Popular vote loser Donald Trump will release the beginnings of his budget plan in a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. We've already heard from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney that this is just a start and the real budget will happen later on in the spring. Based on this outline, however, we know it's as insane as you'd expect from a Trump regime.
The proposal would boost defense spending by $54 billion, or nearly 10 percent—a ridiculous increase (which Sen. John McCain rejects as too small!). The cuts to offset that massive increase would be just as massive and the victims would range from the State Department, to the EPA, to all the safety net programs that aren't Social Security and Medicare (at least so far—they could still be coming). We don't know specifically what all those cuts will be, and won't until the agencies and Congress have weighed in on this outline and the formal budget request is released in May.
So there's a complicated path between now and May. It gets even more hairy after that.
The formal budget process is kicked off by the president's budget request—the document of Trump's that leaked on Monday. Such a request is technically supposed to be released the first Monday in February, but most administrations miss that deadline. […]
The second step is for the Senate and House budget committees to propose, pass, and then reconcile resolutions laying out detailed spending and revenue plans for the coming fiscal year. These resolutions often incorporate ideas from the president’s budget, particularly when the president’s party controls one or both houses of Congress, but they don’t need to. […]
What’s supposed to happen then is that the appropriations committees in each house pass specific spending bills authorizing money for various discretionary activities, including defense and any non-defense spending that doesn’t go to “mandatory” programs such as Social Security or food stamps. Those bills are more specific but align with the spending numbers specified in the budget resolution. […]
Even when there’s unified control of government, the process often operates at a delay of weeks or months, either due to disagreements between the branches or because Congress has been tied up in other business. One significant factor, however, is that while budget resolutions can pass by a simple majority vote—as can “budget reconciliation” bills—appropriations bills, last-minute spending deals, and continuing resolutions are ordinary legislation that’s subject to a filibuster.
What's supposed to happen and what actually happens are not the same thing, ever. But what Trump is doing Tuesday night will potentially shape a dramatically different nation. Or we'll just continue on with continuing resolutions based on Obama-era budgets. That's how it usually works these days.