Trump's budget: political cannibalism

[KingOrfeo]

Chauncey DeVega writes:

Donald Trump is the Hannibal Lecter of American politics. But Trump lacks Lecter’s wit, charm, intelligence or cultured manner. Donald Trump’s voters, like Mason Verger in “Hannibal,” have also been drugged — in their case, all too willingly.

Trump’s proposed 2018 budget is another illustration of how the butcher’s bill has come due. It can fairly be described as political cannibalism when it comes to Trump’s most ardent supporters.

Instead of hallucinogens from a pharmacy, Donald Trump and the right-wing media gave his voters the political drugs of racism, white supremacy, xenophobia and bigotry. Trump has simultaneously numbed and excited members of his public; they beg for more even as he makes them suffer.

Consider the following:

Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget will cut funding for programs that predominantly helps older Americans such as the anti-hunger program Meals on Wheels. Older (white) voters were key to Trump’s presidential victory.

The president’s proposed 2018 budget will severely harm rural communities. For example, while Trump was lying about helping coal miners and bringing back that dying industry, “his proposed budget will slash funds for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state agency founded in 1965 to promote economic development and infrastructure in some of the poorest parts of the United States,”as The New York Times has reported. These rural voters in red-state America were among Trump’s strongest supporters.

As a key part of his overall budget priorities, Donald Trump’s proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act will take insurance away from tens of millions of Americans; punish poor, elderly and other needy Americans by devastating Medicare; give billionaires and millionaires a tax cut; hurt rural America; and force more Americans into bankruptcy as well as premature deaths from lack of access to both preventive, long-term and emergency health care.

 

[OldJourno]

Check this out:

The president’s proposed 2018 budget will severely harm rural communities. For example, while Trump was lying about helping coal miners and bringing back that dying industry, “his proposed budget will slash funds for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state agency founded in 1965 to promote economic development and infrastructure in some of the poorest parts of the United States,” as The New York Times has reported. These rural voters in red-state America were among Trump’s strongest supporters.

This commission was established in 1965. If they haven't accomplished their goal by now, they never will. It's a waste of money.

 

[KingOrfeo]

This commission was established in 1965. If they haven't accomplished their goal by now, they never will. It's a waste of money.

It doesn't work that way. Their kind of work does not have an endgame, it has to be done year after year, and if it stops the people of the region will be even worse off.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Check this out:

The president’s proposed 2018 budget will severely harm rural communities. For example, while Trump was lying about helping coal miners and bringing back that dying industry, “his proposed budget will slash funds for the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state agency founded in 1965 to promote economic development and infrastructure in some of the poorest parts of the United States,” as The New York Times has reported. These rural voters in red-state America were among Trump’s strongest supporters.

This commission was established in 1965. If they haven't accomplished their goal by now, they never will. It's a waste of money.

Excellent point. If our military hasn't made the world safe yet they never will and we should cut off funding.

 

[Comshaw]

Excellent point. If our military hasn't made the world safe yet they never will and we should cut off funding.

Motorboat! But but but but but but but but but but but but but but...........




Comshaw

 

[Hard_Rom]

Excellent point. If our military hasn't made the world safe yet they never will and we should cut off funding.

Exactly! Fiscal austerity from a government is generally not a bad thing. But to gut social and environmental programs while continuing to fund a military already big enough to take on the next 5 armed forces all at once seems stupid and self-serving.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Excellent point. If our military hasn't made the world safe yet they never will and we should cut off funding.

Exactly! Fiscal austerity from a government is generally not a bad thing. But to gut social and environmental programs while continuing to fund a military already big enough to take on the next 5 armed forces all at once seems stupid and self-serving. If he is going to slash government spending it should be across the board. Fairs fair!

 

[OldJourno]

It doesn't work that way. Their kind of work does not have an endgame, it has to be done year after year, and if it stops the people of the region will be even worse off.

Prove that statement.

 

[OldJourno]

While we're at it, prove to me how the Dept. of Education has improved education.
Or is it possible it doesn't work that way? Maybe it just doesn't work, period.

 

[Hard_Rom]

While we're at it, prove to me how the Dept. of Education has improved education.
Or is it possible it doesn't work that way? Maybe it just doesn't work, period.

Yeah, gut the Dept. of Education. That will surely bring all those 3$ or 70 cents an hour jobs lost to China and Sri Lanka back to America. Nothing like an illiterate workforce or populous to stop them asking embarrassing questions.

 

[Christobal]

It is cannibalism only if you think no budget item should be cut. No cuts just raise taxes.

I was out of work. I cancelled cable, internet and my landline. I figured out a way to get my electrical bill down to $25 dollars a month by doing without a lot of things. I suppose I could have felt bady because if me and thousands of other people did the same thing because it might have people out of work because I was spending less.

In real life you can't explain to your boss or bank that you have costs so they just have to give you more.

It's easy to say raise taxes until they hit you. I was barely getting by and now you want me to pay for public art. I am trying to get a job based on my skills and now you want to pay for art no one but the government will buy. Or pay for some military project that the military says they don't want but the senator likes to bring home the jobs.

It's not cannibalism to say we only have so much money and if we want to buy this we can't pay for that.

 

[OldJourno]

Yeah, gut the Dept. of Education. That will surely bring all those 3$ or 70 cents an hour jobs lost to China and Sri Lanka back to America. Nothing like an illiterate workforce or populous to stop them asking embarrassing questions.

The Dept. of Education was created during the Carter Administration. There is no evidence Americans were largely illiterate prior to that time. As a matter of fact, since the creation of the Dept. of Education there is probably, as you suggest, ample evidence American jobs have been lost to China and Sri Lanka.
It is ridiculous to believe only a wise bureaucracy in Washington can guide the local simpletons in their efforts to have an education system.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

While we're at it, prove to me how the Dept. of Education has improved education.
Or is it possible it doesn't work that way? Maybe it just doesn't work, period.

Before you change the topic it's fair to ask you why we should be funding departments that have not fulfilled their task. Again, and according to you, since the military has not brought world peace we should not continue to fund it.

 

[OldJourno]

Before you change the topic it's fair to ask you why we should be funding departments that have not fulfilled their task. Again, and according to you, since the military has not brought world peace we should not continue to fund it.

I never said any such thing about the military.

 

[Christobal]

Before you change the topic it's fair to ask you why we should be funding departments that have not fulfilled their task. Again, and according to you, since the military has not brought world peace we should not continue to fund it.

I would argue with your basic premise that the US military is about world peace. It's about US defence. Not that means they don't need a hard look at what they spend money on.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

I would argue with your basic premise that the US military is about world peace. It's about US defence. Not that means they don't need a hard look at what they spend money on.

I'm willing to rephrase to, if the US isn't safe by now it never will be.

 

[OldJourno]

I'm willing to rephrase to, if the US isn't safe by now it never will be.

You are really grasping at straws now that your ridiculous premise has blown up in your face.
Lightweight.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

I never said any such thing about the military.

No one said you did, the premise is the same though. You claimed that if a department had not completed it's mission after 50 years it should have it's funding cut, correct?

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

You are really grasping at straws now that your ridiculous premise has blown up in your face.
Lightweight.

Yet here you are trying to distance yourself from what you said.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Good lord, it's the board of the politically uneducated...





The House is going to ignore his budget. Period.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Argumentum ad seunpee

Taxpayers subsidize the Legal Service Corporations to provide non-taxpayers the funds to sue the taxpayers. We bankroll the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — four words ill-suited for Uncle Sam’s subsidy — to encourage American businesses to spend their dollars in foreign countries. The Corporation for National and Community Service commands a billion dollars annually from the citizenry to encourage the citizenry to give their time freely to worthy causes — do as they say, not as they do.

Surely some think tank somewhere frowns on the austerity. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the U.S. Peace Institute, two such Washington institutions dependent on Washington, no doubt condemn the cuts. But who outside the Beltway thinks that the capital so desperately needs another think tank that Americans should involuntarily donate capital?

The McGovern-Dole International Food Program, named in honor of two presidential losers, loses its funding. So, too, does Essential Air Service, which subsidizes plane travel for those living away from major airports, and Abandoned Mine Land grants, bankrolled by “fees paid by active coal mine operators on each ton of coal mined.”

The republic, which endured without the Minority Business Development Agency and Global Climate Change Initiative for most of its existence, now must muster up the courage to survive without them.

Daniel J. Flynn
https://spectator.org/trumps-terrible-swift-sword/

 

[Rightguide]

Good lord, it's the board of the politically uneducated...





The House is going to ignore his budget. Period.

Well Trump veto any effort to refund his cuts?

 

[KingOrfeo]

It is cannibalism only if you think no budget item should be cut. No cuts just raise taxes.

It is cannibalism in the sense that the burden falls largely on Trump's own base of white working class rural voters.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

It is cannibalism in the sense that the burden falls largely on Trump's own base of white working class rural voters.

Elections have consequences

 

[Rightguide]

Prove that statement.

It might take a while, so don't hold your breath.