G. William Hoagland

Opinion contributor

The tag line on the cover of President Donald Trump’s Fiscal Year 2020 Budget reads: “Promises Kept, Taxpayers First.” Best not to judge the book by its cover.

When it comes to “promises kept,” a look back at the 2016 presidential campaign is instructive. Candidate Trump promised to pay for increases in defense spending, to balance the budget “very quickly,” to eliminate the then-$19 trillion federal debt and, of course, build a wall on the southern border that Mexico would pay for.

If the president’s new budget plan is any indication, it is doubtful any of these promises will come to pass.

Let’s start with where we are today. More than two years into Trump’s term, defense spending has increased, but those increases were not paid for through offsets. The budget is not, and has not been, balanced during the president’s tenure. And as for the nation’s debt, it currently exceeds $22 trillion, with annual deficits of $1 trillion.

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In fairness, the Trump proposal does claim to balance the budget — but not until 2034, at least a decade after the president leaves office. For now, however, the federal government will run trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. The burden placed on future generations will grow every year, with public debt topping $24 trillion by the end of Trump’s first term and nearly $29 trillion with a second term. Even this dire forecast is conservative, as the administration has assumed, once again, projections of rapid economic growth that nearly all objective forecasts contradict.

It’s not as if the Trump budget doesn’t propose major spending reductions over the next decade. It does, to the tune of nearly $2.1 trillion in savings from entitlement programs and $1.1 trillion in domestic (non-defense) appropriated spending. Within the entitlement bucket, health care, agriculture, welfare and student loans take the brunt of the reductions. Some domestic agencies would see increases in their budgets for next year, such as a 7 percent boost to Homeland Security (in part to pay for the wall) and Veterans Affairs. But most others would see unprecedented reductions. The Environmental Protection Agency would be cut by a third, Transportation down 22 percent, the State Department down 23 percent, and Education down 12 percent.

Debt reduction not a priority for Trump

It's true that the president’s budget request is a request. It reflects the administration’s priorities rather than an actual budget to be enacted. But if that’s the case, the administration’s priorities are quite clear, and they don’t include debt reduction. And they should.

Trillion-dollar deficits are likely to persist indefinitely if no serious action is taken to increase revenues and curtail the ever-growing costs of social insurance programs, as we at the Bipartisan Policy Center have warned about for years.

The Trump administration has seemingly been overwhelmed by how difficult it is to balance the federal budget while also increasing military spending, cutting taxes, and preserving spending on some of the largest entitlement programs. To deal with this difficulty, the administration has, in some cases, resorted to budget gimmicks, rather than serious tradeoffs, to sneak in more spending for its priorities.

The worst of these gimmicks is the administration’s proposed usage of theOverseas Contingency Operations fund, a budget account meant for unanticipated wartime spending. White House Chief of Staff and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney once called this account a “slush fund” for defense. Now he is leading the charge to deposit hundreds of billions of dollars into it. Many experts agree that defense spending is too low given the nation’s current security situation, but this is no way to fund our military. Our troops deserve stable long-term budgets based on the national security strategy developed by our government, not ad hoc funding provided outside of the regular budget process.

We need a budget, not broken promises

One lesson from the president’s current budget: Despite its optimistic — some would say rosy — economic growth assumptions, reduced regulations and restrained domestic spending, the country’s fiscal path does not improve.While politically unpopular, the current leaders of this generation must face the reality that new revenues will be required to reduce the debt burden on generations to come. In other words, they are going to have to raise taxes.

On a few issues, the administration deserves credit for suggesting serious reforms. Several of the proposals to reform the Disability Insurance program as well as the opaque drug pricing system for Medicare and Medicaid are worth serious consideration. Outside analysts on both sides have said such proposals have merit and President Barack Obama’s budget submissions supported similar reforms to Medicare. Unfortunately, these ideas are likely to be overshadowed by the document's larger shortcomings.

The president’s budget aside, it’s now up to policymakers in Congress to decide if they too will shirk their responsibilities to the fiscal health of the United States when crafting a budget this year.

Budgeting is governing, and governing is budgeting. We need serious bipartisan deliberation and action from our leaders, not more gimmicks and broken promises.

G. William Hoagland is a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee. Follow him on Twitter: @billhoagland