Donald Trump is a man who cares about everyday Americans, ok?
You can tell because he’s a self-made man who came from nothing and thus knows what it’s like to have to struggle to make ends meet. He also has a long history of putting others before himself and would definitely never use his namesake charity as a personal checkbook.
Trump is also a man who cares about fiscal discipline. In that regard, his policies are entirely consistent with the GOP’s reputation for fiscal rectitude and he would definitely never push for a deficit-funded tax cut for the wealthy because that would not only be fiscally irresponsible, but would also betray a wanton lack of regard for the everyday Americans he cares so much about.
I’m just kidding.
Trump doesn’t care about working Americans, which is why it was so absurd that he ran on a populist platform. In fact, if you had to make a list of ten celebrities that care the least about flyover America, you’d probably have put Donald Trump on that list prior to his ascension to the presidency.
When it comes to fiscal discipline, do note that his tax cuts prompted the CBO to revise their budget outlook on the way to predicting the deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020, two years ahead of previous estimates. So little does Trump care about the nation’s fiscal trajectory, he actually advocated for spending up to $92 million on a Third World-style military parade that was ultimately nixed earlier this month due to the fact that spending that much money on such an absurd spectacle is borderline insane.
But while Trump is more than willing to balloon the deficit in order to further enrich the wealthy and/or in order to finance real-life G.I. Joe playtime in the nation’s capital, what he’s not willing to do is raise wages for civilian federal employees.
On Thursday, the President canceled a pay raise for those employees in order to – and I kid you not – “put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course.”
“Specifically, I have determined that for 2019, both across-the-board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at zero”, Trump said, in a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan. Here is the full text:
“The president estimates that the 2019 federal employee pay raise he’s scrapping would’ve cost $25 billion”, Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur notes, adding that “for context, his tax law is projected by CBO to cost the Treasury an average of $190 billion each year for the next decade.”
Just try to wrap your head around that. This is an absolutely unforgivable development, even in the context of a man who does something unforgivable every, single day.
Do note that according to the available information, Trump’s tax bill will benefit his family to the tune of $1.1 billion. That is being literally financed by deficit spending.
The ultimate irony: the only reason no one can put an exact figure on just how much the Trumps will benefit from the tax cuts is because he won’t release his tax returns.
Now, he’s scrapping pay raises for the majority of the federal workforce, even as millionaires and billionaires like himself enjoy the benefits of paying less in taxes at the expense of America’s long-term fiscal viability.
Nothing further.
I am honestly more than a little surprised he hasn’t just fired the entire government wholesale. Maybe he is waiting for the midterms to be over. It can’t be obstruction of justice to fire Mueller if you fire the entire FBI and IRS and HUD, etc. Easy way to cut social security would be to just fire everyone and turn off the computers and the check stop going out.
Just another version of “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Having decided that the hundreds of thousands of his supporters who are adversely impacted by this decision will “know that his action is good for them,” and he will would not lose any voters, he had no reluctance to order it. The ironic aspect of it all is that he’s probably correct. True believers – cult followers – those that have left their senses, have been known to go so far as to commit suicide. So, rationalizing a pay raise loss ain’t a hill of beans.