TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE
RICH…. and his parasitic family!
Report:
Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit
After He's Gone
"Trump's alleged comment is
maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this
reminder of the scope of
the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about
it."
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
Trump to Pelosi: I’ll Help GOP Governors If You Cut
Taxes on Rich
Photo: Doug Mills/Pool via Bloomberg/Getty
Images
More than 36 million
Americans have lost their jobs since March. Unemployment in the
United States is now (almost certainly) above 20 percent. The Republican chairman of the Federal Reserve says that further
stimulus spending is required to avert “long-term economic damage” and hasten the onset of recovery. Across the country, GOP
governors are calling on Congress to approve (at least) $500 billion in fiscal aid to states, warning that in the absence of such support, they will be forced
to make draconian cutbacks to public investment and employment, thereby
deepening the recession. All historical evidence suggests that
if the economy is not rebounding strongly by Election Day, undecided voters
will swing against the incumbent president and his party.
Yet Donald Trump and
the congressional GOP have apparently convinced themselves that enacting any further stimulus
somehow qualifies as a gift to Democrats, and including aid to states in such a
stimulus would constitute an act of historic generosity. Or at least the White
House believes that it can convince Nancy Pelosi to believe such absurdities.
Last week, the Trump
administration announced that it had no interest in passing another coronavirus
relief package this month. After all, Congress
had already pumped roughly $3 trillion into the coffers of corporations, small
businesses, and households, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow reasoned.
And now that states were beginning to reopen their economies, it wasn’t clear
that any further federal largesse would be needed.
It’s hard to say
whether this argument was offered in earnest, or merely as a negotiating
tactic. Either way, it is indicative of the GOP’s ideological delusions. All
available evidence — both domestic and international — suggests that you cannot restore economic normality in the
middle of an uncontained pandemic by revoking formal shutdown orders. As long
as people know that eating in a restaurant means accepting a heightened risk of
contracting a deadly virus, demand for dining out will remain at a fraction of
what it was four months ago.
In case you were
wondering how the reopening is going down south. pic.twitter.com/xneL4Pelci
The same can be said
for air travel, retail shopping, and a whole host of other consumer goods and
services. And fewer flights and commuters means tepid demand for the fossil
fuels that power the economies of red petro-states. Meanwhile, even when the public-health threat posed by the
coronavirus is fully eliminated, Americans are unlikely to resume their old
consumption patterns — both because the trauma of the present economic shock is
all-but certain to increase savings rates, and because many households and
firms will need to devote a higher share of income to their accumulated private
debts (assuming the federal government does not step in and enact a debt
jubilee). The private sector is not going to heal itself, and the longer
congressional Republicans delay in dispensing further aid, the less likely a
preelection recovery becomes. Even as a tactical pretense, the GOP’s stalling
on new stimulus is indicative of either self-delusion or a privileging of
conservative orthodoxy over political self-interest (which arguably amounts to
the same thing).
Regardless, now that
last week’s (bizarre) market rally has begun to
fade, Republicans seem ready to concede the necessity of congressional action.
But the White House still doesn’t seem to understand that, electorally, it
needs stimulus much more than Democrats do. In fact, according to a new report
from the Washington Post, the president
believes that he is in a position to offer Nancy Pelosi a tiny fraction of her
desired fiscal aid to states — a policy objective endorsed by just about every
GOP governor in the country — in exchange for regressive tax cuts and liability
reforms that just about every Democrat in Congress opposes:
White House officials have privately signaled that they are
willing to provide tens of billions of dollars in relief to states as part of a
bipartisan deal with Democrats in the coming weeks, despite President Trump’s
reluctance and strong opposition from conservative groups, according to seven
people familiar with the internal deliberations who were granted anonymity to
discuss the matter.
Although that position is likely to anger some Republicans, who
have warned that Democrats want “blue state bailouts,” many White House
officials now believe that providing new funding to states to deal with
challenges related to the coronavirus will be necessary if they want to secure
their own priorities, such as tax breaks and liability protections for businesses, the people said …
Two White House officials said they have made it clear to
business leaders and conservative allies in recent days that Trump is “not
willing to provide a blank check” to states, but is “open” to negotiating
whether he can win concessions from Democrats on taxes in exchange for an
influx of cash — and they have told conservative leaders that they will make
sure any new cash is directed only toward problems sparked by the pandemic. An
unveiling of the White House’s tax proposals is expected in the coming days.
House
Democrats’ latest coronavirus relief bill allocates nearly $1 trillion in fiscal aid to states and cities.
As already mentioned, Republican governors have suggested that at least $500
billion in such aid is warranted. It’s insane that “not forcing states to slash
jobs and public services in the middle of a historic economic crisis for
literally no reason” is considered an exclusively Democratic objective. But
even if it made sense to describe aid to states as a concession to liberals,
offering them “tens of billions” in many-strings-attached funding would be a joke.
By contrast, the concessions the White House is demanding — a capital gains tax
cut for the Americans least harmed by the present crisis, and legal immunity for employers who operate unsafe workplaces — are not only wholly partisan demands, but ones
exceptionally distasteful to the Democratic Party’s left wing. Trump’s proposal
is analogous to Pelosi offering to support a small increase in aid to small
businesses in exchange for a federal repeal of right-to-work laws and a pathway
to citizenship for the undocumented.
In my view, Democrats
should be prepared to make some distasteful concessions to Trump
if doing so allows them to secure $1 trillion in unconditional aid to states,
the indefinite extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, hazard pay for
front-line workers, monthly cash support for households, and other measures
that would dramatically soften the economic blows that are coming. But
Democrats can’t let the GOP’s delusions become contagious. Pelosi must
understand that her party has all the leverage here. If Congress does nothing —
and enhanced unemployment benefits expire in July, while state governments
liquidate their rainy-day funds — millions of ordinary Americans will suffer;
but so will Donald Trump’s campaign. Politically, Democrats don’t need any kind of deal, let alone
a wildly unbalanced one. If the president would rather seek reelection in a
historic depression than make workers and cities whole, Pelosi should grant him
that concession.
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