"Of all the questions which can come before this nation ... there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us... Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation."
The budget blueprint also calls for a "regulatory freeze," which would make it harder to rein in the Wall Street banks whose massive frauds devastated the economy in 2008. It does, however, include $2.6 billion for Trump's foolish and xenophobic border wall.
Shock and AweThis is a "shock and awe" budget, designed to dazzle and confuse Trump's political enemies and the general public. When Republicans on Capitol Hill dial back a few of its more extreme cuts, as is almost inevitable, the public will be expected to sigh with relief. That would be a mistake, since the result will almost certainly remain draconian.
Congressional Republicans will also demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Trump promised to defend those programs, but stay tuned: after ritual displays of "reluctance," followed by "negotiations," Trump will probably break that promise too.
Trump pretends to be a different kind of Republican, but his budget blueprint is ideologically consistent with the modern GOP's hard-right extremism. It values death over life, and fear over hope. It tramples on the bonds that hold us together as one people. It sells off the environment, our shared inheritance. It rejects the fundamental American idea that a nation should be a community, a group of people who protect and look out for one another. It's antagonistic to the very idea of government itself.
"The government is us," said Teddy Roosevelt. "We are the government, you and I." But to Trump and today's Republicans, the government is an alien force to be repelled -- unless it's spending billions on unneeded new machineries of war.
More will be written, here and elsewhere, about the details of this document. It's not just a bad policy proposal, although it is that first and foremost. Fundamentally, it's a betrayal of the American spirit.
"We are struggling to save the soul of America," said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960. That struggle continues.
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