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Trump Promises To ‘Look At’ Social Security And Medicare Cuts

Donald Trump ran on an absolute promise not to cut entitlement and social safety net programs. On Wednesday, he said he hopes to do just that — and soon.

Asked by CNBC if entitlement cuts were something he would consider, Trump said he would “toward the end of the year.”

“At the right time we will take a look at that,” he said. “You know that’s actually the easiest all things, if you look, because it’s such a low percentage.”

Mandatory programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security actually make up about half of the federal government’s spending each year.

Trump also dismissed concerns that he would follow through on past promises not to cut Medicare and other mandatory spending programs, claiming the economy under his administration was the world’s “hottest.”

“We also have assets that we never had. I mean we never had growth like that. We never had a consumer that was taking in through different means over $10,000 per family,” he claimed. “African American, Asian American, Hispanics are doing so incredibly. Best they’ve ever done. Black, best they’ve ever done. African American, the numbers are incredible.”

Trump’s has repeatedly promised not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, never once conditioning that promise on a good economy.

In 2011, Trump tweeted that a “robust growing economy is how to fix Social Security and Medicare—not cuts on Seniors.”

Throughout his 2016 campaign, he used it to differentiate himself from the rest of his party and even Democrats.

“Every Republican wants to do a big number of Social Security. They want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid,” Trump said in an April 2015 speech, not long before launching his White House bid. “And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years.”

In May 2015, he once again claimed, “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”

And days later, he told the conservative Daily Signal, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”

“Every other Republican is 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,” he said.That June, upon launching his campaign, Trump boasted that he could save those programs — with no cuts — by getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.

“The Republicans who want to cut SS & Medicaid are wrong. A robust economy will Make America Great Again!” he tweeted in July that year.

Days before the 2016 election, Trump once again claimed that “Hillary Clinton is going to destroy your Social Security and Medicare. I am going to protect and save your Social Security and your Medicare.” Again, in December 2017, Trump’s then-legislative affairs director Marc Short reaffirmed that the campaign promise not to cut Medicare would be honored, though he embraced cuts to Medicaid to “protect the program.”

As recently as October 2018, Trump claimed that he alone could defend Medicare from attacks, tweeting, “Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!” he said.

In addition to contradicting his past promises, Trump’s suggestion now, that the robust economy makes it easier to cut entitlements, also makes little sense.

While Medicaid provides healthcare to poorer Americans, Medicare and Social Security provide health and retirement income for older Americans of all economic levels.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Iran War Would Blow An Enormous New Hole In Trump’s Budget

Reprinted with permission from DCReport

How much would Trump’s unnecessary war with Iran cost us?

Hardly anyone ever asks that about wars, unlike the costs of social programs. So let’s look at how much money our government needs to fight an unnecessary and likely counterproductive war with Iran.

Let’s look into first the likely costs. Then we will see where Trump and the Republicans think they can get the masses of money needed to prosecute another gratuitous Middle East war.

The government’s purse is short of tax dollars these days after the Trump/Radical Republican tax cuts and spending rise. A new House Budget Committee report documents 50 percent growth in the budget deficit since Trump took office.

When today’s newborns are in their 80s they will still be paying the costs of Trump’s folly.

Spending is growing so much faster than tax revenue that Trump & Co. has forced us into trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future.

Before Ronald Reagan, I remember, Republicans called themselves the party of fiscal responsibility. As they did back in the Reagan years, Republicans today cut taxes on the wealthy and stick the rest of us with the bill, either through stealth tax increases like Trump’s tariffs or by simply putting government operations on the federal credit card for you and your great-great-grandchildren to pay off.

No Tax Cut for You

Wait. You thought you got a tax cut from Trump? Silly you.

You gave Steve Mnuchin, Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross and the other cabinet officer billionaires, as well as fake billionaire Trump, fat tax hikes. You may have gotten a small reduction in your income tax bill since 2018, but it is a mess of pottage next to the trillions in added debt Uncle Sam will incur under the borrow-and-spend Radical Republican/Trump tax cut.

In a few years, just the interest on the new debt will exceed what you may have thought was your income tax savings.

Keep in mind that wars incur both immediate costs as well as future obligations. When today’s newborns are in their 80s they will still be paying the costs of Trump’s folly.

This assumes, of course, that we go to war with Iran, and that Trump does so without what our Constitution requires. A declaration of war by Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, is mandatory.

One cost we can’t estimate is how many of your sons and daughters or grandchildren will die for Trump’s vanity. Maybe we should pray that the fiercely pro-life Vice President Mike Pence will speak up about slaughtering our young to serve Trump’s vanity. No, not going to happen. Pence and his crowd only speak up for the unborn. Pence has already made clear he is all-in for Trump’s war.

Candidate Trump said he would get us out of the Middle East. Instead, he has about the same number of troops there now as his predecessor Barack Obama did three years into his first term. Trump just ordered about 3,500 more Marines there.

$1 Million Per Soldier

More than a decade ago the Obama White House began using $1 million per soldier as its rule of thumb measure for Middle East war costs. That’s 15 times the inflation-adjusted annual cost of $67,000 to maintaining a battlefield soldier in World War II.

Costs are higher now not just because of inflation, but also continued advances in expensive weaponry, reliance on contractors and medical care for battlefield wounds.

The new Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier cost more than $13 billion–before counting its armada of support surface ships and submarines. That whole flotilla can be taken out with a single nuclear missile.

Figure the cost of those newly deployed Marines at about $1.5 million each over the next 12 months, a total of $5.2 billion.

That’s enough money to fund the National Endowment for the Arts for the next three decades; or increase aid to public schools by 30 percent; or increase the EPA budget by 60 percent; or more than double federal spending on renewable energy and energy efficiency; or provide Medicaid for 1.4 million poor Americans.

But the real cost of a war with Iran is likely to be way more than $5.2 billion.

Lowballing the Costs

The George W. Bush administration estimated the cost of the Iraq war at no more than $60 billion, while actual costs will be 50 times that much, according to a 2008 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and economist Linda Bilmes.

The ultimate cost of America’s Middle East wars will be around $4.6 trillion, Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimated two years ago. That’s before tacking on the costs of a war against Iran.

Just medical care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans approaches $1 trillion, one study estimated from official government data. The study understated the real costs because it excludes caring for veterans who live past age 67 when they can go onto Medicare.

High medical costs are a result of a huge shift in the share of battlefield casualties that are fatal.

Modern medicine keeps alive many soldiers who would have died in World War II or Vietnam, but often with a need for intensive medical care for life. In addition, survivors collect disability income checks, which frankly are much too modest for the pain and lost opportunities that surviving soldiers endured. (Disclosure: My dad was a disabled WWII vet.)

Not Easy

Invading Iraq was a piece of cake compared with taking on Iran, which has a much larger, better trained and better-motivated military. Occupying Iran would make our 17-year occupation of Iraq seem easy because the Iranian people are not eager to oust their leaders, however much we dislike them. Many Iranians still harbor resentment from our imposing a shah on them in 1954. Our FBI helped the shah create his murderous secret police, the Savak, in 1957.

Iraq, by the way, may throw us out because we assassinated top General Qassim Suleimani of the elite Iranian Quds Force.

And to think that not that long ago Iraq and Iran were engaged in a long war that killed millions on both sides. Oh, how America has changed the Middle East—and not to the better from an American perspective.

Expect that if the Trump administration ever speaks of costs that it will lowball the numbers. Expect that the cult-like Republican response will be that whatever Supreme Leader and Chosen One Donald Trump wants is not only good, but beyond questioning.

And where will Team Trump get the money to prosecute a war that Congress surely will not declare? From the Forgotten Man.

Ordinary Americans, who Trump courted and at his inauguration called the Forgotten Man, will pay the price. Sacrifice will be necessary, and you can be sure it won’t be sacrifice by those enjoying the increased federal subsidies for personal jets that Trump and the Republicans voted in as part of their so-called tax cuts.

What to Expect

How will the Forgotten Man and Woman be forced to sacrifice? Here are a few predictable examples:

  • Recipients of food stamps, now called SNAP benefits, will be targeted. New cuts will ensure that children, the disabled and the elderly go hungry so Trump can wage war on Tehran.
  • People who breathe the air and drink the water downwind and downstream from electric power plants, petrochemical plants and other polluting companies as more cuts are made in enforcing environmental laws.
  • Students who will get less aid, resulting in a less well-educated America in the decades ahead. That in turn will mean slower economic growth than the lackluster performance under Trump so far.
  • Soldiers and sailors will have to fight for medical care that the Trump administration will do all it can to argue is not needed. In this, at least, Trump is only worse than the similar antagonism of previous administrations of both parties in keeping promises to the war wounded.
  • Fees will go up, freeing up tax dollars. Team Trump may even revive the Reagan era practice of calling adjustments that raises taxes and shifts costs onto feepayers as “revenue enhancements” rather than tax increases.
  • The unborn will pay too. Because absent a major change in policy, the interest on the national debt, now at $23.2 trillion, will just keep rising. When today’s toddlers are wrinkled and grey they will pay the price for Trump’s folly.

And all this assumes Trump can contain the dogs of war after he unleashes them, and that we won’t end up in World War III.

Danziger: A Fistful Of Billions

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

Obeying Fox Pundits, Trump May Declare ‘National Emergency’ To Build Wall

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

President Donald Trump is inching toward declaring a national emergency to secure funding for his long-sought wall on the southern border, repeatedly telling reporters late last week that he may take that step if Congress does not reach a border security compromise he approves of before government funding expires on February 15. If Trump does declare a national emergency, he will be prioritizing the advice of his trusted propagandists at Fox News, who have been urging him to do so for the last month, over the counsel of Republican legislators who have been warning him away from the tactic.

A national emergency declaration would be the strongest sign yet that the conservative propagandists at Fox are effectively running the federal government. Their programs and private counsel are fueling Trump’s decisions, raising dire questions about the nation’s governance and stability.

The feedback loop between Trump and Fox played a key role in causing the partial government shutdown that lasted for a record 35 days between December 21 and January 25, as I noted Sunday in a piece for The Daily Beast:

Trump’s incessant craving for validation from the network’s conservative commentators triggered his initial refusal to sign any legislation funding the government that did not include money for a border wall, and then that need sustained his intransigence over the following weeks. His eventual cave shows the limitations of prioritizing the whims of right-wing infotainers during congressional negotiations. But there is no evidence Trump has learned anything from the crushing defeat, suggesting that he will continue trying to make policy with respect to the wall and other issues, on the basis of whether it pleases Fox hosts.

Trump first suggested in early January that he might declare a national emergency and reallocate funding appropriated for other purposes, such as military construction or disaster relief, to build the wall. Ever since, some congressional Republicans have objected on the grounds that the executive branch would be seizing legislative power, that the move could set a new precedent for when Democrats win the White House, that it would trigger a long legal struggle, or that it could be stymied by a congressional resolution disapproving the declaration.

For a few weeks, those Republicans were successful, and the president backed down.

But Trump is being pulled between them and the Fox advisers begging him to go through with it.

For much of his presidency, Trump has devoted hours of each day to watching cable news programs, frequently live-tweeted his favorite Fox shows, and treated the network’s stars like members of his cabinet. Now he is poised to take their advice and declare a national emergency.

Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Fox hosts whom the president reportedly leaned on for advice about how to manage the shutdown, seem to have played key roles in this drama. The pair of loyal propagandists, who each championed Trump’s shutdown, had very different reactions when Trump agreed to sign a three-week continuing resolution without wall funding. Hannity claimed that anyone “thinking President Trump caved today, you don’t really know the Donald Trump I know,” while Dobbs said it was a “victory for Nancy Pelosi” and anyone saying otherwise is “try[ing] to escape from reality.” But in the weeks before and after Trump’s decision, both used their programs to urge Trump to declare a national emergency, exhorting their audiences to support him if he did.

Hannity, who regularly speaks with Trump and has been described by White House aides as the administration’s “shadow” chief of staff, said on his January 7 show, “Without a doubt, this is a national emergency. It’s time to build the wall.” The next night he argued, “This is a national emergency. The situation is now dire. And whether or not we secure our border, it does have real life or death consequences.” He added on his January 9 broadcast that Trump had “the full authority and power to declare a national emergency and tackle this head on,” adding, “This is about protecting our homeland.”

During an often incoherent January 10 softball interview with Hannity, Trump said he “most likely” would declare a national emergency if he “can’t make a deal with Congress.” He also said he had watched Hannity’s show the previous night and praised him for producing “real news,” not “fake news.”

Since then, Hannity has called for Trump to declare an emergency to secure wall funding on his January 11, January 15, January 16, January 23, January 24, January 25, January 28, January 29, January 30, and January 31 programs. “Now, the president holds all the cards. He gets no deal, February 15th, I’ll give you odds,” Hannity argued on Wednesday night. “I’m 99 percent certain that he will lawfully declare a national emergency or just send down the military and start building the wall with defense funds.”

Dobbs’ commentary has been even more over-the-top, with the Fox Business host using explicitly authoritarian language in urging Trump to seize more power and crush his enemies.

“This is the president of the United States,” Dobbs said January 9. “He says a wall should be built; that it’s a national emergency. At that point, the nation should rally behind him, Democrats as well as Republicans.”

“I really believe,” he added the next night, “that the way forward here is for [Trump] to declare a national emergency and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country. They have — they have obstructed, resisted, and subverted for far too long.”

The drumbeat has continued, with Dobbs pushing for a national emergency declaration on January 11, January 14, January 15, January 23, January 24, January 25, January 28, January 29, January 30, January 31, and February 1. “There is only one way forward and that is an honest straightforward declaration of a national emergency, because that’s where we are,” Dobbs said on one such broadcast. “This president has no choice but to act, and act I am confident he will.”

Other Fox News hosts and personalities have called for the president to declare a national emergency on the network’s airwaves, including longtime Trump friend and confidante Jeanine Pirro and Fox & Friends’ Pete Hegseth and Steve Doocy.

There were some moments of dissent on the network, even on the president’s favored programs. Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade argued that the strategy is flawed because the courts have repeatedly “turned on the president,” while Fox senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano flatly warned the program’s audience that declaring a national emergency to get funding for his wall would be unconstitutional. But those moments were rare, and they were quickly washed away with more b-roll of border chaos and warnings about violent undocumented criminals.

This same battle for the president’s ear between congressional Republicans and Fox hosts eventually ended with December’s partial government shutdown. Several times last year, spending bills that the White House and Congress had agreed to were nearly torpedoed at the last minute when the president heard someone on his television saying that he should oppose the bills and even shut down the government over them because they lacked wall funding. For a while, Republican leaders were able to talk him out of it, until eventually they couldn’t.

Now it’s happening again.

Header image by Melissa Joskow / Media Matters