The list of stuff getting cut will cause generational impact in coming years.
You know how the GWOT was seen as a terrible mistake that wasted the US's economic potential?
Total costs for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001-2007: $604 billion.
US military budget in 2024 as a "Biden Baseline": $880 billion.
Trump requested military budget in 2026: $1.5 trillion.
The
increase in the 2026 budget over the 2024 baseline is more than the entire cost of the GWOT for 6 years. But it represent what can be said to be the cost of what will be 2 months of expenditure. So the rate of military expenditure is 36x higher than the GWOT. And this isn't even taking into account indirect costs like fuel and food inflation.
Cutting the limited social programs the US has will result in disproportionate losses, since these are typically the most cost effective programs that cut the most poverty for lowest input:
farm subsidies, small business loans, migrant worker protections, scientific/industrial standards research and child nutrition. All low cost, ~1 billion or even a few hundred million dollar programs that probably pay back 100x fold. Even standards research, seen as "boring" by many people, is actually gigantic - if you set the 5G standard for instance, everyone that uses 5G has to play by your rules.
the equivalent here is like the Qing raising taxes on farmers to pay for Summer Palace construction and Beiyang Fleet battleships.