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Trump Domestic Policy - Budgets, etc


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I wonder how many blue hair votes they would lose if they passed this.

 

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Unlike last year’s submission, the 2019 Trump plan would cut Medicare by $554 billion over the next 10 years, a 6 percent reduction from projected spending, including cuts in Medicare payments going to hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

 

Edited by BigRedBuster
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2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

So....let me get this straight.  He is blaming the spending on the military that Bush had to do because of military action after 9/11....meanwhile.....he is exploding the military budget himself.

 

:dunno:facepalm:

The contradictions never end and can never be understood.

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Krugman tears Trump's infrastructure plan to shreds - rightfully so, I'd say.

 

I reach a different conclusion than he does. The reason Trump is running with this infrastructure plan instead of the one he campaigned on is because he's too ignorant, impotent & scared to do the hard work to craft policy & make important decisions. This is simply the plan the Republicans in Congress gave him - and the extent of his involvement will be in his role as chief huckster.

 

 

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Journalists need to stop talking about Trump's "huge", "$1.5 trillion" infrastructure plan. He's only proposing $200 billion in federal money, which is somehow supposed to jumpstart almost 8 times as much total spending 1/

Furthermore, his budget slashes $178 billion in transportation funding, billions more from water, energy, and so on. So the real net spending on infrastructure being proposed is basically zero. All that's left is an effort to privatize things that can make profits 2/

The interesting question is why he won't go for a few hundred billion in actual stuff. I mean, he could get some credit from voters; he could stick his name on things (plenty of past politicians have had edifice complexes for that very reason) 3/

And given a complaisant Congress, he could waive lots of rules and turn infrastructure into a big profit center for cronies, very much including his own family. So why is there nothing here but a big fat zero? 4/

One answer may be that much of the Congressional GOP hates doing anything that might convey the impression that government is good for something. But I have a personal theory that something else is going on: Trump is terrified of trying to make actual policy 5/

After all, a real infrastructure plan means deciding what needs to be built; it requires that somebody in the administration have some professional expertise. And this admin actively hates employing such people, either because they weren't loyalists in the past 6/

Or because people who actually know what they're doing in any field other than propaganda -- be it defense, diplomacy, science, economic policy -- might, you know, turn out to have independent minds and even consciences. They're dangerous! 7/

So Trump won't produce a real infrastructure plan because he doesn't dare employ anyone who would know how to do that. 8/

 

Edited by dudeguyy
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Here's another nice thread illustrating what Krugman mentioned above. You can't claim you're investing in infrastructure AT ALL if your budget slashes $200M in transportation & utilities. More accurately they'd say "we're going to keep things exactly the same because if we don't we'd have to follow through on our own plan to cut them by $200M."

 

Spoiler alert: Most of the programs they're proposing deep cuts to help the neediest among us (welfare, SNAP/WIC, Section 8 housing, Headstart, Social Security, the CDC...)

 

 

And here's another list of programs they're proposing complete elimination of. I'm particularly PO'd, because the PSLF program is on the list, and I was going to use that to halve the number of years I'd be paying down my student debt.

 

These people are monsters.

 

 

 

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I'm not sure how you can get any dumber than the GOP right now. If you're going to cut taxes you should cut spending, especially if you've been ranting and raving about the deficit for years and call yourselves conservative. You don't go spending money on a stupid wall or an increase in spending on military when we spend the most on military by far already.

And on that example, the military can become more efficient. We can spend the same amount or less, but just not waste as much.

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I agree. It's hard to summon up the political will to actually improve military waste, because individual states or interest groups all benefit from it in some way. Everybody will talk a big game about trying to fix it, but when it comes time to actually pay the piper, it becomes a huge NIMBYfest where nobody wants to lose what benefits them and their constituents.

 

I agree, you can't blow a hole in revenue that big without reducing spending somewhere. But it's like they went down the list & picked all the programs possible to most easily caricature them as a bunch of heartless thugs.

 

I guess that's why people are saying the budget is DOA. If they actually acted on it they're politically stupid enough to deserve whatever is coming to them.

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34 minutes ago, dudeguyy said:

I agree, you can't blow a hole in revenue that big without reducing spending somewhere. But it's like they went down the list & picked all the programs possible to most easily caricature them as a bunch of heartless thugs.

 

 

Yep, I agree.

 

I didn't want taxes lowered at all, but if I had wanted to lower taxes I wouldn't have increased spending the way they have, and then want to lower spending on things like medicare.

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2 hours ago, dudeguyy said:

 

But those are poor people.  Everyone knows their self-worth doesn't matter.

I just saw an article on this on Yahoo that gives a summary.  Ok the same govt that delivers our mail, who's health care program was suppose to be more efficient, which is known for inefficiencies in about every dept - that govt is going to be responsible for delivering food!     Ok, so Dad comes home from work and asks 'Whats for supper?"  Mom say "I don't know, govt box hasn't arrived yet!"

 

The admin thinks of this as an innovative idea.  Innovation isn't controlling what someone eats.  Govt should be about giving them a safety net, help them to get ahead and hopefully get off of food stamps and giving them the freedom to make choices - which is also the choice in how they will answer the most important question asked millions of times a day "What's for supper?"

 

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-wants-cut-back-food-133500122.html

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Reducing or eliminating SNAP in favor of a mail delivery food box from the government is going to crush the corner markets within poorer communities. When those markets are forced to close it will eliminate one of the few sources of jobs in those areas. Ben Carson should soundly be against this proposed change.

Edited by Whistlebritches
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30 minutes ago, Whistlebritches said:

Reducing or eliminating SNAP in favor of a mail delivery food box from the government is going to crush the corner markets within poorer communities. When those markets a forced to close it will eliminate one of the few source of jobs in those areas. Ben Carson should soundly be against this proposed change.

Yes, to me it flies in the face of anything conservative - govt intrusion into food choice, taking over a section of the economy (that was one of the grievances against Obamacare), hurts the little man grocery store - thus cuts across the ideas of free enterprise, individualist choice, & will most likely become a wasteful govt program - everything Trump ran against.  He is doing the same thing wt the SNAP program that he was critical of wt the ACA. 

 

My Quick one minute summary:

 Issue                                            ACA             Trump SNAP Program

Mandates                                       Yes             Yes

Limits Choice                                 Yes              Yes

Can keep doctor/grocery             No               No

Promotes free enterprise             No               No

Govt over involved in private       Yes               Yes

sector

Edited by TGHusker
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32 minutes ago, Whistlebritches said:

Reducing or eliminating SNAP in favor of a mail delivery food box from the government is going to crush the corner markets within poorer communities. When those markets a forced to close it will eliminate one of the few source of jobs in those areas. Ben Carson should soundly be against this proposed change.

I wonder which billionaire friend may get the delivery contract??  Follow the money. 

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I know you were unaware of this before now....but, we live in strange times.  Just thought I would start letting you know.

 

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House budget chief said on Tuesday that, if he were still a member of Congress, he “probably” would vote against a deficit-financed budget plan he and Trump are proposing.

 

At a U.S. Senate panel hearing where he defended the administration’s new $4.4-trillion, fiscal 2019 spending plan, Mick Mulvaney was asked if he would vote for it, if he were still a lawmaker, which he was before Trump hired him. 

 

“I probably would have found enough shortcomings in this to vote against it,” said Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in reply to a senator’s question. 

 

The frank admission by Mulvaney, formerly a Republican member of the House of Representatives and noted deficit hawk, underscores not only his new job at OMB, but also a rapid retreat from fiscal conservatism by Republicans since Trump signed a major tax cut bill in December.

 

Trump’s budget delivers the final death nail into the former GOP deficit hawk mantra,” said Chris Krueger, policy analyst at financial firm Cowen and Co. in a research note.

 

 

The bolded part is very important to me.

Edited by BigRedBuster
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