Discussion: Trump's Budget Would Balloon Deficit, Slash Social Safety Net

my post from the infrastructure thread yesterday:

the whole budget and infrastructure scam is designed to do a couple simple things:

  1. destroy the social safety nets
  2. transfer wealth to the wealthy
    and 1. is a subset of 2.
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Is there literally anyone out there who thinks this makes sense? Sincere question.

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I’m tired of watching the same movie over and over again. A republican president/Congress destroys the budget and economy followed by Democrats swooping in to clean up the mess and getting no credit for doing so. The American electorate is fricking blind.

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“The open embrace of red ink is a remarkable public reversal for Trump and his party”

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO !!! It is NOT a reversal and I’m SICK OF READING THIS.

This is standard Republicans that I’ve watched my whole life. They ALWAYS cut taxes for the rich and spend money like it’s water - THEN when a Dem is in the White House, they scream that Democrats are spending too much money and deficits are killing the country.

IT IS EVERY TIME. Stop writing this crap.

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Yes, I know it’s juvenile, but I can’t see Mick Mulvaney’s face without thinking “Putz.”

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It’s the same shit, over and over again, each and every time the GOP gets control. And yet, the media thinks they are geniuses for acting as if they’ve discovered this hypocrisy for the first time.

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Cockholster wants to kill people by cutting the social safety net and grow the military in order to kill more people, while also further ballooning a ballooning deficit.

Nobody could’ve seen that coming.

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Teapain nails it IMHO.

disclaimer: I see Boris and Natasha meddling in everything these days.

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I think you have to define “sense” in 2018, in the rein of Trump Bizarro World.

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“In good times, budget policy should be working to get the deficits down because bad times are sure to come.”

Good times. Boy howdy, this sure feels like good times.

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Oh I can think of one person who did, and I believe that she had a binder full of policy proposals that wouldn’t take us down this road again.

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Exactly. I think the problem is that whoever wrote this TPM headline is thinking tactically: let’s call them out on their hypocrisy and bullshit. The problem with short-term tactical thinking is that (a) there’s little to gain in calling hypocrisy, since it’s clear that most Republican supporters aren’t swayed by rational arguments, and the rest of us know this and (b) you fall down on your duty to repeat, loudly and clearly, that ‘this open embrace of red ink is a entirely predictable continuation of long-term Republican strategy.’

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[quote=“blandsten, post:11, topic:68497”]
“In good times, budget policy should be working to get the deficits down because bad times are sure to come.”
[/quote]Or, as Richard Pryor’s stand-up character Mudbone would say, “The Republicans, why they just want to take us back to Hard Times, when times was hard.”

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There are times when it makes sense to cut taxes and increase government deficits and times when it doesn’t. This is one of the times when it doesn’t, which is why the Republicans are hell-bent on doing it.

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Steve Bannon? But he probably wanted more government funding for the Breitbart demographic.

This is news? Every sentient observer and commentor on policy, economics and politics has been predicting this path for over a year. Slash taxes. Funnel money to the wealthy and defense contractors. Make up the shortfall by screwing the poor, the middle class, the sick and disabled, the retired and children. We all saw it coming. It’s like death evidently, we’re powerless to stop it, so we plod on, living our lives, knowing the knock at the door will come eventually.

Yet knowing what we know, this is how we greeted our Reaper:

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i think the point here is that Republicans do the same thing over and over but thist ime they quit pretending they care about anything else.

Its all money, for their billionaire patrons, in the past they at least gave lip service to deficit control, now they flout it.

Why do people get so bent over about provocative headllnes?

How many of you have ever had to write one?

If you ever really HAVE done it, you probably aren’t here criticizing these headlines, you are ignoring them and pondering the article, and wishing people discussed the meaning of the words, not the wording of the headlines…

Just the fact they elicit such reliable response means they worked.

Discuss the article, and what it means, the headlines are INTENDED for pupil dilation. The articles are what matters.

Sure seems like a lot of handwringing over common online journalism, to the point it almost sounds contrived. SO MUCH GRIPING. Wait patiently and you’ll get something at TPM you can chew on, for now appreciate that some folks are learning from this, even if others among us already know it all.

Encourage these people who write for us, don’t pick away at them like some constipated shrew-faced editor.

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What makes this news? Everyone whose head was not buried in the sand (or elsewhere) knew that this would be the case.

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And the press always works hard to sell the idea that the Democrats are the party of deficit spending.

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