by Void
Since the beginning of the current administration, we have witnessed an extraordinary restructuring of American governance in ways that are clearly unconstitutional. While the assumption may be that the actions are being taken for corrupt purposes, proving these assumptions becomes difficult due to the obscure nature of finance, government budgets, and tax policy. Without any legislation passed through Congress, the second Trump administration has unilaterally begun the slow moving process of shifting the nature of the tax structure of the American government. They have accomplished this through three major means: budget cuts, tax cuts for the wealthy, and tariffs.
While budget cuts can reveal conflicts of interest, the offices and programs that avoid budget cuts are equally interesting. When fossil fuel subsidies are untouched, it is because that is a method of funneling public funds back into private enterprise. When the defense budget is untouched, it is because military defense contractors are publicly traded companies that billionaires can profit from. The funding that avoids cuts is representative of a long term plan to only spend tax money on programs that can enrich the owners of capital.
Through an analysis of where money is coming from and how it gets spent, we can identify motivations beyond the stated intentions of the administration. These motivations, when analyzed, appear to have a singular goal: expanding the capacity of the government to more effectively, and discreetly, extract wealth from workers to indirectly enrich the owners of capital. Revealing these intentions, in a way that clarifies their obscure nature, can help us to fight against them. It is far easier to fight an enemy that is understood and far easier to find allies when the fight can be justified. Understanding the purpose of these actions is the first step towards combating them.
To begin with, this administration has started the process of restructuring the US tax system. They are doing so by attempting to slowly shift taxation from a progressive income tax system towards a sales tax based system. Republicans have been advocating for a sales tax funded government for decades. The goal is to shift the tax burden from the wealthy onto the working class by drastically reducing the percentage of taxation paid by the wealthy. A sales tax is paid equally by all Americans regardless of wealth or income, so when prices increase, the new costs represent a large percentage of the yearly salary for average Americans. Those with vast wealth will see the increase in costs as a marginal difference when compared to the taxes they would otherwise pay under a progressive income or wealth-based tax system.
However, most Americans hate sales taxes, as they can see the increased cost as a line item on any receipts for payments. This is why the modern Republican party is pushing for a tariff-based sales tax. Effectively these tariffs function as a sales tax, with increased costs almost always being passed directly to consumers. These increased prices do not directly show how much the tariff increases the price. People see a higher price without a direct cause to blame or point to. This makes it far easier for Republicans to implement. The obscure nature of these higher costs is largely the point. It is a method of increasing taxes on all Americans without being able to see the exact amount they are paying for these taxes, while simultaneously shifting the tax burden towards workers. The obscurity increases due to the deliberately xenophobic arguments used to justify these tariffs. They are enacted in a way that is designed to outrage people for social reasons, so their attention is pulled away from the underlying economic goals of wealth extraction. The obscurity and distractions are deliberate, but this is only half of the plan.
The second half of the plan is to change what taxes pay for. This administration, in its first few days in power, created a new executive branch department without the authorization of Congress. They granted this new department unprecedented authority over all other federal government agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), while jokingly named, is anything but a joke. This department has systematically accomplished goals that the Republican party has been working towards for decades. That is to say, they successfully began defunding any and all government services that do not directly benefit private corporations. DOGE has especially focused its defunding efforts on departments that could be restructured as for-profit enterprises. In an administration run by and for billionaires, it should come as no surprise that many of these budget cuts are occurring in ways that can directly enrich members of the administration. A perfect example of this is the Department of Education.
Connecticut residents might recognize the name of the current Secretary of Education. After failing to win statewide office year after year, Linda McMahon used her money to purchase a cabinet position. This can be clearly seen in her financial disclosure documents provided to congress in advance of her confirmation hearing. Going through those disclosure documents reveals how exactly McMahon has “earned” the job through connections to the Trump media corporation (McMahon 3). In addition to working as a director of the company, McMahon is a partial owner of the Trump media company, and she has been compensated for her work with thousands of shares both vested and unvested. However, disclosure documents reveal something far more sinister.
Linda McMahon makes well over half a million each year off of interest payments from school districts across the nation (McMahon 7-23). McMahon owns the debt for dozens of school districts across the nation, all of whom pay her interest on said debt on a yearly basis. The total amount of interest she collects on this public school debt ranges between a minimum of $575,000 to a maximum of $1,560,000 per year (McMahon 7-23). This direct conflict of interest is how she is able to profit off of the defunding of the Department of Education. The school districts that lose funding will often need to take on debt to make up for the budget cuts, and as they take on more debt, they create an opportunity for McMahon to make money off of interest payments. Properly funding school districts removes a potential source of revenue for billionaires like McMahon. This is also a potential explanation as to why McMahon is such an advocate for diverting education funding towards private voucher programs. Private schools are often a for-profit enterprise, and they can be directly profited from far more than public school debt. The goal here is to destroy the functionality of a public service to help argue for its eventual privatization.
While education serves as a good example, this shift towards privatization is not limited to a single department. One of the focuses of DOGE has been cutting the federal workforce generally. This is in part due to the nature of a federal employee. They represent tax money going to pay a worker, rather than a corporation that can profit from a private contract. Federal workers often exist in direct competition to services that could otherwise be privatized. However, Americans have grown accustomed to some services being provided by the government, like education or the postal service, for example. The best way to undermine public confidence in these services is to cut the workforce, and by extension, their capacity to function properly. When these services eventually begin to fail, that failure is used as a justification for privatization. Then, as the service becomes privatized, the wealthy can purchase stock in the new companies profiting from this privatization.
I argue that the long-term goal of both of these actions, tariffs and DOGE, is to restructure how the government functions. Rather than a progressive tax structure where people pay proportionately based on their wealth, the goal is to shift towards a government funded by sales taxes. We can see this happening through the currently proposed budget/tax bill that will not use the DOGE savings to fight the deficit, as Republicans have claimed to care about. Instead, it will be used to begin the process of moving away from income- and wealth-based taxation through massive tax cuts. This is how the budget will “cut taxes by $3.7 trillion” and “increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next decade” (PBS NewsHour).
The deficit increase is also a deliberate feature of the plan. Rather than balancing the budget, the goal here is to increase the deficit. This is done for one main reason. Increasing the deficit increases the amount of tax money that needs to be paid on interest to prevent the US from going bankrupt. Currently the US spends 14% of its yearly budget paying for interest on existing debt, and this is compared to the 13% the US spends on national defense (U.S. Department of the Treasury). When the deficit increases, so will the amount that needs to be spent on interest. In the past, interest payments have been used by Republicans to justify severe budget cuts across the board. This increase in the deficit is being used in the short term to allow for tax cuts. In the long run it will be used to justify further budget cuts and likely even higher tariffs.
The end result of all these actions is a complex and obscure system that funnels money directly out of the pockets of those who work for a living. That money is then directly spent on private contracts that indirectly enrich those who make money through ownership of capital rather than labor. Over time, this system will dismantle any government programs that do not directly benefit the owners of capital. It will increase the deficit to justify privatization. It will then privatize basic goods and services like education or the postal service. These newly privatized services will likely monopolize, due to a lack of anti-trust enforcement, and further increase prices on regular workers while enriching the owners.
The government, even more so than it already is, will become nothing more than an organization with the authority to take from workers and give to the owners. However, it will accomplish this in a way that is difficult to see or fully comprehend. This is why it is our obligation to understand these systems. Understanding this obscure class warfare allows us to highlight the exact ways in which workers are being swindled. This understanding allows us to communicate exactly why workers should join our fight. The most effective way to fight a powerful adversary is to understand their strategy and to use that knowledge to dismantle it piece by piece. Understanding these actions and motivations is a good place to start.
Sources:
McMahon, Linda. Public Financial Disclosure Report (OGE Form 278e). U.S. Office of Government Ethics, 26 Dec. 2024.https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/1562CD2295BCAD8385258C2A00320E73/$FILE/McMahon%2C%20Linda%20%20final278.pdf.
PBS NewsHour. “How Trump’s Big Bill Will Affect Taxes, Deficit, and Health Care, According to the Budget Office.” PBS NewsHour, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-trumps-big-bill-will-affect-taxes-deficit-and-health-care-according-to-the-budget-office.
U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Federal Spending.” America’s Finance Guide, U.S. Department of the Treasury, https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/.