President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

No, they're terrorist rebels. The ones who are really doing shit with chemical weapons. And we support them. Because that's, well, what we do.

US Now Admits Syrian "Rebels" Have Used Chemical Weapons

 

From the WaPo's Daily 202 today:


The bill authorizes the U.S. government to spend about $500 billion more over the next two years and suspends the debt ceiling until 2019. Most of the additional spending is not offset with cuts elsewhere, which means that the $20 trillion national debt will grow significantly. Sixty percent of the new money goes to the military; the rest goes to domestic programs.

This is the largest increase in federal spending since the stimulus passed during the depths of the Great Recession. Republicans almost universally opposed that bill in 2009, which cost $787 billion over 10 years, on the grounds that it would increase the debt too much. The only difference between now and then is that the economy is firing on all cylinders and doesn’t need stimulus.

Rand doesn’t have a totally clean nose here. He voted in December for the tax bill that will grow the debt by more than $1 trillion over the next decade – and probably more. His pushback is that overhauling the code will generate economic growth to offset the lost revenue.

Because Republicans slashed taxes and are now jacking up spending, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget forecasts that this bill will ensure permanent trillion-dollar deficits. The projected deficit in 2019 is now $1.1 trillion, compared to $439 billion in 2015. (Don’t forget, Trump called for an additional $1.5 trillion infrastructure package during his State of the Union.)

 

I could just easily have said "federal programs which have already exacted their pound of flesh/extorted from me/strongarmed me and my loved ones against our will" and the upshot would be the same.

I've paid some amount of money into these federal insurance programs.

The return of at least some of that money - in some form, to me and to my neighbors - is a reasonable expectation.

"Entitlement program" is on par with "death tax" as a conservative repurposing of language..

 

They're not insurance programs. They never have been. No money will be "returned" to us. Somebody else ... a lot of somebody elses, in fact ... will be, as you say, strong-armed into forking over some of their earnings to us.

 

Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings

--Trump doesn't get briefings every day
--Won't review written material
--Often takes up most of the briefing by leading meandering conversations

 

You all must have missed this story.

 

Why the assumption that “entitlement spending needs to be addressed” is the same as saying the programs need to be eliminated? You’re not tap or TV, you’re smarter than that.

 

Social Security and Medicare are social insurance programs. They work the way insurance companies work, minus the profits. Everybody pays premiums and not everybody is in the payment pool. Objecting to that is like saying you don't need a flu shot because you never get sick.

 

Or cranberry.

 

They're gonna have to reprint all the brochures, then. Oh well.