If ever a $4.4 trillion budget can be said to be dead on arrival, it's the one that President Donald Trump proposed on Monday. The law gives the president the obligation to submit budget recommendations, but Congress can and does ignore them. Consider that just last week, Congress passed a two-year budget (one that had been due last Oct. 1) that largely ignores Trump's budget from last year.

The presidential budget is important only in that it signals what the president thinks the nation's priorities should be. Trump's views are prone to tectonic shift, but as of Monday, here's what he thinks is and is not important:

—Important: The military. His proposal would raise the Pentagon's fiscal 2019 budget by 14.1 percent, in line with the $716 billion already approved by Congress last week.

—Not important: The State Department. Even though Trump's beloved generals tell him that the State Department's work is crucial to the military's mission, the president wants to cut State Department programs by 27 percent.

—Not important: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which would face more than $1.4 trillion in cuts over 10 years. Such cuts explicitly break a Trump campaign promise, but what's new?

—Not important: Food stamps, the Affordable Care Act and federal housing assistance, all of which would face steep cuts or, in the case of Obamacare, elimination. Again.

Then there's a special category for "not important even though he says it is." This includes his vaunted $200 billion infrastructure plan, the one he promised in his State of the Union address would "build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, and waterways across our land."

In fact, because he also plans to cut the Highway Trust Fund by $122 billion over 10 years, America is likely to see less infrastructure spending, not more. Trump's plan would require states and local governments to come up with a larger share of infrastructure money, reducing federal outlays. Or states could contract with private partners to help build toll roads and bridges. That way they might get a share of Trump's $200 billion.

State and local governments already don't have enough money to fix what needs fixing. If Missouri, for example, wanted federal help to rebuild Interstate 70, it would have to raise its own gasoline tax or contract with a private operator to build a toll road. Neither idea is popular in the state.

Trump's budget is a valentine to plutocrats and hard-core anti-government conservatives who want to cut social services, preserve their own tax breaks and government handouts and aren't concerned that it would add $7 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. Trump would finance the federal government like he financed his casinos and resorts, the ones that went bankrupt.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH