In February, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a Republican budget resolution, delivering a key victory for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Donald Trump—but at what cost? The 217-215 vote advanced a plan that calls for $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade while extending and expanding the first Trump tax cuts to the tune of $4 trillion to $4.5 trillion. The contrast is stark: sweeping reductions in government programs that help middle- and low-income families, with Medicaid, SNAP, Pell Grants, and Social Security on the chopping block, to finance permanent tax breaks that disproportionately benefit corporations and high-income earners.
The GOP is betting that voters will reward them for cutting taxes and trimming government spending. But because economic insecurity remains high and healthcare costs continue to rise, slashing safety nets like Medicaid could prove politically toxic—especially among working-class and elderly voters in red states who rely on these programs.
The numbers paint a dismal picture. The GOP budget proposes a 20% reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which over 42 million Americans depend on to combat starvation. The proposed Medicaid cuts are even more severe. Over 90 million Americans, including 37.6 million children, are enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Slashing these funds would leave millions of Americans with reduced access to healthcare. Representative Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) returned to the House floor for her first vote since giving birth, bringing her newborn along as a statement against the proposal. “These cuts will devastate families,” she warned.
Under attack is not just healthcare and nutrition programs. The GOP also aims to scale back Pell Grants, a vital program that helps low-income students afford college. Reducing these grants will disproportionately affect students who rely on them to break the cycle of poverty and access higher education. Meanwhile, Social Security changes in the House proposal would force many Americans to work longer for less, impacting approximately 257 million people, or three in four Americans.
Why target these programs? The answer lies in the $4 trillion to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that the budget aims to retain and extend. These cuts overwhelmingly benefit corporations and high-income households, widening the economic divide. Even some Republicans have voiced concerns. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the lone GOP defector in the House vote, bluntly stated that the plan “will increase budget deficits” because the tax breaks and new spending exceed the proposed cuts by trillions.
Republican leaders counter that their tax plan will generate enough economic growth to offset the deficit. However, this trickle-down promise has repeatedly failed in the past, most notably with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which ballooned the deficit while delivering limited economic benefits to middle- and lower-income Americans. If Republicans were serious about balancing tax cuts with spending reductions, they could have taken a different approach—one that did not disproportionately harm the poor and working class while protecting corporate and wealthy interests.
Instead of slashing Medicaid, food assistance, and Pell Grants, Congress could have targeted wasteful spending, corporate handouts, and tax breaks for the super-rich. Closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating the carried interest loophole could generate $1.8 trillion over a decade while ending fossil fuel subsidies would free up another $200 billion. A 5% reduction in the Pentagon’s $880 billion budget—targeting wasteful projects like the $ 1.7 trillion F-35 program —could offset cuts to social programs. Adjusting Medicare and Social Security benefits for the wealthiest retirees would save $400 billion, ensuring middle- and lower-income seniors remain protected.
Additional reforms could further ease fiscal strain while protecting the vulnerable. Eliminating corporate farm subsidies ($25 billion annually) and consolidating redundant federal programs identified by the GAO ($200 billion in savings) could shrink the deficit without harming essential services. Strengthening Medicare and Medicaid fraud detection could recover $100 billion annually while selling 77,000+ unused federal properties could save $1.7 billion per year. These targeted cuts and efficiency measures would help reduce the deficit without forcing low-income families, seniors, and students to bear the brunt of the burden.
Even with the House GOP’s victory, the fight is far from over. The budget plan now heads to the Senate, where Republicans favor even deeper tax cuts but are also expressing unease over the House’s proposed cuts to Medicaid and other social programs. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has already signaled that substantial revisions will be necessary, making it unlikely the House version will pass without major changes. Some Senate Republicans are pushing to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent, which would further increase the cost of the plan, but they remain wary of slashing vital social safety nets to pay for them. The Senate’s skepticism underscores the GOP's deepening divide over balancing tax cuts with fiscal responsibility.
With the 2026 midterms looming, the GOP’s budget plan poses a massive gamble. While Republican leaders hope voters will focus on tax cuts, gouging deep holes in programs like Medicaid and SNAP could alienate key constituencies, including low-income families, the elderly, and working-class voters in battleground states. If history is any guide, prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the most vulnerable is not just bad policy—it’s bad politics.
The House GOP’s budget resolution represents a significant inflection point in American politics. By proposing deep cuts to essential programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthy, Republicans are making a clear statement about their priorities. But it raises the most important question: Will voters accept these trade-offs, or will the backlash prove too great?
Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.