Republicans don’t care about budget deficits, and never did. They only pretend to care about deficits when one of two things is true: a Democrat is in the White House, and deficit rhetoric can be used to block his agenda, or they see an opportunity to slash social programs that help needy Americans, and can invoke deficits as an excuse. All of this has been obvious for years to anyone paying attention.
.. And it was also predictable that they would return to deficit posturing as soon as the deed was done, citing the red ink they themselves produced as a reason to cut social spending.
.. Hatch declared his support for the program, but insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore” — just before voting for a trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent of the population.
He then went on to say, “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”
.. The House version of the big tax cut would eliminate the estate tax entirely; the Senate version would double the level of wealth exempted from the tax, to $22.4 million for a couple. How can this be justified if it’s supposedly hard to find money for children’s health care?
.. The important thing to realize, however, is that the hypocrisy and contempt for the public we’ve seen in the past few days is just the beginning.
.. offsetting those deficits will require going after the true big-ticket programs, namely Medicare and Social Security.
.. Republicans have given their donors what they wanted — and now they’re coming for your benefits.
No Wonder Millennials Hate Capitalism
The anti-Communist Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was alarmed to find in a recent survey that 44 percent of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country, compared with 42 percent who want to live under capitalism.
.. But given the increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy, it’s not surprising that for many young people, capitalism looks like the god that failed.
.. the rich people who would benefit from the measures passed by the House and the Senate tend to be older (and whiter) than the population at large.
Younger people would foot the bill, either through higher taxes, diminished public services or both. They stand to inherit an even more stratified society than the one they were born into.
.. there’s also an ideology at work, one that sees the rich as more productive and deserving than others... consider what Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register about the need to repeal the estate tax, which falls only on heirs of multimillionaires and billionaires. “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” he said... Senator Orrin Hatch .. He went on to rant against the poor: “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves — won’t lift a finger — and expect the federal government to do everything.” It was unclear whether he was talking about the nearly nine million children covered through CHIP or their parents... You don’t have to want to abolish capitalism to understand why the prospect is tempting to a generation that’s being robbed.
Everyone Wants to Reduce Drug Prices. So Why Can’t We Do It?
The pharmaceutical and health products industries spent $145 million on lobbying for the first half of 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Drug makers gave $4.5 million to congressional campaigns in that period, including six-figure donations to House Speaker Paul Ryan; Representative Greg Walden, a Republican of Oregon who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee; and Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Kaiser Health News analysis found.
The drug lobby has spent $28 million so far this year to air six ads depicting heroic researchers about 4,600 times on national TV, according to iSpot.tv, an ad tracker.
The industry hired the former F.B.I. director Louis Freeh to study the impact of importation. He concluded that it would “leave the safety of the U.S. prescription drug supply vulnerable to criminals seeking to harm patients.” Import proponents argue the Food and Drug Administration could easily ensure safety by licensing and inspecting Canadian suppliers.
.. Mr. Trump’s feud with congressional Republicans, especially the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, means “you’re not going to get any strong direction or leadership out of the White House” on drug prices
Trump Faces Deal-Making Challenges as Congress Returns
“Legislatively, September may be the longest month of the year, with several must pass items that face an uphill climb,” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican strategist. The president’s decision to push the immigrant program to Congress “only makes that harder, on an issue that for years Republicans have struggled to make any headway on. The question is whether this was a strategic decision by the White House.”
His self-proclaimed deal-making skills could also be put to the test in foreign policy as he decides how to respond to North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling while separately seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And he may alienate America’s traditional European allies if he tries to scuttle Mr. Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran by declaring Tehran out of compliance over their objections.
.. As he pressures North Korea to curb its nuclear program, he has belittled South Korea for “appeasement” and threatened to tear up its trade deal with the United States. As he lobbies lawmakers to back his legislative priorities, he has castigated Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and other Republicans crucial to passage.
.. Mr. Trump’s allies argue that he had a better summer than the Washington conventional wisdom would suggest and that he has a path forward. They contend that after the fights of early August, the president took on the mantle of a national leader with a vigorous and visible response to Hurricane Harvey, and that cleaning up the devastation may prove both a rallying point and a strategic leverage.
.. “It may sound counterintuitive, but the president heads into September with a bit of wind at his back,” said Michael Dubke, who served as his White House communications director. “Harvey was handled well, tax reform is back on track, the debt ceiling showdown will be pushed to a later date and while there are no good choices in North Korea, the president’s national security team is second to none.”
.. It’s not a mistake to disagree when you disagree; it is a mistake to suggest that somehow this president, who was elected just as the Constitution prescribed, and has the responsibility to lead the country, that somehow we need to not work with this president.”
.. On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump will host a group that has been dubbed the Big Six to discuss his tax overhaul —
- Mr. McConnell;
- House Speaker Paul D. Ryan;
- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin;
- Gary D. Cohn, the president’s national economics adviser;and
- Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and
- Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the Republican chairmen of the tax-writing committees.
.. Allies said Mr. Trump’s approach to negotiations, however, is to hold out for the best deal possible until the last moment, so it is too soon to judge.
.. “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” he once wrote. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”
.. But those who have studied his career in real estate and business said that it has been marked by as many failed deals as successful ones.
- He bought an airline that failed.
- He bought a football team in a league that collapsed.
- He filed for bankruptcy protection multiple times.
“If you look at his record, there are a lot of deals that didn’t work out,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer. “So if you think about the true record of performance, he is very good at promotion and creating the idea that he is a deal maker, but not very good at making actual successful deals.”
.. some Democrats argue that Mr. Trump’s very weakness may yet prove to be a boon. Since legislating entirely with fellow Republicans has yet to yield the results Mr. Trump had hoped, he may have more incentive to work with Democrats on areas where they could find agreement, particularly
- infrastructure and the
- tax code.
Democrats would also like to work on legislation stabilizing the Obama health care markets.