Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

[momochan]

Trump now says he's going to move on to tax reform...but what about the infrastructure spending package that he had talked about? The one thing that might actually do the country a spot of good (except for the border wall, if you can call that infrastructure, because it would just sit there needing maintenance). The only other recent action I've heard of is approving the pipeline, even though south Florida is underwater at just about every high tide these days -- and even if you think AGW is a hoax, the Chinese and Indians have scaled way back on coal so fossil fuels in general don't look like the best economic bet.

[Highlord Laan]

ut what about the infrastructure spending package that he had talked about?

Thats the sort of thing that would benefit we plebs, therefore it counts as communism.

[TheFeniX]

Trump now says he's going to move on to tax reform...but what about the infrastructure spending package that he had talked about? The one thing that might actually do the country a spot of good (except for the border wall, if you can call that infrastructure, because it would just sit there needing maintenance).

You can't expect Republicans to do anything before they've tried their tax cuts. Trump is only special in this regard because "discredit Obama" was higher on his punch-list. He also needed a few weeks to make whatever executive orders he could. That's done now, so it's time for tax cuts.

And honestly, based on my reading of his proposals and the analysis of people way smarter than me, if he got anything resembling what he's wanting passed: infrastructure? We'd be lucky if we could run a country unless we borrowed metric shit-tons of money.

Going out on a limb here, this shit just looks doomed to fail because Trump would have to gut military spending to even get close to covering the losses we would take. Either that or, like I said, just borrow borrow borrow, and that's still not going to cut it. The GOP is not suicidal: these guys want to have a party left when Trump leaves office. Trump's coalition is just incapable of seeing reality and was going to rely on a straight (R) (D) split. It just doesn't work that way. Not once you get into shit like this.

I'm just going to wait for the inevitable "Trump's not a true conservative" shit that's going to come up when sections of the GOP throws him under the bus.

[The Romulan Republic]

I hope so, not just because it will make it easier to block the far Right's legislation, but because breaking Republican solidarity is going to be necessary to impeach if the various legal cases and investigations into Trump do yield something sufficient to try him.

[TheFeniX]

I hope so, not just because it will make it easier to block the far Right's legislation, but because breaking Republican solidarity is going to be necessary to impeach if the various legal cases and investigations into Trump do yield something sufficient to try him.

The U.S. seems to be dealing with historically high resentment against Russia right now. Though even around 2015, "we" didn't seem to crazy about getting involved in another proxy war. This is part is why I talked about "Americans are just fucking done with war.*" To be fair, I fully admit my reliance on polling borders on "over," but I also don't want to rely on op-eds here. That said, if there's enough evidence to even bring charges that Trump is/was in league with the Russian oligarchy, there is just no way I can see a bunch of older motherfuckers ((R) or (D)) in Congress who remember scrambling under their plywood desks during nuke drills being all "no big deal guys." This would make lieing about blowjobs look laughable in comparison.

That's what the U.S. government is generally made up of: people who grew up in fear of the hammer and sickle. And who gave tons of weapons to anyone who would fight them on "our" behalf. Maybe if Congress was made up of mostly 30-year-olds he could skate by.

I don't think you need to break solidarity here. It was broken the second Trump thought they would all fall in line with him through Hell or high water, even after they harangued him in the primaries. Yea, they shifted direction when he was nominated, but that's purely self-interest. Clinton did the same thing with Obama in 2008. Factor in you've got GOP Congresspersons already saying shit like "that would fuck my constituents" when it comes to healthcare? Like I said, Trump is not the guy they would ride to Hell with.

Total opinion here: the united GOP front over the past decade is due solely to the fight against "The Magic Negro." Um, I'm pretty hammered here, so I need to point out: this is a jab at conservatives, not my personal opinion of the man. Once that threat was gone and they got the car keys, they've nearly immediately fallen back into internal bickering. I remember this shit quite well in the pre-Obama days of the U.S. I mean, they didn't fight Trump when he was beating up illegals because that's like THE safest bet to garner electorate support. Same thing with beating on homosexuals, the transgendered, or Planned Parenthood.

With healthcare and taxes? This shit "matters" because it affects that core group of people who support them. Oh man, this shit is going to be good. And I say that as a man desperate to find something worthwhile to look forward to in this massive clusterfuck. So when I say "good" I mean "holy fucking shit I am not looking forward to explaining WTF was up with the 2010's when my son is old enough to understand it."

But, me personally, I'm more of the mind that Trump's got a few shots here to not end up as a lame duck who oversees "his" party hemorrhage what gains they made over the past 8 years. You know, like GW did with his tax cuts. Cuts he could do because "Blowjob Mc. Lie Poorly" had us in such a good spot economically only Gore (and Americans) ate shit for his infidelity.

I mean, yea, he could go poke China (our biggest trade partner except IIRC a massive collection of Eurorpean countries) or poke Iran / North Korean. Those guys are a "threat" but also a threat Obama handled pretty well. So, Republicans (sitting here with the car keys) are going to be all "Yea, go poke those guys."? I just can't see it. Another Republican dragging us into ANOTHER WAR! All the while Obama is posting more pics of his retirement saying "Miss me yet bitches?"

*I mean, maybe you could beat the anti-muslim drum. But it's not the safe bet it used to be. We're just fucking done man.

[Bedlam]

And honestly, based on my reading of his proposals and the analysis of people way smarter than me, if he got anything resembling what he's wanting passed: infrastructure? We'd be lucky if we could run a country unless we borrowed metric shit-tons of money.

Isn't the normal tactic for this 'borrow now, let the next guy have to deal with the repayment'?

[The Romulan Republic]

I feel great pity for whichever poor bastard succeeds Trump, considering they'll likely have to spend most of their Presidency just cleaning up the Orange Man Child's mess. And we thought Obama had it bad, having to clean up for Bush...

[momochan]

You know, like GW did with his tax cuts. Cuts he could do because "Blowjob Mc. Lie Poorly" had us in such a good spot economically

I remember when GW first got into office he had the IRS cut everyone a several-hundred-dollar check. (I sent half of mine back to the IRS, and got a very nice thank-you letter for it, BTW). Conservatives were gloating. A few years later, with a Republican in the White House and a Republican Congress, the economy had the biggest recession since the Great Depression and most people lost more than they had gotten from the IRS in the first year.
And it was a mistake on the part of the Democrats for not harping on that fact constantly and loudly during the campaign -- for all their talk of economy, the Republicans may actually be bad for it. When you have a consumer economy, things like a higher minimum wage, that are good for average workers, turn out to benefit the economy overall.
I'm wondering if the Dems are going to try to thwart the Supreme Court nomination partly based on the lack of legitimacy of TrumPutin. The frozen trucker case is disturbing to me ... do we really want drivers of 18-wheelers to be out on our roads endangering everyone?

[mr friendly guy]

Speaking of borrowing money for his pet projects, there have been reports that Trump handed Germany a big bill for NATO defense spending. The White House denies this and I will withhold judgement until more info comes out.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/26/donald-t ... -bill.html

[The Romulan Republic]

Already posted in the Trump foreign policy thread, I believe.

If true, its just Trump mistaking showmanship for diplomacy again, by the sounds of it. And insulting our allies, of course.

[mr friendly guy]

Fair enough, although having just skim read Jonathon Ross's blog where he made an argument linking Trump's foreign policy to domestic economic needs (ie he needs to borrow money to fund his infrastructure projects and reach his GDP growth target, and the two most likely candidates who can provide the money will be hard to compel with a carrot, hence he is going to have to use the stick), and I felt this story if true certainly fits into that narrative.

[TimothyC]

A less than negative spin on something out of the Trump administration from Mother Jones of all places.

The Great Meals on Wheels Debacle, Explained

Today was the great Meals on Wheels debacle. Politico's framing was typical:

Mulvaney: Proposed cuts to Meals on Wheels are compassionate to taxpayers

White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s proposed deep cuts to social welfare programs....“Meals on Wheels sounds great,” Mulvaney said during the White House news briefing, adding that “we're not going to spend [money] on programs that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises that we’ve made to people.”

This take quickly went viral. But Meals on Wheels is a program that delivers hot and cold meals to elderly people who can't get out of the house. Did Mulvaney really say that he was showing compassion by cutting a tiny part of the federal budget for a program that helps feed the elderly? If you were writing a satire designed to show that Republicans were all heartless bastards, you still wouldn't invent something like that. It would be too ridiculous to work even as black humor.

I would hardly put anything beyond the Trump administration at this point, but hell, this is bad PR. They have too much animal shrewdness to do this even if they wanted to. And it turns out, they didn't. Here's what really happened:

1. The Department of Housing and Urban Development runs a program called Community Development Block Grants. It's exactly what it sounds like. It provides funds to states that they can use for a variety of approved purposes.
2. Last year, the Obama administration recommended cutting its budget from $3 billion to $2.8 billion.
3. This year, Mulvaney proposed that the program be eliminated entirely. Here's what the Trump budget has to say about it:

   Eliminates funding for the Community Development Block Grant program, a savings of $3 billion from the 2017 annualized CR level. The Federal Government has spent over $150 billion on this block grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results. The Budget devolves community and economic development activities to the State and local level, and redirects Federal resources to other activities.

4. Some bright bulb noticed that a few states use a small portion of their HUD CDBG money to fund Meals on Wheels. Actually, small isn't the right word. Microscopic is the the right word. Elderly nutrition programs like Meals on Wheels receive about $700 million from other government sources—most of which aren't targeted one way or the other in the Trump budget—but hardly anything from CDBG grants.
5. Here is Mulvaney's full quote after getting a question that, for some reason, focused on Meals on Wheels:

   Housing and Urban Development, and the Community Development Block Grants, aren't exclusively about housing. They support a variety of different programs, including, in part, Meals on Wheels. In Austin Texas today, one organization there that delivers those meals to thousands of elderly, says that those citizens will no longer be able to be provided those meals. So what do you say to those American who are ultimately losing out?
   As you know, Meals on Wheels is not a federal program. It's part of the CDBGs, the block grants, that we give to the states. And there have been many states that have made the decision to use that money for Meals on Wheels.
   Here's what I can tell you about CDBGs, because that's what we fund, is that we've spent $150 billion on those programs since the 1970s. The CDBGs have been identified as programs by the second Bush administration as ones that were just not showing any results. We can't do that anymore. We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good. And great, Meals on Wheels sounds great. Again, that's a state decision to fund that particular program.
   But to take federal money and give it to the states and say we want to give you money for programs that don't work, I can't defend that anymore. We cannot defend that anymore. We're $20 trillion in debt, we're going to spend money, we're going to spend a lot of money, but we're not going to spend it on programs that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises that we've made to people.

Note how far apart those two snippets are. A second reporter then followed up several minutes later, using Meals on Wheels as an example yet again, and asked if this was a "hard-hearted budget." Mulvaney said no, he thought it was compassionate to stop taxing people to pay for programs that don't work.

Mulvaney, obviously, wasn't saying that Meals on Wheels doesn't work. He was saying that CDBGs don't work. Meals on Wheels might be great, but community grants aren't, and he wants to eliminate them. But by smushing together three quotes delivered at three different points, it sounds like Mulvaney was gleefully killing off food for the elderly.

I'm no expert on community block grants. I don't know if they're a good idea or not. And God knows the Trump "skinny budget" is a disgraceful piece of work for the richest country on the planet. But spinning this as "Mulvaney guts Meals on Wheels" is pretty ridiculous. The vast majority of federal funding for Meals on Wheels—which comes via HHS's Administration on Aging, not HUD's CDBGs—remains intact. Someone managed to plant this idea with reporters, and more power to them. Good job! But reporters ought to be smart enough not to fall for it.

A reminder to be smart about the critiques of the administration, and reminder to republicans to red team the shit out of their plans.

[Flagg]

Oh my god, Trump didn't completely fuck up one thing! Let's put him on Mt Rushmore with Reagan sucking his cock.

Frankly the only actual good thing President Pussygrabber managed to do was shit the bed on repealing Obamacare.

[Gandalf]

Frankly the only actual good thing President Pussygrabber managed to do was shit the bed on repealing Obamacare.

If forty odd votes and a government shutdown didn't do it, could Trump really accomplish anything?

People like Obamacare, and now the GOP are helping to preserve it. Good thing they were sure to put Obama's name on it, so everyone knows who gets the thanks.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, the whole health care thing, and how its backfired on the Republicans, is just beautiful, beautiful karma.

[Flagg]

Frankly the only actual good thing President Pussygrabber managed to do was shit the bed on repealing Obamacare.

If forty odd votes and a government shutdown didn't do it, could Trump really accomplish anything?

People like Obamacare, and now the GOP are helping to preserve it. Good thing they were sure to put Obama's name on it, so everyone knows who gets the thanks.

It's a truism at this point, really: Republicans know how to get elected, Democrats know how to govern.

[aerius]

Yeah, the whole health care thing, and how its backfired on the Republicans, is just beautiful, beautiful karma.

Yes, and no. If you've looked at healthcare spending & costs along with various other metrics you'll see that Obamacare is not sustainable since its cost is going up at around 8-9% per year which is well in excess of inflation and economic growth. The proposed replacement plan wouldn't fix any of the cost issues, it would make them worse actually, but at that point the Republicans would have their name on the bill and they'd own the fuckup. As it is, Obamacare is guaranteed to fail and it has Obama's name on it, and the Republicans get to claim that they could've fixed it if only they had a chance to pass their reforms. Completely false claim, but they'll make it anyway and people are fucking dumb enough to believe it.

Short term win for the Dems, but in another 2-3 terms this is going to come back to bite them in the ass.

[Gerald Tarrant]

<snip>The proposed replacement plan wouldn't fix any of the cost issues, it would make them worse actually, but at that point the Republicans would have their name on the bill and they'd own the fuckup. </snip>

Everything I've seen from the CBO projections indicates that costs would go down and insurance markets would stabilize. Link Do you have different numbers, and could I see them?

-Thanks

[Flagg]

Yeah, the whole health care thing, and how its backfired on the Republicans, is just beautiful, beautiful karma.

Short term win for the Dems, but in another 2-3 terms this is going to come back to bite them in the ass.

This assumes Obamacare is still in place in its current form. I've always viewed it as a first step into getting a single payer system up and running and hope that happens within the next 15-20 years. But you know me, always the optimist!

[Solauren]

Trump now says he's going to move on to tax reform...

That's actually something alot of people have wanted for years, but no one with the authority to do anything about it, and the party support to do it,
has had the balls to really try it.

In THEORY, Trump might have the needed support to do it.

Considering what a bloody nightmare the US Tax System is supposed to be, I'll be very impressive if Trump pulls off reformation and comes out with a easy to understand tax system.

[Simon_Jester]

Trump has no incentive to make the tax system easy to understand, it would be bad for him and everyone like him. What he does have an incentive to do is to make sure rich people don't pay anything, through a combination of lowering the rates and making the code actively more complicated in order to create more loopholes.

Poor people might at some point get a check in the mail or something as a propaganda tool, equivalent to the emperor distributing a loaf of bread to every peasant in an attempt to draw attention from the impending crop failure caused by his failure to maintain the waterworks.

Yeah, the whole health care thing, and how its backfired on the Republicans, is just beautiful, beautiful karma.

Yes, and no. If you've looked at healthcare spending & costs along with various other metrics you'll see that Obamacare is not sustainable since its cost is going up at around 8-9% per year which is well in excess of inflation and economic growth.

Wasn't the cost of health care already doing that before Obamacare? And is Obamacare more, or less, effective at keeping costs under control courtesy of the bits of it Republicans have selectively knocked out and/or refused to implement?

As it is, Obamacare is guaranteed to fail and it has Obama's name on it, and the Republicans get to claim that they could've fixed it if only they had a chance to pass their reforms. Completely false claim, but they'll make it anyway and people are fucking dumb enough to believe it.

Short term win for the Dems, but in another 2-3 terms this is going to come back to bite them in the ass.

Only if the Democrats don't get a chance to fix the program, among other things by fixing some of the deliberate sabotage the Republicans threw in to make it fail.

I mean, a perfectly valid alternate interpretation is simply that the problem gets less bad with Democrats in power, and worse with Republicans in power. What you're saying is that since the only attempt to fix the problem is named after a Democrat, that will inevitably result in Democrats being humiliated if the Republicans continue to make the problem worse by remaining in power. That seems like a rather lopsided interpretation and there are a hell of a lot of other ways to spin that outcome.

Like "Look at those (R)s! they sabotaged your Obamacare!"

[aerius]

Everything I've seen from the CBO projections indicates that costs would go down and insurance markets would stabilize. Link Do you have different numbers, and could I see them?

-Thanks

If I'm reading the CBO paper correctly (I skimmed it pretty fast), it states that the proposed amendments to Obamacare would save $300 billion over 10 years compared to continuing the Obamacare act as it stands. It would also leave 24 million more people uninsured and fuck things up pretty badly for a bunch more people.

As for numbers, they're from the St. Louis Fed. Actually I was a bit off, going by rule 72 for doubling time the average yearly increase over the past 30 years is about 7% or so. Obamacare slowed the trend for a couple years before it went back to the previous rate.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160271A027NBEA

Only if the Democrats don't get a chance to fix the program, among other things by fixing some of the deliberate sabotage the Republicans threw in to make it fail.

I mean, a perfectly valid alternate interpretation is simply that the problem gets less bad with Democrats in power, and worse with Republicans in power. What you're saying is that since the only attempt to fix the problem is named after a Democrat, that will inevitably result in Democrats being humiliated if the Republicans continue to make the problem worse by remaining in power. That seems like a rather lopsided interpretation and there are a hell of a lot of other ways to spin that outcome.

Like "Look at those (R)s! they sabotaged your Obamacare!"

Like the Democrats can grow a spine. Because there's only 2 ways to fix it; single payer system, or enforce the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust laws which instantly puts at least 90% of the US healthcare, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries in jail. No one in the US has the balls or influence to even think about pulling off either of the above anytime soon.

[The Romulan Republic]

Bernie has the balls, but sadly not the influence (see 2016 primary results).

Maybe some of the other few progressives too. But they need a good election cycle or two to build up their numbers in Congress before such things can be legislated.

[Flagg]

Like the Democrats can grow a spine. Because there's only 2 ways to fix it; single payer system, or enforce the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust laws which instantly puts at least 90% of the US healthcare, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries in jail. No one in the US has the balls or influence to even think about pulling off either of the above anytime soon.

I more or less agree with this. The problem is that unlike the GLOP, the democrats don't engage in blood purges every few election cycles so even with a supermajority (which is what it took to get Obamacare through the senate) there are enough "blue dogs" or insurance company shills (Lieberman, the cunt) that everything gets watered down. We would have the public option if not for one douchebag (Lieberman, the cunt) threatening to leave the filibuster proof backing of the bill.

[FaxModem1]

Out News

BREAKING: Trump Administration Omits LGBTQ People from 2020 Census
Donald Trump
Flickr/Gage Skidmore
Various federal agencies urged the Census Bureau to include sexual orientation and gender in their data.

BY GLENN GARNER
TUE, 2017-03-28 19:08
6.1K SHARES Share on Twitter Share on Facebook
The Trump Administration recently submitted a list of data categories it will collect for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey (ACS). Although the Supreme Court, in 2013, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, paving the way for the census to change the way it tracks same-sex households, the White House has sent yet another powerful signal that it considers LGBTQ rights as frivolous.

Although “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” were proposed subjects in the appendix, today’s version of the report excluded LGBTQ people from the list of subjects for the Census and ACS, suggesting that data collection for these subjects may have been in the works for an earlier version.

Last year, various federal agencies urged the Census Bureau to include sexual orientation and gender in their data as it was crucial to their role in enforcing the law. The current census only allows for a snapshot of same-sex households, but Democrats in Congress had pushed for more indepth questions around sexual orientation and gender identity to improve results. The logic was simple: With more focused questions law makers would be better equipped to ensure appropriate legislation to improve the lives of LGBTQ citizens.

Meghan Maury, Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force released a statement:

"Today, the Trump Administration has taken yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice, and equity, by choosing to exclude us from the 2020 Census and American Community Survey. LGBTQ people are not counted on the Census—no data is collected on sexual orientation or gender identity. Information from these surveys helps the government to enforce federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act and to determine how to allocate resources like housing supports and food stamps. If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in a community, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections and services we need? We call on President Trump and his Administration to begin collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data on the American Community Survey as soon as possible and urge Congress to conduct oversight hearings to reveal why the Administration made the last-minute decision not to collect data on LGBTQ people.”

Not really a surprise.