Renewable Revolution

Jon Schwarz

2017-01-21T14:26:59+00:00

SNIPPET:

But while nothing is certain, some alarming things are more likely than others. The path the new administration hopes to take may be discernible in a 2016 report by the conservative Heritage Foundation. According to The Hill on Thursday, Trump transition staffers – including a vice president at Heritage’s grassroots arm Action for America – are using the Heritage document as the basis for Trump’s first proposed budget.

The Trump transition staff did not respond to questions about whether they are in fact doing this, and understandably so — the Heritage plan treats social spending like Lizzie Borden treated her parents, axing $10.5 trillion, or 20 percent, from the $51.4 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office projects the federal government would otherwise spend over the next ten years.

“Unprecedented” is simultaneously accurate and insufficient to describe the Heritage cuts. As Joel Friedman, vice president for federal fiscal policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, puts it: “No administration up to this point has ever bought into proposals this far-reaching. Even the George W. Bush administration was never proposing cuts of anywhere near this magnitude.”


As seen above, $6.8 trillion in cuts – or 65 percent of the total — would be extracted from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other non-discretionary spending, including all of the Affordable Care Act.

In addition to sharply reducing Social Security and Medicare benefits for most people, the Heritage plan would raise the programs’ eligibility ages and then index them to longevity – thereby enshrining in law the concept that no matter how wealthy the U.S. becomes, regular people will never be permitted to work fewer years at the end of their lives.

Heritage does not provide details about how exactly Medicaid and other mandatory spending would be whacked, but the cuts would be even heavier. While most Americans don’t know this until they need it, 65 percent of the elderly in nursing homes depend on Medicaid to pay their bills, and the program covers 45 percent of the country’s spending on nursing home care overall. Non-Medicaid mandatory spending includes income security for veterans, food stamps, and unemployment benefits.

Non-defense discretionary spending would also be eviscerated. Heritage would slice expenditures on clean energy, environmental programs, and veterans’ health, as well as funding for the Departments of Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and State. The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be totally eliminated.

While all this is happening, one part of the government would see its budget protected and even increased: the Pentagon.

But wait, there’s more: The Heritage plan gets more draconian as time goes by, so these numbers actually understate the size of spending cuts in the long term. The graph below shows by percentage how much each area of government would be reduced in Heritage’s 2026 budget in comparison to the CBO’s current projection for 2026. For instance, spending on non-defense discretionary spending would be cut almost in half.



full article:

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/21/anything-at-all-can-happen-in-the-age-of-trump/

Agelbert NOTE: The author of the above article seems to think that Trump is different from Pence in that Pseudo-Christian Pence certainly would carry out all the murderous budget cuts, while Trump might not.

I believe that is wishful thinking. Trump, if anything, will attempt even more draconian empathy deficit disordered budget cuts in order to further enrich his plutocratic pals at the expense of we-the-people. Mark my words. Trump is pure poison for we-the-people.

The sad fact is that the US Government is now fully fascist and will proceed to ignore every clean air, soil and water regulation on behalf of the fossil fuel industry and other polluters from the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

Also, the entire social contract that has been laboriously built up by people of good will since the time of FDR up to and including civil rights gains for people of color and healthcare for all Americans during the LBJ Administration will be deliberately and methodically destroyed piece by piece.

Every step in the dismembering of the social contract that will cause the unnecessary misery and the death of millions of Americans will be given an Orwellian label. For example, the Ryan plan to DEFUND the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare) is cynically called a "rescue", when in fact it is a death sentence. This nihilistic cynicism is part and parcel of the fascist regressive modus operandi now only slightly less prevalent in the Democratic Party wing of the duopoly as in the Republican in-your-face fascist wing.

More wealth transfer from the poor and middle class of all colors to the rich is what the Trump Administration is all about, as well as more pollution, more sickness, and more rampant racist brutality.

The defunding of the ACA immediately hands out an average of 7 million dollars in tax cuts (EACH!) to the 400 most wealthy families in America. The only reason the ACA was bad mouthed and demonized as "Obamacare" for the past seven years by the internet noise machine and the bought and paid for news media is because all those families that make over $250,000 a year did not like funding this program, even though it was a poor substitute for what every other industrialized country in the west has for their own citizens.

For those who labor under the belief that Trump isn't as "radical" as Pence in wanting to destroy the safety net of we-the-people, all you have to do is study Trump's choice for OMB (i.e. BUDGETS!).
 
Donald’s Budget Chief Nominee GOP Congressman Mick Mulvaney—He’s a Political/Economic “House of Cards” 

Mulvaney pressed for slashing federal spending more deeply than House GOP leaders wanted. During the Obama administration, Mulvaney took a super-hard line on spending. In 2011, he vowed not to raise the nation’s debt limit. Not raising the debt limit to pay debts already owed would have caused domestic and international economic collapse. Mulvaney could have cared less. He labeled himself part of the “Shutdown Caucus” because he was willing to shut down the government rather than raise the debt ceiling. 

Mulvaney was one of several dozen House GOPers who refused to back the final deal to raise the statutory debt limit (NY Times, Shear, 12/16/16).  Mulvaney voted against passing the 2013 fiscal cliff agreement. Failure to enact this deal would have increased taxes on the middle class and denied unemployment benefits to millions (Wash. Post U.S. Cong. Votes Database).

Mulvaney objected because there were not enough spending cuts, and taxes were allowed to rise on families making over $450,000 (NY Times, Weisman, 1/03/13, McClatchy Newspapers, J. Rosen, 1/12/13).

Mulvaney, who comes from a state often hit by hurricanes, voted against aid for Northeastern Hurricane Sandy victims because this relief didn’t include “corresponding budget cuts.” This condition  had never been attached to prior disaster relief bills (See “Politico,” Everett & Sherman, 1/10/13, “Politico,” Rogers, 1/15/13).

At the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Mulvaney would guide Trump in repealing Obamacare. He would help Trump overhaul taxes and work on an infrastructure plan, which in Trump’s hands, appears to be more of a giveaway to his 1% rich friends than a middle class stimulus.

Mulvaney would also manage the White House’s annual proposed budget program and policies. He would be in charge of government purchases of goods and services, and oversee the review of government agencies and federal employees (NYTimes, Shear, 12/16/16, CNN, Diaz & Acosta, 12/17/16).

In introducing Mulvaney as his OMB pick, Trump stated, “We are going to do great things for the American people with Mick Mulvaney leading the Office of Management and Budget.” Trump called Mulvaney a “high- energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink  (CNN, Diaz & Acosta, 12/17/16).” Translation: Trump and Mulvaney will cut middle class programs to the bone, but help the super-rich.

Mulvaney at OMB will also cut science research. In a now deleted (though cached) Facebook page, Mulvaney wrote, “Do we really need government-funded research at all (Levy, “Mother Jones”)?  Mulvaney recently spoke to the original tinfoil hat John Birch Society. He argued against all scientific knowledge that the Zika virus does not cause birth defects (Kos, Sumner, 12/19/16).  Hey, why fund science at all?

He endorsed Donald a few hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan jumped on the Trump bandwagon in 6/2016. At a candidate’s forum in Gaffney, S. Carolina, Mulvaney stated that Trump could “advance the Republican agenda.” 

Mulvaney talked of Trump having “possible common ground with him on entitlements,” read, cutting Social Security and Medicare (CNN, Diaz & Acosta). Scam artist Trump and his political/economic “House of Cards” OMB nominee Mulvaney are nothing more than selfish radical budget cutters. Again, the only people getting more money in a Trump administration will be the super-rich.

Plutocratic greed is destroying America. This will end VERY badly.

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." — Dwight D. Eisenhower