This man has a face that says, “I’m the last person who should be Treasury Secretary.”
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They’ll also “contract out” State Department e-mails to private servers at GOP HQ, too! But You can bet the farm that Chaffetz and Gowdy Doody won’t utter a peep!
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Especially after he won a trio of RAZZIES for Batman Vs. Superman!
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Add in tax cuts and a YUUUGE military funding increase, and I see recession just over the horizon. Watch for the economy and hiring to slow, then begin to contract. End of year two at the latest.
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I can see it now .Fruit pickers and lawn service with old dudes using walkers.
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And, in related news, Paul Ryan just soiled himself.
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For me, the key points are:
won’t be cutting SS/Medicare “now” AND
he specified this is Rump’s budget
I think this Rethug Congress will simply do what they want regardless of what Rump has decided. Why? Because they know he’ll sign anything that’s put in front of him. That’s his purpose for the GOP.
I found another aspect to this as interesting. It sounds as if Mnuchin is saying that areas like the State Department are up for grabs. That would make sense as to why so many career positions in government aren’t filled yet. They never will be filled. For Rump and Bannon, it saves money for the 1% and creates chaos. For them, win-win.
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He has no sense of history, and no inclination to think about… well anything save perceived insults. I am sure the Nixonian comparisons fly over his head - save for the implication of the ‘insult’ that it isn’t a positive comparison.
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“this” budget, and “right now”.
Dead giveaways.
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Munchkin’s hardscrabble life as the son of a Goldman Sachs banker taught him one thing as he was coming up: You can never take too much away from the greedy middle class, which has sucked poor billionaires dry for too long!
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Oh my-Paul Krugman is going to have a good time with this.
If Defense spending is jacked up, and Social Security and Medicare declared off-limits-well that’s
more than half the budget.
I would imagine they’ll pay lip service to paying the interest on the national debt-- but on the other hand–maybe if they phrase it just right–they can stiff all the creditors w no damage done to our credit rating or to the international monetary system. Sure, it’s threading the needle, but Trump is genius at making deals and he hires smart people.
As for the other ~1/3~ of budget-I assume they’ll borrow one of Paul Ryan’s magic asterisks?
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Heck the Freedom caucus and Ryan have been salivating to cut both via privatizing in order to “save” the programs. The congress gives no safe harbor to Social Security, Medicare anymore than they give safe harbor to the ACA.
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In other news, the Cabinet problems continue as Philip Bilden has withdrawn as Navy Secretary:
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Another aspect of this, that I can see, is that of tax cuts.
They’re going to create MASSIVE tax cuts for the wealthy. At some point in the next two years at the earliest, we’re going to see the results of such a dramatic loss of tax revenue. Seems to me that even if they don’t cut safety net programs, by starving the programs of tax revenue, they can just claim that the programs collapsed on their own.
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Like a dream come true to Grover Norquist.
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Once again, the Democratic party will be charged with getting us out of this mess…and once again, as the nasty taste of the medicine hits yet another charlatan will rise on the Reich wing and say that this was all the Democrats’ fault the entire time and that only he can save us.
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because our cost/benefit calculations tell us we can buy off the geriatric vote by leaving those things intact…
for now…
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They don’t want to make it obvious to the rubes what’s going to happen to them yet, but I wonder if Paul Ryan is as patient.
CNN has a good piece on the sausage making: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/paul-ryan-mike-pence-congressional-meetings/
Long and short of it is that the House has the initiative. My quick guess is that the more faith Ryan and McConnell have in the stability of the WH, the more patience they’ll have in enacting their dystopian dream policies.
(Side note: Trump supporters who I’d put among the convinceables all are saying they’ll give him 2 years before they entertain any negative thoughts.)
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Even the rich guys know Trump is an asshole and want nothing to do with him.
They do however enjoy taking advantage of his stupidity
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And this is what happens when a “businessman” runs the government. I believe he called himself the Master of Debt - now he is going to prove it. And just like he bankrupted himself by building casinos that competed with his already existing casinos, he is going to pour money into programs like the military where the glut is already embarrassing and additional resources ARE NOT NEEDED. Having already demonstrated his profound ignorance of how the world economy works in words, he will now prove he can follow through on this by making us an unstable economy and scaring the world off of the American dollar as a standard of trust.
We are so fucking fucked.
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