Morning Glory: ‘Is the new budget done yet?'
I hope that headline is the question with which President-elect Donald Trump begins every conversation with House Speaker Mike Johnson and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune. The budget resolution, once passed by both House and Senate, unlocks the "reconciliation process" where "trailing bills" that implement the budget resolution cannot be filibustered in the Senate.
A task force of OMB Director-designate Russ Hauth, the proposed incoming National Security Advisor Rep. Michael Waltz, and two GOP members from both the Senate and the House should be working on the 2025 budget resolution all this December. We know the big "must haves":
The Trump tax cuts must be revised and made permanent. Revisions include the "no taxes on tips" promise made by Trump on the campaign trail and a revision to the SALT deduction cap. These are the promises Trump made throughout the campaign, and he should deliver them within 60 days of his inauguration.
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If I were king of the forest, I’d also put in an opportunity for all taxpayers to pay a one-time tax of 10% to convert all 401(k) and IRA holdings they chose to convert into Roth IRAs, which would gain an immediate and massive one-time payment on the deficit and debt while also liberating millions of Americans from many absurd, nanny state controls on their retirement savings.
"Americans had $7.8 trillion invested in 401(k)s and $14.3 trillion in IRAs in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Investment Company Institute," according to Nerd Wallet in August of this year. A tax of 10% of whatever portion of the $22 trillion converted by America’s savers into Roth IRAs would be a big lift for Trump 2.0’s first budget-reconciliation round. And it would empower Americans to plan their own financial futures free of mandatory withdrawal rules and IRS supervision. (What a super-jolt to the growth of the economy as well.)
The budget resolution must fund the rapid construction of the rest of the wall and a massive expansion of the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and staff, and the restoration of America’s borders and rule of law about migration. (And yes, it would be smart to regularize "Dreamers" at the same time. Trump can do a "Nixon-to-China" major move in this budget and expand his coalition while doing so.)
Trump’s commitment to a restored and renewed military should be in the first budget, with, among other priorities, shipyard expansion budgeted for in Philadelphia, Newport News, and other major ports where the current fleet is serviced, and the new fleet will be built. Acquisition of the B-21 and the new Columbia class of nuclear submarines can be forward funded in the first budget. Re-setting defense spending at 3.5% of GDP with further lifts budgeted in the out years is essential to rebuilding a hollowed-out military.
The budget could mandate cuts to federal spending for state public school systems which are in states without robust, statewide school choice programs that are at least the equal of Florida’s or Arizona’s or Ohio’s. There are some states which will not do this — looking at you California — and the consequences must be financial or the wholly persuasive arguments for school choice will be ignored.
Trump can also direct his team to assure that the obvious, low-hanging fruit of the budget-cutting process be identified and slashed in the first round of budget and reconciliation laws. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting can be shuttered (and with it the subsidies for PBS and NPR) and federal government-wide reductions-in-force authorized "without regard to any other law or regulation."
Every department or agency head, every board and commission should be skinnied down by 20% of "FTEs" and a hiring freeze imposed save for Schedule C or new Trump-appointed lawyers everywhere but especially the Department of Justice.
Finally, the first legislative drive of Trump 2.0 should authorize the proposed incoming Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in his capacity at Interior and as Chair of the National Energy Council, to identify the locations and authorize construction of at least 100 "small, modular reactors" on public lands in the United States and provide for a small tax on every kilowatt hour of energy they produce forever.
"SMRs" are the long-term future of clean and abundant energy, and while all energy is crucial to preserving, defending and extending freedom, energy from nuclear SMRs should not upset even the most ardent opponent of climate-impacting emissions as SMRs don’t have any. SMRs "could be easier to build and might help cut costs as companies standardize designs for reactors," MIT’s Technology Report opined last year. "‘That’s the benefit—it becomes more of a routine, more of a cookie-cutter project,’ says Jacopo Buongiorno, director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at MIT."
Getting the SMRs’ construction authorized and funded in a fashion that sweeps away the left-wing activists' ability to delay these critically needed SMRs may be Trump’s greatest contribution to domestic policy over the next many decades. The tax on their energy output will also provide revenue for the budget-reconciliation process Part One.
The typical calendar for a new Congress is a leisurely one that shoots for the budget resolution by April 15, but Trump should be driving the budget-reconciliation process at warp speed. The economy needs it and political considerations compel it.
Every member of the closely divided House plus 20 incumbent Republican senators face the voters in 23 months. To survive the blowback that almost every new administration’s party faces in the midterm, Trump and the GOP Congress must move fast and far so the economy is booming, the border secure, our military rebuild underway and wasteful spending slashed by voting season in 2026.
The Congressional Research Service has provided the layman’s guide to the Budget Reconciliation Process but all readers need to know is that it can all be done by mid-February IF the president-elect and the House and Senate move with urgency and focus.
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Trump can enforce GOP discipline on the budget-reconciliation process by simply notifying every incumbent who intends to run again that he or she will face a Trump-backed primary challenger if they obstruct the rapid passage of the budget and the trailing bills. It should be that simple.
The GOP as a whole and Trump as an individual ran on the tax cuts, the border, rebuilding the military and slashing to size of government in order to restore the pre-COVID-19 Trump economy. They should do just that and be done with the budget resolution by the middle of February and the trailer bills before the end of March.
The DOGE will come up with the blueprint for the second whack at budget-reconciliation in 2026. It can cut and combine the permanent bureaucracy and enact its vision, as approved by the president-elect, by February 28 of 2026. But this first round of budget-reconciliation should be in the statute books by the middle of the shortest month this year. The Senate can get the confirmation flywheel going and complete the process for cabinet, the deputy secretaries and agency directors done even as the specifics of the budget resolution get hammered out by the core group of negotiators.
Trump should also push Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi and White House Counsel nominee William McGinley to have selected and vetted at least four Circuit Court of Appeals nominees for the existing vacancies. They can be cleared and advanced to final votes in the same period. Trump, in his first term, put 226 justices and judges on the federal bench. Trump should aim to pass the total of Presidents Barack Obama (320), George W. Bush (322) and Bill Clinton (367) by the end of his second. Trump has already placed 54 judges on the U.S. courts of appeals, one short of Obama (who had eight years) and is 29 appeals court judges behind Ronald Reagan’s record of 83. Trump should break that record as well, and if he does the conclusion of the "triumph of Trump’s originalists" will be complete.
All of this looks like a lot, and sounds impossible to "old Beltway hands," but it is actually not. It’s what every company that ever found itself in turnaround mode has done and which most start-ups must do: Work around the clock and get what must be done, done. Trump’s mandate for change was delivered early on election night and the permanent government ought to have heard it loud and clear, and the GOP’s instinct for self-preservation and the desire for expansion of their majorities should help them keep up with Trump’s pace.
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.