiring credits, along with the GOP’s Medicaid cuts and other changes, are expected to cause 17 million Americans to lose their coverage in the coming years.
Senators agreed to a vote on a possible solution for the expiring ACA credits, but there’s no such agreement in the House of Representatives, making any solution highly unlikely.
The Senate’s $32 billion increase comes on top of the previously passed $156 billion increase from the president’s Big Bad Bill. That already promised to push military spending over the $1 trillion mark — by a significant margin, the most we’ve ever spent on the Pentagon during peacetime.
The Senate’s additional $32 billion adds insult to injury. Much of that sum would go to shipbuilding and buying more F-35s, fighter jets which are considered outrageously expensive and often criticized as ineffective.
Along the way, the Senate also defeated amendments that would require military and law enforcement to display clear identification when conducting crowd control — and another that would have required congressional approval for domestic military deployments for law enforcement purposes after 30 days. (Trump’s National Guard deployments to American cities, by the way, have now cost taxpayers nearly $500 million.)
Apparently, even the lowest bars for accountability for Trump’s Pentagon were too high for lawmakers.
But it’s not over — the House and Senate still need to reconcile their Pentagon funding levels. While that will likely happen behind closed doors, members of Congress will still be receptive to calls from their constituents. It’s not too late to defeat that $32 billion.
And then we can get to work using that money to save health care subsidies and keep millions of Americans from losing health insurance.
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Trump's $2,000 Tariff Dividend Payments Would Explode the Deficit by Nearly $4 Trillion Over a Decade
I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk, but I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder.
Nov 10, 2025
I learned basic arithmetic skills in third grade. I wasn’t exceptional; everyone in my public school third grade class learned them. Of course, we all can now use computers to have calculations done for us in a fraction of a second. But still, somehow we have major national debates that show zero understanding of even the most basic arithmetic.
The latest example is the $2,000 tariff dividend check that Trump is promising us. The arithmetic here is about as simple as it gets. We have roughly 340 million people in the country. Let’s say 10 percent don’t get the check because they meet Trump’s category of “high-income.”
That leaves over 300 million people getting Trump’s $2,000 checks. That comes to more than $600 billion. Trump’s tariffs are raising around $270 billion. That means we will be paying out $330 billion more in Trump tariff dividend checks than he is raising in tariff revenue. That would add $270 billion to the deficit—this coming from the same guy who is making an obsession of paying down our national debt.
And just to be clear, we were already looking at a budget deficit for 2026 of $1.8 trillion. If we add $330 billion, the deficit for the fiscal year will be $2.1 trillion. To put this in simple language that even a reporter for a major national news outlet can understand, Trump is proposing to add $2.1 trillion to the debt in 2026; he is not paying it down.
I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk and am not terrified by a deficit of this size, which is roughly 7 percent of GDP. But I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder.
But watching the reaction in major media outlets, there seems almost no appreciation of the fact that Trump was floating what would ordinarily be considered a very large increase in the deficit. In fact, if Trump were to give this tariff dividend check every year over the next decade, it would add close to $4 trillion to the debt (counting interest payments), almost as much as the big tax cut Congress approved earlier this year.
It’s also worth comparing Trump’s tariff dividends to other items in the news. The government shutdown was in large part over the $35 billion in annual payments for enhanced subsidies for people buying insurance in Obamacare exchanges. Trump and Republicans in Congress claimed that we didn’t have the money to pay for these subsidies. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 17 times as much as the enhanced insurance subsidies.
To make another comparison, Trump saved us around $6 billion a year by shutting down PEPFAR, the program that has saved tens of millions of lives by treating people in Africa for AIDS. This means that Trump’s tariff dividend checks will cost us 100 times as much as the AIDS program that he said we couldn’t afford.
And just to throw in one more comparison, the annual appropriation for public broadcasting was $550 million. Trump’s tariff dividend checks would cost more than 1,000 times as much as the government’s payments for public broadcasting.
People can differ in their views on how important it is to save lives in Africa or provide people here with healthcare. They may also differ in their assessments of how important deficits are. But it really would be good if media outlets could make knowledge of third grade arithmetic a job requirement for reporters who deal with budget issues. It should be their job to provide meaningful information to the public on the topic. Letting someone talk about $2,000 dividend checks, and also about paying down the debt, is a sick joke.
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Has Sen Schumer Learned Costly Lessons in the Federal Spending Fight?
With very few opportunities for the minority party to make a difference, Schumer and Senate Democrats now must hold strong to stand up for everyday Americans and their access to the most basic essentials.
Sep 26, 2025
In March, Food & Water Watch joined a chorus of organizations calling on New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to step aside as Democratic minority leader after his disastrous capitulation during the last federal appropriations fight. At the time, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk were running rampant, defunding and destroying critical climate, food, and water programs. But instead of fighting to mitigate the harms, Schumer led fellow Senate Democrats in ceding any leverage they had by capitulating to Republicans’ six-month spending bill without demanding any concessions or procedural backstops.
Now the opportunity has returned to leverage the significant power Senate Democrats have ahead of the latest spending deadline. For the moment it seems that Schumer has learned some lessons from the earlier debacle. He led his caucus to reject a House spending proposal and support an alternative plan to protect critical food, water, and health programs from Trump’s dangerous cuts. He must continue to demonstrate this leadership as the September 30 spending deadline draws near.
Trump and congressional Republicans are playing a dangerous game of chicken, running headfirst into a government shutdown on October 1 with no off-ramp. Trump has refused to even meet with Democratic leadership, and House Republicans are refusing to come back to work until after the funding deadline. They are following the same playbook they used in March to force the hands of Schumer and Senate Democrats. It worked then, and it will work again if Schumer doesn’t stand strong.
After all, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Access to safe, affordable food, clean water, basic healthcare, and so much more.
A Democratic counter proposal from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) includes a key protection against partisan rescissions. We are encouraged that Schumer claims to support this plan.
Though congressional Republicans tout their spending bill as a “clean” extension of current funding levels, this commitment is belied by their threatened use of partisan rescissions to enact Trump’s dangerous cuts later on. This backdoor process fast-tracks the elimination of previously agreed upon funding. While the spending bill needs the support of Senate Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold to avoid the filibuster, with partisan rescissions Trump can later send Congress a list of programs to eliminate through a simple majority vote—without requiring any Democratic support.
Case in point: Congressional Republicans slashed funding for public television and radio—long an aim of the right—through this partisan rescission process earlier in the year. Trump has further abused this tool to illegally withhold funding through a so-called “pocket rescission,” issuing a last-minute request to freeze funds, run out the clock on the fiscal year, and unilaterally cut congressionally-approved funds. This is unconstitutional.
Further backdoor cuts threaten everything from the environment to education to healthcare. On clean water specifically, Trump and congressional Republicans have proposed slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets limits on contaminants in water, develops methods to test for and removes toxic substances, and establishes regulations that prevent water pollution in the first place. Slashing the EPA will imperil the ability of regulators to enforce clean water standards, making our water less safe and Americans more sick.
Republicans have also proposed slashing funding for water infrastructure. In fact, Trump’s spending proposal calls for virtually eliminating funding for the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds—the primary source of federal funding for water infrastructure in the country. Our water infrastructure is already dramatically underfunded. Federal cuts will make it even more difficult for municipalities to respond to acute threats to water safety, including toxic PFAS “forever chemicals,” lead, and climate change-induced storms and flooding. The result will be higher water bills for households and business, and dirtier, dangerous water.
Senate Democrats must reject the House spending bill for these and many other reasons. Fortunately, a Democratic counter proposal from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) includes a key protection against partisan rescissions. We are encouraged that Schumer claims to support this plan.
Recently we facilitated a letter from more than 200 groups across the country that was sent to Sen. Schumer, demanding just this. The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Oxfam America, Popular Democracy, and Public Citizen, among many others. It seems that Sen. Schumer is finally listening.
With very few opportunities for the minority party to make a difference, Schumer and Senate Democrats now must hold strong to stand up for everyday Americans and their access to the most basic essentials, including clean water. No budget deal that allows for future partisan rescissions can be allowed to pass.
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Progressives Fear Schumer Will 'Cave' Again in Budget Fight
In an interview Sunday, the top Senate Democrat hesitated to commit to voting 'no' on a Republican funding bill, even without any concessions on a policy that would lead to higher healthcare premiums for millions.
Sep 22, 2025
Progressives are beginning to fear Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may once again "cave" in budget negotiations with Senate Republicans, even as Democrats hold a crucial bargaining chip related to healthcare costs.
Democrats are pushing the GOP to make concessions in order to fund the government, namely by extending a health insurance subsidy that, if allowed to lapse, will result in tens of millions of Americans paying higher premiums at the end of the year.
They are also hoping to use the negotiations to curtail Trump's ability to rescind federal funding appropriated by Congress and restore funds that have been stripped from public broadcasting and foreign aid.
On Friday, after Republicans passed their version of the bill through the House, both the Republican and Democratic versions of the Senate bills were struck down by the other side.
In an interview Sunday with Dana Bash on CNN, Schumer (D-NY) lamented that Republicans were attempting to ram a bill through with "zero input from Democrats," adding that "that’s not how to get things done."
Congressional Democrats have described a refusal to extend the healthcare subsidies as a red line. But Schumer has come across somewhat shakier in his commitment to that fight, saying last week that “We don’t have a red line, but we know we have to help the American people.”
Later in the interview with Bash, Schumer said, "I hope and pray that Trump will sit down with us and negotiate a bipartisan bill. That's how it's always been done in the past. That's how shutdowns have been avoided in the past."
Bash pushed Schumer to clarify his position: "If he doesn't—I'm just confirming here—You will vote 'no,' is that correct?"
Schumer responded: "We are hoping that he will negotiate with us. So far, he hasn't. We've had two bills in the House and Senate and neither of them have passed. Our Democrats are firm. We need to get something done to relieve the distress the American people are in."
Bash again asked for clarity: "That sounded like a 'yes,' but you can confirm that, and we can move on. Is that accurate?"
Once again, he neglected to give a clear answer, instead reiterating that "The bottom line is that we must—we must—get a better bill than what they have, plain and simple."
Schumer's antics during his last budget showdown with Republicans are looming large in the minds of progressives. In March, the Democratic leader faced perhaps the greatest groundswell of outrage in his career when he abandoned promises to hold firm against a Republican-led continuing resolution that funded the government for six months and expanded Trump's power to override Congress's control over spending.
Many Democrats accused him of "caving," with some calling for him to resign from leadership altogether.
Schumer justified the decision at the time by warning that a temporary shutdown would give Trump greater latitude to consolidate his power. Democrats who voted to break the stalemate also reportedly worried about the political ramifications of being blamed for a shutdown, which could disrupt the functioning of many government services and result in more layoffs of federal workers.
Republicans are reportedly betting that Schumer will cave once again. CNN's Manu Raju reported that late last week, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told him that "Chuck Schumer is not gonna shut the government down."
His unwillingness to make a firm commitment on Sunday has reignited fears that yet another capitulation may be coming—even as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others warn that Republicans' budget proposal would cause healthcare premiums to rise by an average of 75% for millions of Americans who are already struggling with the cost of living.
Sam Seder, host of the progressive talk show The Majority Report, called Schumer's comments "pathetic."
"It’s not an ultimatum if there are no consequences," Seder said. "This is just Schumer begging Senate Republicans for a fig leaf to justify his coming cave and weak leadership."
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, expressed bewilderment that Schumer had been reduced to "literally hoping and praying" for Republicans to act differently rather than using leverage.
Sixty votes would be needed for a continuing resolution to pass through the Senate, meaning that seven Democrats would need to join all 53 Republicans in order for it to pass. On Friday, just one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), joined Republicans in voting for their version of the bill while Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Ky.) joined Democrats in voting against it.
The progressive activist group Indivisible has urged constituents to call their Democratic senators and pressure them to use their bargaining power and reject any deal that does not include significant GOP concessions.
Your Members of Congress need to hear from you.Urge Senate Democrats to keep holding their ground.If you’re represented by Sen. Fetterman or Rep. Golden (or Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez, who was recorded as not voting), be sure to let them know how you feel about their support for the GOP’s proposals.
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— Indivisible ❌👑 (@indivisible.org) September 20, 2025 at 8:55 AM
"The GOP is threatening to shut the government down at the end of this month unless Dems let them take healthcare away from millions and hand Trump another blank check to continue his power grab," the group said in a call to action on Bluesky. "Democrats need to keep opposing any funding deal that enables GOP healthcare cuts or allows Trump’s chaos and lawlessness to go unchecked. We must make sure Democrats are fighting like hell and Republicans are held accountable."
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Stop the GOP Budget From Dirtying Your Drinking Water
At risk in the imminent spending battle are billions of dollars essential to keeping our water safe and clean, funding everything from replacing toxic lead pipes to upgrading treatment technology to remove PFAS.
Aug 20, 2025
When US Congress went on summer break for all of August, they left on the table a major piece of legislation that will have profound consequences for the safety of our water: the annual spending, or appropriations, bill.
This legislation funds federal programs, departments, and agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the fiscal year, which runs through September 30.
When they return in September, Congress will have less than a month to hammer out a deal to keep the lights on—or many parts of the federal government will shut down on the first of October.
At risk in this imminent spending battle are billions of dollars essential to keeping our water safe and clean, funding everything from replacing toxic lead pipes to upgrading treatment technology to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Congress members have already made proposals for the spending bill attacking those funds, putting clean water for many in jeopardy.
At the same time, US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are turning to a new sneaky backdoor partisan tactic called rescission to slash funding and go back on their own deals. This is not only a threat to clean water support, but to the funding of any government program. Congress must block any spending bill that leaves the door open for rescissions.
Rescissions: A Sneaky Backdoor Way to Eliminate Support for Clean Water
Under the regular procedure, the House approves a spending bill and sends it to the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to end the filibuster. This generally ensures a more bipartisan process in the Senate. When Congress hasn’t been able to pass regular spending bills, it has passed continuing resolutions to extend current levels of funding. These still require a 60-vote majority in the Senate.
But the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are turning to a special tool to upend this bipartisan system. That tool—rescissions—allows them to slash spending they already agreed to, without any say from Democrats.
At a time when the price of basic necessities continues to grow, we cannot eliminate federal support for safe, affordable water.
With rescissions, Trump can send a list of programs that he wants to cut in a special request to Congress. Crucially, the vote to eliminate those funds requires only a simple majority in the Senate. It is not subject to the filibuster.
These backdoor recissions are the same partisan scheme that Trump and congressional Republicans used to eliminate support for PBS and NPR. Now, some Republicans have signalled that if Congress passes a continuing resolution, they’ll work with Trump to roll back funding in that bill through rescissions.
This threatens funding for everything from safe food to education to housing. Funding for safe drinking water is also at risk—the EPA, the leading federal agency for protecting our water, has already been a major target of the Trump administration. Rescissions’ threat to safe water looms large.
Congressional Republicans Attack Vital Clean Water Funding
In proposals for this year’s spending bill, Trump and congressional Republicans have directly attacked the EPA’s vital work to protect our water. By gutting its funding and attacking its workforce, they’re undermining the main federal agency responsible for safe drinking water. Among its crucial responsibilities, the EPA sets limits on contaminants in water, develops methods to test for and remove toxic substances, and establishes regulations that prevent water pollution in the first place.
Trump and Congress have also proposed slashing hundreds of millions of EPA dollars dedicated to local and state water safety projects. (About half of the EPA’s entire budget goes directly to states through State and Tribal Assistance Grants.)
That includes massive cuts to the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs). The SRFs are the primary source of federal funding for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in the country.
For decades, these funds have provided billions of dollars to build and improve wastewater treatment systems and help communities comply with water safety regulations. Without them, we would have more contaminated, less affordable water.
Here are the main defunding proposals:
- House Republicans want to eliminate $662 million from the SRFs. The House spending bill (H.R.4754) would cut the SRFs by nearly 25%, from $2.8 billion to $2.1 billion. This would be the lowest level since 2008.
- The Senate proposed to eliminate $250 million from the SRFs for replacing toxic lead service lines. The Senate appropriations bill (S.2431) cuts and transfers dedicated funding for lead pipe replacements that had already been appropriated and provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021. These funds were set to go out the door. This is the last year of funding provided by the infrastructure bill, and communities must get every cent.
- Trump wants to cut 100% of the $2.8 billion in SRF funds.Trump wants to virtually eliminate the SRFs with a nearly 90% cut this year. He’s also announced a goal to outright eliminate this water funding in the future. He could achieve this goal and bypass the traditional bipartisan congressional spending process by sending his cronies in Congress a rescissions proposal with a list of programs to defund and eliminate.
What We’ll Lose If We Lose Clean Water Funding
These proposals strike a dangerous tone for Republican leadership. The State Revolving Funds (SRFs) have traditionally enjoyed broad bipartisan support because they fund basic water safety projects that provide immense public health benefits to communities.
These projects are managed by states, which pass SRF funds to local water and sewer utilities. New York State alone has $9.5 billion-worth of drinking water projects and $6 billion of wastewater and stormwater projects seeking support from its SRFs.
They include:
- Updates to technology at treatment plants to remove PFAS and other toxic contaminants. PFAS are toxic, lab-made “forever chemicals” that pollute the water of more than 165 million people in the United States. PFAS accumulate in the body and are associated with many serious health harms, including cancer and reproductive harm. SRF dollars help remove dangerous PFAS from drinking water. In New York, Nyack Village has requested $4.7 million, and Kent Water District has requested $1 million to that end.
- Replacement of toxic lead service lines. There is no safe level of lead in drinking water, and it’s especially dangerous for children. Yet millions of families in the United States are still exposed to lead in their drinking water every single day. SRF dollars help communities replace lead service lines, which are the main source of lead contamination of drinking water. New York City alone seeks SRF support for $90 million-worth of lead line replacements.
- Repair and upgrade wastewater infrastructure to protect waterways and help keep our waters safe. Aging sewer pipes, broken equipment, outdated treatment plants, and failing systems overwhelmed by climate change-fueled storms can cause raw sewage to spill into our neighborhoods. That sewage pollutes the waters that we rely on for our drinking water, fishing, and swimming. SRF funds help address these problems. In New York, for example, Rockland County Sewer District is seeking funding for more than half a dozen projects to help protect the Hudson River.
Projects like these are not only happening in New York—they’re planned and underway in every single state. And they are all under fire from Trump and Congress.
Slashing Federal Dollars Will Make Water More Expensive
The proposed massive cuts come at a time when the needs of our nation’s water and wastewater systems are growing. The EPA estimates that upgrading our water and wastewater infrastructure will cost $1.3 trillion over the next two decades—just to comply with existing federal law.
Federal funding for water infrastructure, however, has plummeted 77% in real terms since its peak in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, the cost paid by localities has more than tripled after accounting for inflation. Local water utilities pay for these costs by hiking water bills for local businesses and households.
Senate Democrats have an opportunity to defend safe water and stop Republicans’ rescission scheme right now.
SRF cuts would lead to higher water rates for many people who already struggle to pay their bills. Already, as many as 1 in 3 households struggles to afford their water bill.
When households receive unaffordable water bills, they may cut back on medicine, groceries, or other essentials; or they don’t pay for their water service. More people will fall into water debt, lose service to shutoffs, and even lose their homes because of unpaid water bills. At a time when the price of basic necessities continues to grow, we cannot eliminate federal support for safe, affordable water.
Instead of cutting water infrastructure funding, we need to expand it. Beyond this year’s spending battle, Congress must pass the WATER Act (HR 3376, S 1730) to safeguard federal water funding from more reckless spending cuts.
Congress Must Guarantee Support for Safe Water
Senate Democrats have an opportunity to defend safe water and stop Republicans’ rescission scheme right now. This year’s spending bill needs support from seven Senate Democrats to pass. They must leverage this power to pass a bill that (1) fully funds safe water and (2) guarantees that funding by preventing future unilateral rescissions by Trump and congressional Republicans.
Our communities need lasting federal support to help ensure safe, affordable water and sewer service for all. Safe water is nonnegotiable. Our elected leaders must stand up for us and oppose any spending bill that slashes federal support for clean water, and any spending bill that leaves the door open for Trump’s partisan rescissions.
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Progressives, Democrats Vow Fight as Senate GOP Aims to Claw Back Billions in Federal Funding
Republicans plan to utilize a rare process called "rescission" to skirt Congress' power of the purse and illegally allow Trump to withhold hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to critical programs.
Jul 10, 2025
The U.S. Senate will soon vote on whether President Donald Trump can claw back billions of dollars that have already been appropriated by Congress.
Last month, the House narrowly voted to allow Trump to rescind $9.4 billion in funds that were meant to fund global health initiatives—including AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention—and public broadcasters like PBS and NPR.
It's far from the first time that this Republican-controlled Congress has voted on massive budget cuts, but progressive groups and some Democratic lawmakers say this vote has another frightening dimension to it.
These funds were among the more than $420 billion appropriated by Congress that Trump illegally impounded, or refused to spend, at the start of his term.
In a letter sent Wednesday to members of Congress, a coalition of more than 100 groups—including Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO, and Greenpeace—warned that by voting to approve these rescissions of federal funds, they would be giving Trump tacit approval to unconstitutionally take away Congress' authority to spend money.
"This rescissions proposal does not ask Congress, as required by the Impoundment Control Act, to approve the entirety of the federal spending that has been illegally frozen by the Trump administration," the letter notes. "The administration is merely trying to establish a veil of legitimacy while it continues unconstitutional actions that it began more than 100 days ago."
The groups went on to warn that allowing the president to unilaterally cut funding that he doesn't approve of "risks irreparable damage to the regular bipartisan appropriations process."
"Despite the political back-and-forth, Congress eventually reaches a bipartisan agreement on government funding every year, one way or another," they said. "The basis for that bipartisan agreement is that both parties must agree to compromises to achieve any of their goals. If a party with a political trifecta can simply rescind funding for the parts of appropriations bills they compromised on, they undermine congressional checks and balances and the basis for future bipartisan dealmaking on an already politically fraught process."
Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, presidents are forbidden from unilaterally refusing to spend funds. However, Congress is allowed to pass a "rescission" bill within 45 days of canceling them if the president requests it.
Trump would be the first president since Bill Clinton in 1999 to successfully have funds rescinded by Congress, and it would be the largest rescission in four decades.
But as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out, there is a key difference: "The administration illegally impounded the funds at issue for months before proposing the [rescission] package" and that it is "unlawfully withholding much larger amounts of funding that it has not proposed for rescission."
According to a tracker created by the office of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who sit on the House and Senate appropriations committees, respectively, the Trump administration is blocking congressionally appropriated funds for programs including:
- Research into Alzheimer's disease, women's health, cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses;
- Natural disaster relief;
- School lunch assistance for children;
- Early childhood education through the Head Start Program; and
- Birth control and cancer screenings for over 800,000 patients
Russell Vought, the head of the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has openly indicated a desire to use rescission to cut all of this spending "without having to get an affirmative vote" from Congress.
According to The New York Times, Vought is planning to use an even more arcane and illegal maneuver known as "pocket rescission" to avoid spending the funds. As Tony Romm reported in June:
Under the emerging plan, the Trump administration would wait until closer to Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, to formally ask lawmakers to claw back a set of funds it has targeted for cuts. Even if Congress fails to vote on the request, the president’s timing would trigger a law that freezes the money until it ultimately expires.
Some Senate Democrats have indicated they'd be willing to risk a government shutdown to prevent the rescission bill from passing.
In a letter published Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote that the prospect of the rescissions bill passing had "grave implications."
"[I]t is absurd for [Republicans] to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes," Schumer wrote.
Murray called out Vought directly on Wednesday at a markup session on the next round of bills in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"For us to be able to work in a bipartisan way effectively, that requires us to work with each other. To not just write bipartisan funding bills—but to defend them from partisan cuts sought by the president and the OMB director," she said during her opening remarks. "We cannot allow bipartisan funding bills with partisan rescission packages. It will not work."
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House Dems Form Procedural 'Conga Line' to Block Medicaid and SNAP Cuts
"We're here to help people, not screw people over!" said Rep. Jim McGovern.
Jul 02, 2025
Democrats in the House of Representatives on Wednesday banded together in an attempt to gum up the works to block House Republicans from passing their massive budget bill that includes historic and devastating cuts to both Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP.
One by one, House Democrats moved in what Punchbowl News reporter Jake Sherman described as a "conga line" to make the exact same request for unanimous consent "to amend the rule to make an order the amendment at the desk that protects against any cuts to Medicaid and SNAP." Each time a Democrat would make the request, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), holding the gavel in the chamber, informed them that "the unanimous consent request cannot be entertained."
At one point, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) grew frustrated with his Republican colleagues for their insistence on passing the budget bill, which he noted would significantly cut taxes for the richest Americans while decimating safety net programs designed to help poor and working class Americans.
"We're here to help people, not screw people over!" McGovern fumed.
As of this writing, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R.La.) remained in his office, according to Punchbowl reporting, an apparent signal that a floor vote for Wednesday remained up in the air.
The United States Senate on Tuesday passed a budget package by the slimmest of margins that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would slash spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program by more than $1 trillion over a ten-year-period and would slash SNAP spending by more than $250 billion over the same period.
Previous polling has shown that the budget package is broadly unpopular and a new poll from Data for Progress released Wednesday found that the Republican plan grows more unpopular the more voters learn about its provisions. In particular, voters expressed significant concern about the plan's impact on the national debt, cuts to CHIP and Medicaid, and attacks on clean energy programs.
Over 100 @HouseDemocrats lined up to ask for "unanimous consent to amend the rule and make in order the amendment at the desk that protects against any cuts to Medicaid & SNAP" pic.twitter.com/r5ktS9Uj0K
— Jahana Hayes (@RepJahanaHayes) July 2, 2025
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