I’ve been trying, really really trying, to figure out why anyone would vote for Donald Trump.
The first time around I assumed it was because he promised to appoint lots and lots of conservative judges and Supreme Court justices in order to overturn Roe v Wade, which the religious right has been using as a wedge issue since the late seventies, after they realized segregation wouldn’t fly anymore.
He delivered on that, along with passing a massive tax cut, mostly for corporations and the top two or three percent of earners in the US. This cut was supposed to pay for itself. It didn’t. Instead it blew massive hole in the federal budget, without the job creation and wage increases that were promised.
Now I hear GOP politicians blaming the increase in the national debt on the Biden administration.
I hate to tell ya, but Biden’s doing the best he can with the mess the Trump administration left him. When a budget is out of balance, there are two ways to resolve it, increase revenue, reduce spending or some combination of the two.
According to this chart the vast majority of the federal budget pays for so-called entitlements:
BTW, “Entitlements” aren’t. People pay into those accounts throughout their working lives. Relatively minor tweaks1 to payroll deductions will keep them funded indefinitely, if only Congress would act in the interest of the People instead of the interest of the Investment Class and large corporations.
But I digress.
In my humble opinion cutting Social Security and/or Medicare would cause such a backlash that any politician who supported it would find themselves out of a job as soon as the next election came around.
The next most expensive part of the budget is the military, which is currently inviolate. Personally I’d love to see our foreign policy move away from military solutions and toward foreign aid and diplomacy, but I realize there are wackos like Putin, Orban, Erdoan, Maduro, etc. who need to be discouraged. Maybe we could take about half of what we spend on troops and weapons of war and use it to bribe them to retire?
Nah.
That leaves about 14% of the budget where cuts might be made. Good luck.
How about increasing revenue? Well, that would require raising taxes and fully funding the IRS so they can go after rich tax cheats. The current house speaker with an obviously pseudonymous name doesn’t like that second option.
I suppose we could sell naming rights to government buildings and monuments, The Mr. Clean White House, Cialis Washington Monument, Cosa Nostra Capital Building, Lincoln Savings Memorial, etc.
Sorry, got a little off track there. As near as I can tell Trump’s accomplishments were":
packing the judiciary and the US Supreme Court with “conservative”2 jurists
created a new military branch, the Space Force, which nobody asked for
signed the First Step Act to address prison reform (a good thing!)
killed off some of the higher-ups in ISIS
tried to ban Muslims from entering the US
seemed to think there were at least some “good people” among white supremacist demonstrators
managed to piss off most if not all of our allies world-wide
separated families at our southern border without any record keeping to help re-unite them,
pulled the US out of a nuclear deal with Iran that would have delayed their development of nuclear weapons for at least a decade
pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords
tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, apparently without any documented plan to replace it
solicited a bribe from the leader of a foreign country, leading to his first impeachment (I’d say allegedly, but I’ve read the transcript)
implemented the Warp Speed program to develop a COVID19 vaccine (another good thing!)
totally failed to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control. It’s been estimated that due to his policies, or lack there of, hundreds of thousands of US citizens died
by refusing to acknowledge that he lost a free and fair election (to this day), has done a huge disservice to our democratic republic.
This Business Insider article also lists the economy as one of Trump’s failures, but nobody has ever completely shut down an economy and re-started it before, so, to me, it’s unclear that we can lay that failure at his feet.
By creating a SCOTUS with a 6-3 “conservative” bias Trump assured that Roe V Wade would be overturned.
So what’s so great about Trump? Beats me!
To be fair, let’s look at what the Biden administration has accomplished/failed at in the last three years or so:
Comprehensive Immigration reform is elusive. There are two connected issues that need to be resolved, border security and immigration reform.
A couple of weeks ago Biden supported a bi-partisan bill that would have been a good start to resolving both issues. The GOP seemed ready to vote for it until the current leading GOP candidate for President came out against it.
Apparently Trump doesn’t want the border fixed on Biden’s watch.Thanks to continued support for the ACA (Obamacare) about 95% of citizens now have healthcare, up from 80.2% at the end of the George W. Bush administration and 88.3% at the end of the Trump administration.
Wages are increasing faster than inflation.
After a peak in June of 2023 due largely to after-effects of the COVID pandemic, the Consumer Price Index is trending down.
Investment it zero-carbon and renewable energy is rising quickly, but not quickly enough to meet the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Under Biden renewable power is now the second largest source of power, and climbing, in the US.
After a slight dip in 2022, due to the COVID pandemic, family net worth is again on the rise.
Low income worker’s income is rising faster than the income of those who are better off. I.e. wage inequality is narrowing.
Stock prices are on the rise.
Violent crime is way down, no matter what GOP politicians tell you.
The American Rescue Plan provided stimulus to millions of families (including mine and probably yours) to help keep them afloat during the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.
The Inflation Reduction Act is putting tens of thousands of people to work re-building America’s infrastructure, even in districts and states of Republicans who voted against it.
Biden has eliminated or reduced the staggering burden of education loans for millions. Many of these loans were taken out to attend predatory for-profit schools that made deceiving promises of employability and wages to lure unsuspecting students.
There’s lots more.
So, as often happens, this didn’t turn out to be the article I started to write, so I’m making it Part 1. See you next week
From azquotes.com
Random Biden Quote:
Make sure of two things. Be careful - microphones are always hot, and understand that in Washington, D.C., a gaffe is when you tell the truth. So, be careful.
Random Trump Quote:
The beauty of me is that I'm very rich.
Both quotes are problematic, but one is a lot more self-absorbed than the other. Which of these do you think deserves to be President?
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For instance, eliminate the (2-24) cutoff of contributions to Social Security at $168,000. Yes, that’s the max base for calculating benefits, but it seems to me folks making more than that can afford to continue to contribute to the program to help keep it afloat for the rest of us.
I put “conservative” in quotes because apparently these days that term refers to (mostly) White Christian Nationals, Clarence Thomas being one of the notable exceptions.
I kind of wish we could back to the days when conservatives were in favor of low taxes, small government and a large military. The days when William F. Buckley Jr. said in the Mission Statement of the National Review, “[The National Review] stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
Mr. Buckley wrote this on November 18, 1955. I was six, and not yet much of a political junkie, being much more interested in the acquisition and consumption of candy.
But as I got older, and started becoming more an more irritated with Mr. Buckley and his brethren standing athwart liberal efforts to improve the lot of the people of the US. Even so, I wish he was still around to call the folks who call themselves “conservatives” these days on their hypocrisy.
Or, maybe he’d cheer them on. I never got a handle on that guy.