As part of his effort to reduce federal spending, President Donald Trump directed his administration to scrutinize budgets and cut unnecessary programs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recommended eliminating $1 million in grant funding for the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), which had received federal support for more than 58 years.
The IWP is described as “the oldest and largest multicultural writing residency in the world.” With federal funds eliminated, the University turned to private donations, grants, gifts, and even foreign support to keep the program alive, ultimately sponsoring 23 international writers.
This was not the only writing initiative to face change. The Magid Center for Writing at the University of Iowa announced it would close, to be replaced by the Office of Writing and Communication. Critics lament that this will affect a range of writing programs once offered at the University.
The loss of federal funding drew a sharp response from IWP Director Christopher Merrill, who expressed hope that “sanity will return to Washington” and suggested that without restored funding, the American “experiment in liberty” might come to an end. That statement is hyperbolic. Liberty does not hinge on a federal grant to one university program. Merrill is correct, however, that sanity must return to Washington—but not in the way he imagines.
The real danger to America’s experiment in liberty is not the elimination of a small grant. It is the $37 trillion national debt, which continues to grow at alarming speed. In just the first 10 months of Fiscal Year 2025, the federal deficit was $1.6 trillion—$109 billion higher than during the same period in FY 2024.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warns that the debt will reach $53 trillion by 2035. Even with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which contained supposed cuts, spending will keep rising. This is fiscal insanity. As Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute puts it: “The U.S. federal budget is on a Titanic-esque voyage that could result in a fatal crash with a massive iceberg of unfunded entitlement obligations. This ship also has no captain. It is racing full steam ahead on autopilot.”
The chief driver is entitlement spending. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare programs like SNAP consume the bulk of the federal budget. Social Security, which just marked its 90th year, is projected to see its retirement trust fund go insolvent by late 2032. Without reform, benefits will automatically be cut by 24 percent. For a typical couple, that means an $18,400 annual reduction in retirement income.
Economist Veronique de Rugy warns that such uncontrolled spending will eventually be paid for with “higher taxes, inflation, or both”—a future that she calls “morally and economically reprehensible.” Inflation, though cooling in recent months, remains a looming threat and could easily worsen under the weight of debt and unchecked entitlement growth.
Even if every “cut” were enacted—including the elimination of grants like the IWP—federal spending is barely slowed. The deeper question is whether programs like the IWP should ever have been federally funded. Only the broadest reading of Congress’s constitutional powers could justify such spending. The uproar over the IWP grant shows how far we have strayed from the Founders’ vision of limited government.
The problem is not that Washington cut a $1 million grant. The problem is that Washington has spent decades creating “little empires,” as the (second) Hoover Commission described federal agencies, each with its own budget, bureaucracy, and pressure groups. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed former president Herbert Hoover to chair that commission to improve efficiency and reduce waste in the federal government back in the 1950s. Even then, a return to constitutional principles was put forth as the best way to reform government. Sadly, little has changed.
True sanity will only return when America once again takes those principles seriously. The federal government must return to its proper constitutional role. The threat to liberty is not the end of a writing program—it is the crushing weight of debt, deficits, and unchecked federal growth.
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