Forget Trump’s speech. Look at his budget.

It was a kinder, gentler, somewhat maudlin version of his campaign speech that President Trump delivered to Congress Tuesday. In case you missed it, here’s the 20-second version, which I present as my service to you:

America is reeling and its streets are afire because of foreign countries that take advantage of us and foreigners who sneak into the land, so what we need to do is to slam the doors and close the shutters and worry about doing a bunch of stuff for our own people, just as soon as we figure out what that stuff is.

Also, our children will grow up in a nation of miracles, if only we find the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts. These are actual quotes. I was not watching “Moana.”

Speechifying aside, though, we did learn something significant this week about the president’s governing vision, because he also previewed the budget he will send to Congress. And what’s interesting here is that as much as he talks about breaking with the past and the failure of our political duopoly, Trump seems poised to continue charging down a path that a reckless generation of politicians has already trampled.

A president’s budget, as you may know, is really more like a statement of priorities and general direction, which Congress rarely enacts these days in any event. It’s a glimpse into the choices a president intends to make — or avoid.

And there are choices to be made. Something like 60 percent of federal spending goes to entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Almost another quarter goes out the door for military spending and to pay down the interest on the federal debt.

That means that the remaining chunk of the budget — roughly a fifth — has to fund all the other programs the federal government administers, from veterans’ affairs to safeguarding the nuclear stockpile to maintaining and staffing embassies around the world. This is what they’re talking about when they use the term “discretionary spending.”

It was a kinder, gentler, somewhat maudlin version of his campaign speech that President Trump delivered to Congress Tuesday. In case you missed it, here’s the 20-second version, which I present as my service to you:

America is reeling and its streets are afire because of foreign countries that take advantage of us and foreigners who sneak into the land, so what we need to do is to slam the doors and close the shutters and worry about doing a bunch of stuff for our own people, just as soon as we figure out what that stuff is.

Also, our children will grow up in a nation of miracles, if only we find the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts. These are actual quotes. I was not watching “Moana.”

Speechifying aside, though, we did learn something significant this week about the president’s governing vision, because he also previewed the budget he will send to Congress. And what’s interesting here is that as much as he talks about breaking with the past and the failure of our political duopoly, Trump seems poised to continue charging down a path that a reckless generation of politicians has already trampled.

A president’s budget, as you may know, is really more like a statement of priorities and general direction, which Congress rarely enacts these days in any event. It’s a glimpse into the choices a president intends to make — or avoid.

And there are choices to be made. Something like 60 percent of federal spending goes to entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Almost another quarter goes out the door for military spending and to pay down the interest on the federal debt.

That means that the remaining chunk of the budget — roughly a fifth — has to fund all the other programs the federal government administers, from veterans’ affairs to safeguarding the nuclear stockpile to maintaining and staffing embassies around the world. This is what they’re talking about when they use the term “discretionary spending.”

The second disconcerting fact is that Trump’s vision, if enacted, would land most heavily on the people who can least afford it. I’m not saying there aren’t pointless programs in the federal bureaucracy (there are), but you can cut only so much from housing and food stamps and foreign aid before you verge on cruelty — just as you can cut only so much from homeland security and energy before you endanger the public.

But the biggest problem with Trump’s budgeting philosophy is that it comes down squarely on the wrong side of a generational choice. And in this way, he’s not very different from all the governing Democrats or Republicans he rails against, who’ve mostly declined to make any choices at all.

When you’re spending most of your national wealth on programs aimed specifically at your oldest citizens, it means you’re not investing in their grandchildren or the technologies they’ll need. When you’re accelerating debt instead of slowing it, you’re only delaying the reckoning.

Trump has a rare chance, as a nondoctrinaire conservative with a Congress of his own party, to pick up where Obama and Boehner left off. He might actually be able to win some concessions toward a more balanced tax code (something he hinted at in the campaign) in exchange for modest changes to entitlement programs that would make them more sustainable and more progressive.

Instead, in his budget, he proposes more of the same abdication that has defined his entire generation of leaders. He won’t risk a fight with the old and the affluent. The only people he seems willing to offend are the poor who rely most on federal programs and the government workers whom nobody cares much about.

I guess they’re the only Americans who won’t soon get tired of winning.