How to Understand Trump’s “Starve the Beast” Politics and the Authoritarian Agenda

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Last week the GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that included $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, extending the Trump tax cuts that grossly and disproportionately benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans, as well as calling for $2 trillion in spending cuts.  The spending pot from which these cuts could potentially come mean key programs that sustain American lives such as Medicare, Medicaid, and nutritional assistance programs could all be on the chopping block.

 And even as it is, this budget resolution would balloon the federal deficit while still robbing Americans of vital supports and services their taxes have historically and responsibly been used to fund. Now Americans will receive less for the taxes they pay.

The resolution, for sure, presents an unorthodox and counter-intuitive approach to establishing government efficiency.

Or is it? There is in fact a scary and long-standing conservative approach to government efficiency at work here, and it by and large comes from a fellow named Grover Norquist who founded the organization Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of Ronald Reagan.

Norquist made the objectives of this organization blatantly clear when he declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

He is famous for naming this approach to dismantling the government as “starving the beast.”

Tax cuts for the wealthy, previously justified as “trickle-down economics” which has since been exposed as joke, are a key feature of “starving the beast.”

As Bruce Bartlett explained the concept in a 2007 article, “The idea is that if revenues are unilaterally reduced, this reduction will lead to a higher budget deficit, which will force legislators to enact spending cuts. Thus, using tax cuts to bring about spending cuts has been called ‘starving the beast.’”

House Republicans are no longer even trying to sell the lie that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth and bringing in more revenue to the federal government or that the wealth will trickle down. Instead, they are being very clear that to pay for these tax cuts they will need to make substantial cuts to important programs that have supported Americans’ health and well-being–to the tune of $2 trillion.  

 And trust me, whatever meager tax cut the average American might receive as part of the overall budget proposal will in no way cover whatever out-of-pocket expenses they will end up paying for the services and support they received from these government programs. While we’ve been trained to hate paying taxes in America, the fact of the matter is that pooling our money together in the taxes we pay actually delivers important services to us–such as public education, health care, clean water, etc–much more inexpensively and efficiently than if we dealt with private entities as individuals to procure these services. Just look into the costs of sending your kids to private schools.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican House member to vote against the resolution, stating in a social media post last Monday, "If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better." Elon Musk posted in response, "That sounds bad."

But Massie simply isn’t grasping the “starve the beast” politics the other House Republicans, wittingly or not, are abetting.

And Musk is simply responding in bad faith, as he is Trump’s chief accomplice in this plan to starve the beast and dismantle government. Nearly the entire federal workforce was offered a buyout and some since unceremoniously fired with no performance review or even attempt to understand the vital work they might have been doing. As USA Today reported in mid-February, “The full ramifications of Trump’s decision, whether in the country’s urban centers or rural enclaves, won’t be fully absorbed for weeks or months. Asked for a total or estimate on how many workers have been let go, for instance, the Office of Personnel Management on Friday declined to provide USA TODAY with answers.”

Musk and his gang did not exercise any care or scrutiny in deciding which members of our federal workforce could be fired, as one might do in any well-run organization or business genuinely seeking efficiencies with the effect of still having the organization or business actually function in a more streamlined and less wasteful way.

They don’t want government to function; they want it gone.

And making the government disappear, particularly the United States system of government that has built-in checks and balances, is a key step in establishing autocratic or oligarchic rule.

With no government to regulate any behavior, such as providing workplace protections, minimum wage requirements,  protections from fraud, anti-pollution and environmental regulations, and more, then who is in charge?

The wealthiest— who can control the economy and the resources upon which we all rely.

The rule of law and the power of the government to regulate have provided key buffers and protections against untrammeled capitalism and corporate rule.  Just think about how corporations like Amazon, Target, and Starbucks, to name but a few, have fought so vociferously against their employees seeking to unionize so they can enjoy some basic rights and have basic protections and safeguards in their workplaces.

The Bezos and Musk types of the world have no interest in laws or regulations that restrict them in any way, even–or especially–when it comes to fair treatment and fair compensation and basic recognition of the human rights of their employees.

Think about the resistance to proposed millionaire taxes in the past, which would have entailed people paying an additional two cents on every dollar of wealth over their first $50 million. Such a tax was decried as socialism!

And yet as a whole the billionaire class and corporate America are resistant to paying any taxes to support the infrastructure of the nation that provides the conditions of possibility and the educated workforce for them to accumulate their wealth.

“Starving the beast” means the end of government and the substantial erosion of the rule of law.

The wealthy don’t need Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamps. They don’t need public education. And they don’t want to pay for any of them. 

If the average American wants health care and education and retirement security, then their taxes alone will have to pay for them–nevermind that a healthy and educated workforce make corporate America’s wealth possible.

Ronald Reagan started starving the beast big time in 1981 when he cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%, and it has been declining ever since. Trump’s tax cuts slashed corporate rates from the already greatly-reduced rate of 35% to 21%.

These cuts don’t pay for themselves, which is why the nation’s deficits and debts grow, why our infrastructure is eroding, why people can’t afford college, and more.

The more the beast is starved and we have no government to protect us by providing checks and balances and a basic chance for Americans to get their voices heard, the more the wealthiest will rule us and rob us.

Efficiency for Trump and his allies means nothing less than destroying the government and any provision or protection it affords the masses of Americans.

To be sure, our government is far from perfect and needs reform to make it much more responsive to people’s needs and to pursuing egalitarian ideals across our society, politics, and economy. The democratic structure, though, did provide possibilities for achieving these goals. With these starved away, we will indeed face an autocratic or oligarchic rule of the wealthy.