Why does Trump want a second term?

The problem is that none of Trump’s stated priorities really align with budget cuts. He wants a big, beautiful wall and a big, beautiful military, and those both require more, rather than less, spending. Trump may not be a Roosevelt Democrat, exactly, but he also seems to have no particular ideological fixation on shrinking government or the importance of deficits. He was more than happy to expand the deficit with tax cuts in late 2017.

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It’s hard to imagine what Trump would want to cut steeply, either. Entitlements, which make up roughly half of the federal budget, are extremely popular, as every president who has attempted to cut them has discovered. More importantly, Trump promised during the 2016 campaign not to cut entitlements, and while he could change his mind on that, it would probably be politically unwise, since his voters may be even more pro-entitlement than the average Republican president’s.

Besides, Trump is not ideologically committed to entitlement reform in the manner of many of the movement conservatives, such as former Speaker Paul Ryan, whom he has either driven from politics or relegated to the sidelines of the GOP.

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