Sojourners was among the first to say the oft-repeated refrain that a budget is a moral document. Of course, that’s still true. Whether for a single household, an organization, or an entire nation, a budget offers a sense of the moral values of the people who create it. It shows who and what do and do not matter — what the priorities are — for the family or church or Congress or the White House.

When a president releases his annual budget proposal, there’s always a temptation to argue that it carries little weight — that since Congress holds the power of the purse, many of the president’s proposals may be non-starters for the opposing party and won’t actually go into effect. That’s why it’s helpful to view President Trump’s budget proposal for FY2021, which was released on Monday, not as a preview of what’s to come, but instead as a statement of purpose and priority — literally, a campaign document.

... It’s clear that the Trump administration responded to its party’s defeat in the 2018 midterm elections not by moderating its push to inflict harm on society’s most vulnerable, but rather by simply shifting its tactics to focus less on legislation and more on executive orders, which far more often fly under the media’s radar. The administration has been using every bit of executive authority it can justify, and then some, to make the lives of people more difficult and less secure.

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