President Donald Trump's 2026 "skinny budget" is out, and at first glance it gives small government advocates reason to cheer. It proposes deep cuts to domestic agencies, calls for eliminating redundant programs, and gestures toward reviving federalism by shifting power and responsibility back to the states. It promises to slash overreaching "woke" initiatives, end international handouts, and abolish bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness.
But this budget is more rhetorical than revolutionary. As impressive as Trump's envisioned cuts are—$163 billion worth—they lose luster because the version of the budget being considered in Congress also calls for increases to defense and border security spending, as well as the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. And for all its fiery declarations, the budget fails to truly confront the drivers of our fiscal crisis.
The budget does, thankfully, enshrine the Department of Government Efficiency's acknowledgment that federal sprawl has become unmanageable. It proposes defunding environmental justice programs, trimming National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation budgets, slashing the Department of Education, and eliminating corporate welfare masquerading as climate policy.
