Dispatches

TRUMP BUDGET RENEGES ON PROMISES TO PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Donald Trump declared in 2015. “Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”

It became a staple of his entire national candidacy: no matter what, Americans could count on him to champion these social-insurance programs, Steve Benen noted at MaddowBlog (3/11).

Four years later, the president is, in fact, proposing deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Total spending on Medicare would be reduced by about $845 billion over 10 years, which is about 10% of total Medicare spending. Trump also proposes a major overhaul of Medicaid, by turning more power over to states and cutting spending by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with $1.2 trillion of that to be diverted into block grants starting in 2021. What’s more, it would eliminate the Medicaid expansion funding under the Affordable Care Act, essentially repealing the program in the three dozen states that took expansion.

Most of the Medicare cuts would be on the provider side, targeting supposed “fraud and abuse” and cutting payments to hospitals, Joan Clawson noted at DailyKos (3/11). Cuts would also affect payments for prescription drugs. These are not direct benefits cuts, but could make it more difficult for seniors to find care.

Not content to make life more difficult for poor people, the Trump budget also goes after people with cancer. It proposes cutting the National Institutes of Health budget by $4.5 billion in 2020. That includes $897 million from the cancer institute.

Trump’s newly proposed budget completes the trifecta by targeting Social Security, too, proposing to spend $26 billion less on Social Security programs, including a $10 billion cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, Benen noted.

As the 2018 midterm elections drew closer, Benen noted, a variety of Republican leaders, cognizant of broad public support for programs like Medicare and Social Security, said it’s GOP officials who really support the programs – reality be damned.

Trump led the way, going so far as to argue just six months ago, “We’re saving Social Security; the Democrats will destroy Social Security. We’re saving Medicare; the Democrats want to destroy Medicare.” The president has pushed the same message at many of his campaign rallies.

Soon after, voters handed Democrats their biggest wins in US House races since the Watergate era – which, for some reason, the president interpreted as a justification to betray his own assurances to voters, Benen noted.

Other agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department, Transportation Department, and Interior Department, would see their budgets severely reduced. The budget includes a 70% cut to the Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, from $2.3 billion to $700 million, Bloomberg News reported.

Charles Pierce reminds us at Esquire.com (3/11), “this is exactly the kind of budget that would have been submitted by any Republican who won the presidency in 2016. It is also the kind of budget that would’ve been cheered by practically any Republican pundit alive, Never-Trumper or no.

The budget foresees a $1.1 trillion deficit in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and a $1 trillion deficit in 2022. These deficits will add to the existing $22 trillion debt and put further strain on the budget. For example, the White House now projects the government will spend $482 billion on interest payments for the debt next year, more than the entire budget for Medicaid, which provides health care benefits for millions of people. More broadly, Tump’s budget would impose mandatory work-requirements for millions of people who receive welfare assistance while dramatically increasing the defense budget to $750 billion next year, a 5% increase from 2019.

Of course, Trump wants $8.6 billion for his “big, beautiful stupid wall, built to cope with an imaginary emergency on the border,” Pierce noted. (Trump also wants $506 million to hire over 2,800 agents and support personnel at ICE and CBP and increase in the number of detention beds at ICE facilities to 54,000.)

“As far as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her majority caucus are concerned, of course, he might as well have asked for the Great Agra Treasure and mining rights on Neptune,” Pierce wrote. “All it does is set himself up for another fight he can pretend to win while getting his ass drop-kicked over the Key Bridge. As Pelosi said upon hearing about this volume of science-fiction the other day, the budget is ‘talking about funding a campaign applause line,’ which doesn’t sound like she’s any more open to the idea than she was the last time the president* threw a fit on this issue.”

REPUBLICANS RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BASH MUSLIMS, MINORITIES. House Democrats deftly handled a movement by Republicans and some Jewish Democratic members of Congress to demonize US Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for suggesting that Congress members were forced to be loyal to Israel as well as the US.

Republicans were gleeful as some Democrats originally called for a resolution to rebuke Omar as well as condemning anti-Semitism, but the GOP glee turned to outrage when the draft ended up condemning not only anti-Semitism but also anti-Muslim rhetoric and bigotry against minorities, and left Omar’s name out entirely.

The resolution passed 407-23-1. The opposition came entirely from Republicans who reserve the right to bash Muslims and minorities. Liz Cheney, R-Mont., chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, called it a “sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own,” even though neither Cheney nor other major Republican elected officials have denounced Trump’s numerous bigoted statements.

Others voting against the resolution included Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who once took a notorious Holocaust denier to a State of the Union address, and Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who falsely accused Jewish philanthropist George Soros of collaborating with Nazis. (Soros was a child during World War II.) White supremacist Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, voted “present.” All Democrats, including Omar, voted in support of the resolution, which Trump called “disgraceful.”

TRUMP TELLS BLACKFACE JOKE AT RNC FUNDRAISER. Donald Trump brought out his legendary sense of humor during a Republican National Committee fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago the evening after the House passed the anti-hate speech resolution (3/8), Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (3/11), “where ‘legendary sense of humor’ means unfunny blackface ‘joke’ from a guy who rarely smiles and never laughs unless it’s at himself insulting someone.”

Guests at the fundraiser weren’t allowed to have their phones out, lest anyone record Trump or another speaker saying something that wouldn’t play well outside a room full of wealthy Republicans. But many of them seem to have rushed out to leak stories about the event immediately afterward, with two sources telling Axios about what one called a “bizarre tangent” in which he described seeing Secret Service agents on the White House lawn over Christmas. “They’re in blackface,” Trump said, in what Axios described as a joking reference. And because of that, “so maybe they have to take them away.”

“Ha ha ha, gosh, it sure is funny comparing Secret Service agents wearing dark masks for stealth purposes with people wearing blackface for racist purposes. What a knee-slapper,” Clawson noted.

At the same event, Trump also “said he didn’t understand how any Jew could vote for a Democrat these days,” which is legitimately if unintentionally hilarious, since 79% of Jewish people voted for Democrats in 2018.

TRUMP TOPS 9,000 LIES. Powered by his two-hour stemwinder at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2 — which featured more than 100 false or misleading claims — President Trump has made 9,014 false or misleading claims since his inauguration and is on pace to exceed his daily quota set during his first two years in office, the Washington Post Fact Checker reported (3/3).

The president averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. He hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year. So far in 2019, he’s averaging nearly 22 false claims a day.

As of the end of March 3, the 773rd day of his term in office, Trump accumulated 9,014 fishy claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

Trump’s performance at CPAC is emblematic of his version of the truth during his presidency — a potent mix of exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasting and outright falsehoods. His speech helped push March 2 to his fourth-biggest day for false or misleading claims, totaling 104.

The stemwinder included his greatest hits: 131 times he has falsely said he passed the biggest tax cut in history, 126 times he has falsely said his border wall is already being built and 116 times he has asserted that the US economy today is the best in history. All three of those claims are on Fact Checker’s list of “Bottomless Pinocchios,” as well as other claims Trump made during his CPAC speech.

Since the Bottomless Pinocchio list was introduced in December, it has continued to grow. The president now has 20 claims that qualify.

RATE OF ILLEGAL CROSSINGS FROM CANADA RISING NEARLY AS RAPIDLY AS US BORDER WITH MEXICO. Illegal crossings at the US-Canada border have risen 91% compared with the previous year, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), even as President Trump remains fixated on building a wall and adding additional agents to prevent migrants from crossing the southern US border, Rebekah Entralgo noted at ThinkProgress (3/10).

In fiscal year 2017, immigration agents detained a total of 540 people, compared to 960 in fiscal year 2018. The largest spike occurred along the Swanton border patrol section, which includes the borders of New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, where 548 people were apprehended in 2018, up from 165 in all of 2017.

While these numbers are significantly smaller than the crossings at the southern border, the lack of outrage against illegal activity on the northern border is emblematic of President Trump’s war against black and brown immigrants and asylum seekers.

Last month, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to secure funds for his border wall. To justify the action, Trump cited CBP data that demonstrated a significant increase in the number of border crossings and used fear-mongering language that implied all Mexican and Central American immigrants are criminals and trafficking in drugs.

Illegal border crossings have dropped significantly since the early 2000s, from approximately 1.6 million in 2000 to just 310,000 in 2017. Crossings at the southwest border alone were approximately 304,000, with the remaining 3,600 and 3,000 occurring at the coastal and northern borders, respectively, according to CBP.

The argument could be made that the Trump administration’s own policies have exacerbated the situation at the border. While Nielsen and other administration officials have warned of a “breaking point” in response to the recent spike in border apprehensions, a significant portion were asylum seekers following the law.

In early March, CBP reported 76,103 “enforcement actions” at the southern border. This number includes nearly 10,000 people found “inadmissible” at ports of entry. People deemed “inadmissible” attempted to enter the country legally or requested humanitarian protection.

SUNDAY MORNING TALK SHOWS IGNORE TRUMP MASSAGE PARLOR SCANDAL. News that the former owner of a Florida massage parlor recently raided as part of a sex trafficking ring has been selling access to Donald Trump to Chinese business executives wasn’t deemed newsworthy enough to be mentioned on the Sunday network news programs, Eric Boehlert noted at DailyKos (3/11). The blackout represents the latest instance of the formerly scandal-driven Washington press suddenly opting for restraint as questionable controversies continue to erupt all around Trump.

The unfolding parlor story is one of the most bizarre of Trump’s presidency, and that says a lot. Two weeks after New England Patriots owner and Trump pal Robert Kraft was caught up in a sting at the Orchids of Asia day spa in Jupiter, Fla., where he was charged with soliciting prostitution, new reports note that the spa’s former owner, Li Yang (also known as Cindy Yang), runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family.

Mother Jones reported that Yang’s website boasts that her company has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” Yang, an entrepreneur from China, routinely posted photos of herself with high-profile Republicans, such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Donald Trump Jr. The photos certainly raise questions about who can gain access to the president while he’s visiting his resorts. Yang has hosted events at Mar-a-Lago while peddling access, which means she has also been pumping money directly into Trump’s pockets in the process.

Ironically, the Miami Herald reported that in January, Yang attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club (to watch Kraft’s Patriots win the game) and snapped a selfie with the president during the event. The newspaper also reported that Yang arranged for Chinese business executives to attend a paid fundraiser for Trump in New York City in late 2017.

“On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its ‘activities for clients’ have included providing them ‘the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures,’” Mother Jones noted. Yang has also donated generously to the GOP.

“It is a textbook story of how foreign actors gain leverage over senior officials,” according to the Daily Beast, which raised the specter of blackmail for Trump. On the afternoon March 10, Mother Jones reported Yang is connected to two organizations that have direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Yang may have sold the now-infamous Orchids of Asia, but the chain of spas she operated “have gained a reputation for offering sexual services,” according to the Miami Herald.

Yet none of this was mentioned on ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face The Nation, Fox News Sunday, or NBC’s Meet the Press on March 10, as the programs discussed the most pressing political stories of the day. On cable news, CNN’s State of the Union made no mention of Yang. Only MSNBC’s AM Joy tackled the topic on Sunday, devoting an entire segment to the story.

And again, what’s the often-heard explanation for why Trump scandals don’t get enough coverage? It’s because the press is “fatigued,” and there are so many outrages that newsrooms just can’t keep up. So journalists kind of throw up their hands, as they seem to have done with the unfolding Yang story.

And how much of that explanation holds water? None of it, Boehlert noted.

TRUMP ASKS UK TO DROP FOOD & ENVIRO STANDARDS FOR POST-BREXIT TRADE DEAL. With Brexit quickly approaching, the British government has been negotiating trade deals with countries around the world with the aim of transitioning its economy away from European markets. However, initial conversations with the Trump administration have forced the United Kingdom to consider how much it is willing to sacrifice in order to make a deal, James Ellsmoor reported at Forbes (3/6).

US negotiation objectives call for the UK to “eliminate practices that unfairly decrease US market access opportunities or distort agricultural markets to the detriment of the United States.” These practices include the ban on the sale of chlorinated chicken, genetically modified plants and hormone-injected beef, which many say will lower the UK’s more rigorous food and environmental practices and standards.

As a member of the European Union, the UK had to adhere to strict food safety and animal health regulations, which protects producers and consumers from cheaper, low-quality foodstuffs flooding the market. Despite the UK’s International Trade Secretary Liam Fox being previously linked to a potential deal that would comply with the Trump administration’s demands, negotiators have continued to deny they are willing to compromise at all. While Theresa May’s government has insisted that they will keep high standards for UK farmers, it has been less clear about the standards to which imported food will be held.

The National Farmers Union and other agricultural interest groups have denounced any decision that reduces the quality of food in British supermarkets, pointing out that UK farms will struggle to compete with cheaper imports held to less stringent standards. Described as “fear-mongering” by American ambassador Woody Johnson, the controversy over the US trade demands has sparked a debate regarding what other issues a potential deal could create. The National Health Service (NHS) has also been a subject of discussions, with critics warning that it could become a lot more expensive should the government acquiesce to the United States’ pharmaceutical demands.

JUDGE RULES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CAN’T IGNORE SEPARATED KIDS. A federal judge has ruled that the potentially thousands of children that were separated from their migrant parents prior to the official implementation of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy should be included in the class-action lawsuit that forced the administration to reunite thousands of other families last summer, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos (3/11).

While Judge Dana Sabraw has not yet ruled whether the administration must track down and reunite these additional families, his decision is nevertheless a stinging rebuke to officials, who have sought to keep these kids out of the American Civil Liberties Union-led lawsuit. "The hallmark of a civilized society,” he said, “is measured by how it treats its people and those within its borders.”

Sabraw’s decision is the result of a report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General last January revealing that potentially thousands more families were separated before the policy. "How many more children were separated is unknown by us and HHS,” the OIG said. The ACLU then went to court to ask Sabraw to have these families included in the lawsuit.

But the Trump administration immediately fought back, essentially claiming it would be too much work to track them all down. During the court hearing, Sabraw was already indicating that the administration would be losing this one. "It's important to recognize that we're talking about human beings," he said at the time. "Every person needs to be accounted for."

“The court made clear that potentially thousands of children’s lives are at stake,” the ACLU said about his decision, “and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused.”

“Sabraw must order their reunification,” Ortiz wrote. “The only reason why others have been reunited en masse is his 2018 order. And as Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen made clear in her House testimony last week, she just doesn’t give a s**t about these kids and would be perfectly fine letting them languish.”

Ortiz noted that 228 days past Sabraw’s reunification deadline, a number of children stolen from families under the policy remain in HHS custody.
“Why Nielsen and HHS secretary Alex Azar aren’t in jail for contempt of court, only he knows. Border officials have continued to separate hundreds of kids from families since the supposed end of the policy, sometimes on the basis of a total lie. Family separation remains a crisis.”

HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH FALLS BY LARGEST AMOUNT SINCE GREAT RECESSION. Total household net worth in the fourth quarter of 2018 dropped by the largest amount since the fourth quarter of 2008 when the country was amid a steep recession, according to data released by the Federal Reserve (3/7), the Washington Post reported (3/10).

Total household net worth is a measure of the assets — such as homes, stocks and bank accounts — owned by American families and nonprofits minus their debts. In the fourth quarter of 2018, it fell by about $3.7 trillion, a 3.5% quarterly decline. Going back to 1952, the start of the Fed’s data, only three quarters — the third and fourth quarters of 2008, and the second quarter of 1962 — posted bigger declines in household net worth, percentage-wise.

The data shows that change was driven by the poor performance of the stock market in the fourth quarter of last year. The flailing market erased $4.6 trillion in assets from household and nonprofit balance sheets, which was offset somewhat by gains in real estate and other assets. 

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2019

Populist.com