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Senate Democrats’ decision to allow Republicans to pass a spending bill will avert a short-term shutdown, but it will also give Republicans the power to grant President Donald Trump new leverage to control spending for the rest of the year.
The Democrats’ tactical retreat from this spending battle means the government will remain open and Trump can more easily carry on with the systemic changes and deep cuts he has done heretofore without the blessing of Congress.
Entire divisions at agencies such as the Department of Education and NASA have already been laid off, along with the gutting of the government’s consumer protection arm, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
A large-scale “reduction in force” of federal workers is expected in the near future.
Americans are both deeply concerned and somewhat excited about the prospect of Trump’s cuts, whose potential breadth is not yet known.
In a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS and released this week, 22% of American adults thought Trump’s government cuts would help them and their families.
About half, 51%, said the cuts would hurt them and their families; a slightly larger majority, 55%, said the cuts will hurt the economy. More than a quarter, 27%, said the cuts would neither help nor hurt their families.
Of those who expect the cuts to impact them, a minority, 29%, said the cuts had already affected them or their families, but most, 71%, said the impacts would come in the future.
Those who answered the poll explained in their own words what effects they expected, providing some insight into these answers.
Equal portions, 19%, of those who said the cuts will hurt them pointed to health care or to an effect on prices.
Those worried about health insurance pointed to effects on Medicare, Medicaid or other insurance options.
I am a physician and most of my patients use Medicaid for health care. If patients lose their Medicaid because of cuts, fewer people will be able to access health care and I may lose my job.
Trump promised on the campaign trail that Medicaid and Social Security would not be affected by government cuts, but more recently, he and Musk have argued there is fraud, waste and abuse in the programs, suggesting they will try to change them.
Both parties will ultimately have to contend with the cost of Medicare and Social Security, both of which could be forced to reduce payments within a decade or so if they aren’t reformed.
It is true that Republicans in Congress are likely to seek cuts to Medicaid funding in a bill that simultaneously extends and expands tax cuts from the first Trump administration. There is a knock-on effect for government cuts. Foreign aid cuts caused layoffs not just of USAID workers, but of contractors in foreign countries.
Johns Hopkins University announced Thursday it would lay off 2,000 workers because of cuts at USAID.
Americans also expressed a lot of fear about cuts to the National Institutes of Health, both from people who work in scientific research and those who support it.
My spouse and I both work in scientific research. The massive cuts to research funding will affect current and future employment for us both.
My husband is a scientific researcher — the cuts to the NIH and research in general will cause a trickle-down effect that will affect all areas of medical research and make us weaker on innovation.
In that vein, Dr. Craig Spencer, a Brown University School of Public Health professor, discusses the greater implications of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts in the health sector. Watch.
Other people are looking at how the federal government maintains parks.
I hike and hunt in a national forest. Which I think will not be up kept as well as in the past. And as a parent I fear what will happen if/ when (Trump) guts the Department of Education. My father is (a) 100% disabled veteran and wondering what will happen to his care from the VA.
While the Department of Veterans Affairs has promised that care will not be affected by cuts, the administration is intent on reducing the size of the VA workforce.
As for parks, there are already warnings that layoffs and a hiring freeze will impact the ability of parks to be maintained during the coming summer. In addition, cuts to the US Forest Service could affect the ability to respond to forest fires.
Because of tariffs, prices will increase, and if (Trump) changes Medicare then we’ll be choosing between medicine or food or bills. It’s scary.
Food prices may indeed rise as a result of tariffs, in particular on Canada and Mexico. The rise in egg prices, on the other hand, is largely due to the outbreak of avian flu. A larger issue with Trump’s trade war could be how retaliatory tariffs in China and cuts to US foreign aid will affect American farmers, who rely on exports.
The minority of Americans who expect to be helped by the cuts are looking primarily at two benefits. About a quarter of them expect taxes or reduced taxes to benefit them. A smaller portion are expecting inflation to be eased or prices to drop as a result of reduced government spending.
Some saw the cuts as a symbol.
He has had a positive impact by showing us and the world that he will not stand for the corruption that had taken over our government.
Another person said the government spends on its own behalf, not for individual people, and while the cuts have not yet had an impact, this person is confident they will.
Less spending on (the government’s) part, more money kept in my pocket. There will be respect once again for the ‘government for the people’ not (the government’s) gain.
One important upside of government cuts is that they could indeed restore faith in US systems among the portion of the population that feels the government is actively working against them, although there is a partisan element to faith in government. A person that trusts Trump’s administration might not trust a Democratic administration in the future.
I think he will distribute credits to the taxpayers that were otherwise going to pad the pockets of lifetime bureaucrats.
While there has been some preliminary talk of a “DOGE dividend,” a one-time payment to taxpayers to represent savings from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the idea has not yet gained traction. Plus, since the US is in the midst of major deficit spending, any credit would still have to be borrowed. Trump does plan to cut taxes, but those cuts will likely give the most benefit to Americans who pay the most in taxes.
Trump and Musk have so far focused on cutting foreign aid, non-defense domestic spending and the federal workforce, but those are not the largest elements of US spending. To really affect spending, they will have to tackle spending on defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those will be much more difficult and controversial efforts if they come to pass.
Some who approve of the cuts give Trump credit for things not necessarily related to the cuts.
House prices falling, gas prices falling, border patrol in area, no tax on tips.
Certainly, Trump has a made a show of stopping the influx of migrants, although that might be an example of more government rather than government cuts. Mortgage rates have dropped in recent weeks, perhaps a symptom of economic uncertainty. If inflation cools and the economy stalls, they could fall more. Gas prices have indeed fallen, 11% since Trump took office, although CNN’s Chris Isidore found that Trump’s energy policy has not yet had much of an opportunity to affect prices. The US was already producing more oil than any other country when he took office and production has not yet increased. Those prices are set by OPEC+ nations, which had already announced an increase in production.
Trump’s promise to end taxes on tips has not yet been realized. Republicans in the House and Senate are working on bills to extend tax cuts from his first term that are expiring and they could include a removal of taxes on tips in those bills. But the final drafts have not yet been released, and tax cuts will either come with further government cuts or more deficit spending.
One person thinks the cuts will ultimately help, but adds that there needs to be balance.
Potentially lower taxes by cutting federal spending but could also hurt if elimination goes too far and impacts departments/roles that played a more influential role within our family needs.
It’s a smart point since the impact of the cuts will have a lot to do with how they are perceived and whether Americans feel that they’ve gone too far.
Some Americans are hoping for cuts to safety net programs. One person is frustrated about their neighbor, who is on some type of assistance.
Too many people are on Medicaid that can work and (are) driving brand-new 40k vehicles. … Hopefully there will be a trickle-down effect with the elimination of fraud and waste.
It’s impossible to verify this respondent’s story about their neighbor, but they will probably like what’s being proposed in Congress, where Republicans are hoping to impose cuts on Medicaid programs and potentially impose new work requirements. On the other hand, expanding Medicaid was a major element of the Affordable Care Act and the main reason that law drove down the rate of those uninsured in the US.
