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It would appear that President Donald Trump is learning from the card game Hearts and from the taxation strategy of the Republican supermajority in Indiana.
In Hearts, you try to stick your opponents with all the bad cards. Trump’s strategy is similar with two tricks: Take pressure off your own budget and attack people or programs you don’t like. So, he cut taxes for the wealthy and now hopes to finance these cuts by shifting obligations to state governments.
This might sound familiar because it’s precisely what the Indiana legislative supermajority did to our local government units. In 2025, the Legislature left local taxpayers and local governments with significant responsibility for schools and full responsibility for fire and police services but limited the ability to pay for these through property and local income taxes.
So the Republican supermajority successfully undercut public schools (a favorite target) and got to brag about tax cuts that did not affect its own budget. Nice card trick.
The Trump strategy is so brazen that it is easy to understand.
During Easter week, Trump told a group of cronies that he wants to shift responsibility for key social programs from federal to state government.
He wants to dump full responsibility for Medicaid onto the states. Currently, the federal budget supports two-thirds and more of that cost. The program provides medical and nursing home care to some 1.6 million to 1.8 million Hoosiers. The annual total cost is in the billions.
Our state government is struggling with the relatively small changes already imposed on Medicaid. Deeper cuts will leave Indiana in a quandary: Can we continue to cut taxes and shift burdens onto local government and still take care of the many Hoosiers dependent on Medicaid? Will this Trump strategy lead to even more closing of rural hospitals?
Trump and the Indiana Republican Party have long opposed Medicaid. They view it as “welfare.” They think many of our poor people are simply undeserving, reluctant to work.
They ignore our low wage rates. They are ignorant of the fact that some 40% of Medicaid funds support the elderly who are often in nursing homes. They do not understand the value of investing in good health infrastructure for our people and our employers.
They will spend millions trying to find ineligible individuals on Medicaid while downplaying provider fraud.
At his dinner party, Trump also focused on cutting federal funding for preschool education.
The federal government supports such efforts with a complex system of grants. In the case of Indiana, the state is scheduled to pay some $206 million out of a total pre-K and related expense of some $475 million, or a little over 40%.
The Braun administration made large cuts in preschool funding last year, leading to the closing of hundreds of programs. This year’s legislative session gave him some wiggle room to restore some funding.
The Trump attack on pre-K funding might affect how that plays out. Trump shows disdain for preschool funding. Can Gov. Mike Braun do the same? Will our parents and employers be content to have this done?
It is time for Braun to call upon the seven Republican congressmen from Indiana to support health care funding and preserve our fiscal strength.
I have compared these Republican fiscal moves to the of game of Hearts. Maybe the more apt comparison is to the children’s game of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” where the goal is to make everyone else a loser.
Let’s hope we do better.•
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DeLaney, an Indianapolis attorney, is a Democrat representing the 86th District in the Indiana House of Representatives. Send comments to [email protected].
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