The United States is careening toward bankruptcy! We spend more for interest on our national debt than we do on national defense. President Donald Trump says that he wants to balance the federal budget. But, eliminating wasteful spending won’t get us there. Instead, it just sets us up for failure.
We must go far beyond wasteful spending and open a second front in our war on the size and cost of the federal government. We must bring out the most powerful weapon available, the budgetary atomic bomb that has been left hidden and unused for over 100 years.
We must eliminate federal spending that violates the U.S. Constitution, regardless of whether that spending is wasteful.
Balancing the federal budget will require annual cuts of more than $2 trillion. But as of April 1, DOGE has only identified roughly $140 billion of wasteful, fraudulent, and inefficient spending that could be eliminated.
That is less than 7 percent of what is required, and not even close to being on track to getting us there. Also, woke totalitarian federal judges and Senate Democrats have very successfully slowed or stopped many of the cuts that DOGE and the other Departments have tried to implement.
Federal spending that violates the Constitution is funding for any federal governmental function that is outside the scope of the enumerated powers that are explicitly given to the federal government by the Constitution and therefore must be funded by the states, as required by the Tenth Amendment
Those Constitutionally legitimate, enumerated powers include functions such as conducting military defense, regulating interstate and foreign commerce, and running the Post Office.
(For a complete list of those powers and the sections of the Constitution in which they are specified.)
And they do NOT INCLUDE, for example:
- Non-military foreign aid (e.g., for USAID).
- Federal insurance programs such as FEMA and Medicaid.
- K-12 and university education (adios Department of Education).
- Local pork projects (e.g., California Light Rail).
- Public housing.
- Unearned subsidies to individuals or companies (such as wind and solar energy subsidies and low-income tax credits).
Governmental functions that violate the enumerated powers/Tenth Amendment criteria may well be legitimate at some level of government, but not at the federal level under the current U.S. Constitution.
President Trump should phase out federal spending on these functions over two years, balancing the budget and returning responsibility for prioritizing and funding these functions to the states (without any federal block grants).
Congress and the states should pass constitutional amendments to make some of those functions constitutionally legitimate enumerated powers of the federal government.
For example, most Americans would probably support a constitutional amendment legitimizing many components of Social Security and Medicare, including incremental increases in the retirement age.
Honest Republicans recognize that we cannot balance the budget without significant Medicaid reform, but are being beaten up by Democrats for suggesting any federal Medicaid cuts. The president and congressional Republicans must take the position that they don’t oppose Medicaid, they only oppose the federal government’s funding of it for two reasons.
First, Medicaid is unconstitutional at the federal level because it does not meet the enumerated powers/Tenth Amendment criteria for federal spending, and second, each state can decide the extent to which it wants to fund a Medicaid-style program (without funding from any federal block grants).
This approach to Medicaid and other unconstitutional federal programs would require that states raise their state tax rates. However, returning these responsibilities to the states would force the costs of those programs to be prioritized and borne by state-level governments that cannot just cause inflation by printing money to fund their pet projects.
Also, the burden of paying for this spending is where it should be: on the taxpayers who approve it and not on future generations.
This approach should be phased in as quickly as possible over a 2.5-year period: for the rest of the current fiscal year (FY25) and fiscal years 2026 and 2027. This would give the states time to adjust their taxing and spending priorities and for passage of any constitutional amendments that voters want.
But congressional Republicans and President Trump should start immediately.
Returning responsibility for funding Medicaid and K-12 and university education to the states are just two examples that could be included in the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2026 (which starts on October 1, 2025). This would also allow us to eliminate the Department of Education, transferring any of its critical functions to other Departments (for example, transferring Title IX enforcement to the Justice Department).
President Trump should refuse to disburse unconstitutional spending that has been previously passed by Congress. Not disbursing funds because they are unconstitutional would be much easier to defend in court than doing so just because the president designates that spending as wasteful or not in the national interest.
Refusing to disburse funds that violate the enumerated powers/Tenth Amendment criteria, would force woke totalitarian judges and congressional Democrats to identify the enumerated powers that justify that spending.
They cannot.
If the courts still rule that unconstitutional funding must be disbursed, then we will have a genuine constitutional crisis: What should be done when the courts ignore the Constitution?
However, this would put President Trump and congressional Republicans where all good generals want to be: strategically on offense and tactically on defense.
Eliminating unconstitutional spending does more than just get our national fiscal house in order. It’s a matter of national security.
We could eliminate enough unconstitutional spending and DOGE-identified wasteful spending in the 2026 budget to eliminate the need to borrow any more from China.
We could then credibly threaten to end at least a substantial part of the interest payments that we make on our debt to China as one way (among others) of deterring China from invading Taiwan.
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