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President Trump’s budget landed with a thud this week on Capitol Hill, where even conservative Republicans pronounced it “dead on arrival” and quailed at its proposed sharp cuts to social welfare programs such as food stamps, Meals on Wheels and Medicaid.

Yet some conservatives found plenty to like in the document. Consider the reaction of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington think tank heavily funded by hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson.

“The President deserves credit for setting a fiscal goal and working to meet it,” the CRFB said in its gloss on the budget. Trump “should be commended for putting forward a number of specific and significant spending cuts to help address the debt.”

But one aspect of the budget plan really stuck in CRFB’s craw: It leaves Social Security and Medicare alone. “The President should focus on controlling the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare, two of the nation’s largest and fastest growing programs, which the budget almost completely ignores.”

Followers of CRFB’s history will recognize that caveat as classic Pete Peterson. As we reported in 2012, the 90-year-old billionaire has been on a long crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. In a 1994 essay in the New York Review of Books, for example, he laid out his view that the only way to eliminate the federal deficit was by “reforming the entire system of entitlements — the fastest-growing part of the federal budget.” Where have we heard that line before?

In the piece, Peterson called Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid a “vast and largely unearned windfall we now give to the more affluent half of all American households.” By “more affluent half,” he meant all households then earning $32,000 or more. That figure would be about $53,520 in today’s dollars, close to the median income in the U.S. (In other words, after accounting for inflation, the standard of living of the median household hasn’t noticeably progressed in 23 years.)

The CRFB describes itself as “an independent source of objective policy analysis,” but in reality it’s joined to Peterson by the pocketbook. From 2012 through March 2016, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the billionaire’s chief pipeline of grants to nonprofits, contributed $8 million to the organization. Peterson sits on its board.

That board is replete with members of what the late muckraking journalist Jack Newfield called “the permanent government” — former members of Congress, agency heads, lobbyists, well-heeled academics, etc., etc. Their board service is unpaid. CRFB President Maya MacGuineas, a frequent speaker and editorialist on the deficit, collected about $394,000 in compensation in 2015, the latest year reported.

The CRFB’s viewpoint on Social Security typically echoes Peterson’s. Its emphasis on bringing the program into fiscal balance leans heavily on benefit cuts. Last December it praised a Social Security “permanent save” offered by conservative Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, that achieved its goal entirely through benefit cuts, without a dime of new revenues such as higher payroll taxes on the wealthy.

The CRFB tends to fret about proposals to raise the payroll tax, even though removing the cap on earned income subject to the tax (currently $127,200) would deliver the single biggest improvement to Social Security’s fiscal condition of any proposal on the table. “Solvency can’t be achieved simply by making the rich pay the same as everyone else or means-testing their benefits,” the committee lectured reformers last month.

In general, the committee approaches budget matters almost entirely through the blinkers of deficit reduction, giving very little attention to the street-level consequences of budget and spending policies. That mind set bubbles through its commentary on the Trump budget, many elements of which it labels “sensible and thoughtful reforms… worthy of consideration.”

The committee doesn’t specify which policies it’s referring to. It observes that the program cuts in the budget “fall disproportionately on programs that benefit children, low-income individuals, and promote investment,” but places that caveat in the context of the “almost inevitable consequence of virtually ignoring the rapid growth of Social Security and Medicare.” The committee does acknowledge, implicitly, that the budget’s $72-billion cut in disability benefits is a Social Security cut — it specifies that it’s Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance program that remains “largely untouched.”

The CRFB, to its credit, doesn’t give the Trump budget a free pass on its well-documented mathematical mendacity. Like other commentators, it labels the budget’s projection of annual growth exceeding 3% in the economy “rosy,” “extremely optimistic,” even “phony.” Responsible economic analysts place the likely annual growth rate closer to 1.8% to 1.9%.

The committee concludes, “tough choices, not wishful thinking, are needed to fix the debt.” As is typical of the analyses of this billionaire’s pet think tanks, the question it leaves unanswered is “tough for whom?” The inescapable implication is: tough on the beneficiaries of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If those choices are made, the board members and officers of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget will do just fine.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email [email protected].

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At a White House event on Nov. 6 announcing price cuts for those blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz made an astonishing claim.

Because the price cuts would vastly improve access to the prescription drugs, Oz said, by next year’s midterm elections in November, “Americans will lose 135 billion pounds.”

As though to make sure nobody missed the magnitude of the achievement, Oz hit the word “billion” with all its plosive force: “135 BILLION pounds.”

Well, that would be some achievement. The U.S. population is just over 340 million. Do the math, and Oz’s figure works out to an average weight loss of 347 pounds for every man, woman and child in America.

Oz called the calculation “our estimate based on company numbers,” referring to Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the makers of the most popular drugs in the category. His figure was a vast improvement over what he said was his agency’s original estimate of 125 million pounds.

Perhaps Oz just misspoke; it’s certainly not uncommon for people to substitute “billions” for “millions” in quotidian speech. (More on that shortly.) But his casual retailing of obviously bogus arithmetic points to a broader issue with the numbers the Trump White House routinely injects into its policy statements.

The administration’s suspect arithmetic is in many respects deliberately aimed at portraying some condition as better than the real numbers show.

It’s also reliant, however, on people’s proverbial dislike, even fear, of math — whether we’re talking about calculating the tip at a restaurant or the statistical risk of dying from a lightning strike or in a terrorist attack. The mathematician John Allen Poulos described this phenomenon as “innumeracy,” the title of his classic 1989 book on the topic.

As is the case in all hierarchical organizations, the problem starts at the top. President Trump loves to define his ostensible political achievements and goals with big numbers. For example, he claimed in August to have cut prescription drug prices “by 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400, 1,500%.”

To an unwary listener, that sounds like another major achievement. In mathematical terms, though, it’s impossible: A 1,500% reduction would mean reducing a $100 drug bill to negative $1,400, meaning that the drug company would be paying you to use its product.

In recent weeks, Trumpian innumeracy has cropped up in official dispatches not only in relation to healthcare, but also home mortgages and (especially) inflation. The partisan value of mathematical deception is manifest. But it’s also dangerous.

“One rarely discussed consequence of innumeracy is its link with pseudoscience,” Poulos wrote. That’s at the core of the anti-vaccine movement and the doubts sown by partisan actors in the science of COVID-19‘s origins — specifically, the evidence-free assertions that the virus was concocted in a Chinese laboratory.

Let’s examine the most recent displays of bogus math from the Trump administration.

Healthcare math: Oz employed his weight-loss conjecture to dress up the effect of Trump’s price negotiations with Lilly and Novo Nordisk. The figure he offered as the administration’s initial estimate of 125 million pounds lost by next November’s election was not especially impressive, as it implied an average loss of about one-third of a pound per capita.

If we adjust these stats to cover the 12% of American adults who have taken the drugs — about 3.12 million users — that’s a loss of 40 pounds per user, which is at the very high end of per-user weight loss experiences. A 2023 study found that about one-third of users lost more than 5% of their body weight after about 18 months; for a 250-pound user, that’s a loss of about 12.5 pounds in a year and a half.

I asked the Department of Health and Human Services, Oz’s parent agency, to clarify his statement but didn’t receive a reply. I also asked Novo Nordisk and Lilly what “company numbers” he might have been referring to. Lilly didn’t reply, and Novo Nordisk emailed me to say it had nothing to say on the matter.

Mortgage math: As an ostensible solution to the diminishing affordability of home ownership, the administration advanced the idea of giving homebuyers the option of 50-year mortgages. That’s a big departure from the standard 30-year, fixed-rate home loan, the most popular option.

Trump endorsed this fundamentally unserviceable idea with a Truth Social post in which he depicted himself as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s equal as a “great American President” — indeed, as going one better than FDR, to whom he attributed the introduction of the 30-year mortgage.

(Actually, under FDR the standard mortgage, a three-to-five-year loan with interest-only payments ending in a balloon payment and required refinancing, gave way to fully amortized loans that would be paid off in 15 years; the 30-year mortgage didn’t become the standard until the 1950s.)

What makes the 50-year mortgage such a chuckleheaded product? Let’s do the math.

Here’s a nugget of truth about it: The monthly payment on the same size mortgage at the same rate would be lower on a 50-year term than on a 30-year term. On a $400,000 loan at 6%, the interest and principal payment would be $2,106 for the former versus $2,398 on the latter, an apparent savings of $292 a month. For borrowers living on the edge, that’s a sizable difference.

Here are the catches, however. First, over the life of the loan, borrowers will pay much more in interest for the longer loan — in our examples, the total in interest on the 50-year loan comes to about $650,000, versus $461,000 over 30 years.

Moreover, it’s almost certain that lenders will charge a higher rate for the longer-term loan. No one is quite sure how much higher, but Adam Levitin of Georgetown Law conjectures that it might be higher by a percentage point or more. The monthly payment on a 50-year, $400,000 loan at 7% would be $2,407 — higher than the payment on the shorter loan at the lower rate — and the total interest paid over the term rises to about $774,500.

It’s true that very few borrowers pay off their entire mortgage; Americans stay in their homes an average of 12 years, real estate experts say. That brings the issue of home equity into play.

This is important because a home is the largest single investment for most Americans, with the growth of home equity the financial holy grail of home ownership. Yet equity grows much more slowly under the longer-term loan. At the beginning, most of the monthly payment goes to pay down interest, not principal.

After 12 years of payments, the holder of a 30-year, $400,000 loan at 6% would have accumulated nearly $84,000 in home equity. The holder of a 50-year loan would have accumulated only about $22,000 in equity. (If that loan were at 7%, the gain would be even less — only about $16,500.)

“Homeowners are not building much wealth with a 50-year mortgage,” economist Dean Baker observes.

The 50-year mortgage idea reportedly was sold to Trump by Bill Pulte, the real estate scion serving as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who’s best known as the instigator of the mortgage fraud accusations against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, and other Trump critics.

After his idea was pilloried by sources including the Wall Street Journal, Pulte stated in a tweet that it was one of “a wide arsenal of solutions” to housing costs. The only solutions he mentioned were assumable mortgages and portable mortgages. The first are loans that can be assumed by new buyers of existing homes, the second are loans that borrowers can apply to their own new homes.

These are pigs in a poke. Mortgage lenders generally are averse to carrying existing loans over to new borrowers or new properties, at least without new appraisals, credit checks and other paperwork. No one in the administration can wave a wand and make them happen. I asked Pulte’s agency to explain his thinking but received no reply.

That brings us to the White House’s inflation math.

On Nov. 10, after the government shutdown rendered the monthly inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics missing in action (perhaps permanently), the White House issued a statement asserting, “President Trump has tamed inflation.”

The statement drew heavily from a report on the consumer economy issued last week by the gig delivery company DoorDash, principally its Breakfast Basics Index, which showed a decline in breakfast prices of 14% from March through September. The index measures price movements for three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel and an avocado.

A couple of points about this: First, the company acknowledges that the driver of the index decline was the price of eggs; those for the other commodities were stable. Second, Trump has had nothing to do with the price of eggs. They’ve come down sharply since March because of the passing of the avian flu epidemic, which devastated flocks and accordingly the supply of fresh eggs. Finally, the price of eggs bottomed out in early October .

The White House tried to take credit for ending bird flu. “Egg prices are down because the Trump administration implemented a robust plan to tackle bird flu and increase egg production,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told me by email. “The bird flu crisis did not magically disappear.”

Nope, it didn’t: After a lull in cases this summer, bird flu is again on the rise, after a marked increase in infections in October. And — surprise! — that’s when egg prices started heading higher too. Anyway, Desai insisted that “the Trump administration’s policies have cooled inflation.”

DoorDash told me that although its report was published this month, its data collection ended in September. But the company’s full report shows price increases over the last year in baked, canned and jarred goods, and automotive supplies and clothing. The average price of a cheeseburger, soda and fries, it says, rose by 3.8% in the year through September.

The White House still is trying to hide the effects of its economic policies on inflation — especially its tariffs. Just last week, Trump moved to roll back tariffs on coffee, beef, bananas and other foodstuffs to bring prices down.

Despite Trump’s insistence that foreign exports pay the tariffs, his move is an implicit admission that U.S. consumers are paying the price. Desai explained Trump’s tariff climb down as demonstrating Trump’s “nimble, nuanced, and multi-faceted strategy on trade and tariffs.”

The bottom line is that one shouldn’t trust the math coming from this White House. If you do the calculations for yourself, you’ll see why.

Democrats’ caterwauling this week after a few of their senators caved to end the government shutdown couldn’t completely drown out another noise: the sound of President Trump pinballing dumb “policy” ideas as he flails to respond to voters’ unhappiness that his promised Golden Age is proving golden only for him, his family and his donors.

On social media (of course) and in interviews, the president has been blurting out proposals that are news even to the advisors who should be vetting them first. Rebates of $2,000 for most Americans and pay-downs of federal debt, all from supposed tariff windfalls. (Don’t count on either payoff; more below.) New 50-year mortgages to make home-buying more affordable (not). Docked pay for air traffic controllers who didn’t show up to work during the shutdown, without pay, and $10,000 bonuses for those who did. (He doesn’t have that power; the government isn’t his family business.) Most mind-boggling of all, Trump has resurrected his and Republicans’ long-buried promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

It’s been five years since he promised a healthcare plan “in two weeks.” It’s been a year since he said he had “concepts of a plan” during the 2024 campaign. What he now calls “Trumpcare” (natch) apparently amounts to paying people to buy insurance. Details to come, he says, again.

With all this seat-of-the-pants policymaking, Trump only underscores the policy ignorance that’s been a defining trait since he first ran for office. No other president in memory put out such knee-jerk junk that’s easily discounted and mocked.

In his first term, Trump didn’t learn how to navigate the legislative process, and thus steer well-debated ideas into law. He didn’t want to. Even more in his second term, Trump avoids that deliberative democratic process, preferring rule by fiat and executive order (even if the results don’t outlast your presidency, or they fizzle in court). For Trump, ideas don’t percolate, infused with expertise and data. They pop into his head.

But diktats are not always possible, as the shutdown dramatized when Republicans couldn’t agree with Democrats on the must-pass legislation to keep the government funded.

With Republicans controlling the White House and Congress (and arguably the Supreme Court: see recent decisions siding with the Trump administration to block SNAP benefits), the Democrats were never going to actually win the shutdown showdown — not if winning meant forcing Republicans to agree to extend health insurance tax credits for millions of Americans. Expanding healthcare coverage has never been Republicans’ priority. Tax cuts are, mainly for the wealthy and corporations, and Republicans pocketed that win months ago with Trump’s big, ugly bill, paid for mainly by cuts to Medicaid.

Yet Democrats won something: They shoved the issue of spiraling healthcare costs back onto politics’ center stage, where it joins the broader question of affordability in an economy that doesn’t work for the working class. Drawing attention to the cruel priorities of Trump 2.0 is a big reason that I and many others supported Democrats forcing a shutdown, despite the unlikelihood of a policy “W.” (I did not support the Senate Democrats’ caving just yet, not so soon after Democrats won bigger-than-expected victories in last week’s off-year elections on the strength of their fight for affordability, including health insurance.)

The fight isn’t over. The Senate will debate and vote next month on extending tax credits for Obamacare that otherwise expire at year’s end, making coverage unaffordable for millions of people. Even if the Democrats win that vote — unlikely — the subsidies would be DOA in the House, a MAGA stronghold. What’s not dead, however, is the issue of rising insurance premiums for all Americans. It’s teed up for the midterm election campaigns.

Such pocketbook issues have thrown Trump on the defensive. The result is his string of politically tone-deaf remarks and unvetted, out-of-right-field initiatives.

On Monday night, having invited Fox News host Laura Ingraham into the White House for an interview and a tour of his gilt-and-marble renovations, he pooh-poohed her question about Americans’ anxiety about the costs of living with this unpolitic rejoinder: “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats.” When Ingraham, to her credit, reminded Trump that he’d slammed President Biden for “saying things were great, and things weren’t great,” Trump stood his shaky ground, sniping: “Polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” (False.)

On Saturday, Trump had posted that Republicans should take money “from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate” Obamacare. He told Ingraham, “Call it Trumpcare … anything but Obamacare.” Healthcare industry experts pounced: Such direct payments could allow younger, healthy people to get cheaper, no-frills coverage, but would leave the insurance pools with disproportionately more ailing people and, in turn, higher costs.

As for Trump’s promised $2,000 rebates and reductions in the $37 trillion federal debt, he posted early Sunday and again on Monday that “trillions of dollars” from tariffs would make both things possible soon. On Tuesday night, he sent a fundraising email: “Would you take a TARIFF rebate check signed by yours truly?”

Maybe if he’d talked to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who professed ignorance about the idea on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Trump would have learned that tariffs in the past year raised not trillions but $195 billion, significantly less than $2,000 rebates would cost. Not only would there be nothing to put toward the debt, but rebates would add $6 trillion in red ink over 10 years. That would put Trump just $2 trillion short of the amount of debt he added in his first term.

When Ingraham asked where he’d get the money to pay bonuses to air traffic controllers, Trump was quick with a nonanswer: “I don’t know. I’ll get it from someplace.” And when she told him the 50-year mortgage idea “has enraged your MAGA friends,” given the potential windfall of interest payment for banks, Trump was equally dismissive: “It’s not even a big deal.”

Not a big deal: That’s policymaking, Trump-style.

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NICOLA Peltz has snubbed her father-in-law David Beckham’s knighthood as the family feud rumbles on.

The actress returned to social media on Tuesday to share a picture of a bunch of flowers from her sister but failed to make mention of David’s honour.

Alongside the picture, she gushed: “Omg @brittanyleahpeltz thank you so so so much these are breathtaking.”

David received his knighthood from King Charles at Windsor Castle for services to sport and charity and were joined by his family for the special occasion.

His wife Victoria Beckham and parents Ted and Sandra watched on as the King bestowed the honour on him with a gentle touch of a sword on either shoulder.

His children Romeo, Cruz and Harper were also involved in celebrating the big day with their beloved dad.

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However, eldest son Brooklyn and his wife Nicola were noticeably absent from the big day and much like his other half, Brooklyn has failed to make any mention of it on social media.

Romeo and Cruz both took to Instagram to share sweet tributes to their dad but their big brother has stayed silent.

Romeo shared an adorable picture with his parents and siblings as he penned: “No one deserves this more than you, love you so much xxx. Congrats Sir dad @davidbeckham.”

While Cruz shared the moment David received his knighthood on his stories as well as sharing David’s post.

Brooklyn and Nicola’s snub comes after he is believed to have “quit” the famous family this year following rising tension.

The Beckham family feud is understood to have actually started four years ago, when Nicola refused to wear a wedding dress designed by Victoria.

Tensions then became public when Brooklyn did not publicly acknowledge fashion designer Victoria on Mother’s Day.

He then failed to show up at any of David’s 50th birthday celebrations earlier this year.

The couple reside in their mansion in Los Angeles and appear to be very close to Nicola’s side of the family.

They tied the knot in 2022 and renewed their wedding vows earlier this year, with the ceremony being officiated by her father Nelson.

Only her family were present for the big day, with the Beckhams not being involved.

Despite the ongoing tensions, David put his best foot forward to receive the biggest honour of his career and become Sir David Beckham.

It marks the end of an agonising wait for the charity ambassador, who was first put forward for a knighthood in 2011.

He took to Instagram to pen his feelings as he wrote: “I can’t even begin to describe what a special day it is for me today, a boy born in East London, to receive a Knighthood from His Majesty The King.

“I am truly humbled and so grateful for this honour.

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“All I have ever wanted to do is to make my family proud.” the star gushed.

Becks then added a sweet message to his four kids as he wrote: “To my beautiful children who I am so proud of and I know this is a proud and inspiring day for them as well, they are our greatest joy in life and my inspiration every single day. I love you all so much…”