Kevin Williamson of National Review Online criticizes proposals on both sides of the political divide aimed at people who least need government help.
President Donald Trump has submitted a budget blueprint to Congress, and Congress will ignore it, as tradition, the Constitution, and prudence all dictate — the power to spend and the power to tax reside with the legislative branch, not with the executive. This is another example of American politics as ritual.
The Democrats still have declared themselves appalled by Trump’s proposals, which include cuts to many government agencies (which employ many Democrats) and to programs for poor people. Democrats object to this. At the same time, the Trump schematic maintains a political moat around welfare programs that benefit relatively well-off people, Social Security and Medicare prominent among them.
Democrats do not in general advocate cuts to entitlements for affluent people, either. And, in fact, some of the most popular items on the current Democratic agenda are wealth transfers to people who are relatively well-off and in some cases very well-off. The most prominent example of that is the proposal to pay off Americans’ college loans for them. The wage premium for college graduates has fluctuated a bit over the years, but college graduates on average still earn much more than non-graduates, and they end up about twice as wealthy. Most of the borrowers with college loans are able to repay them out of a relatively small portion of their incomes, and the people who are the most burdened by their student loans are, counterintuitively, those with the least debt.
