THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

[Jimbone]

They're all full of shit.

[Carsman]

When you look up "full of shit" in the dictionary it says: politician

[HairOfTheDog]

Senate Passes 2018 Budget Plan

Tax reform was one of President Trump's campaign promises. He's still a long way from accomplishing it, but has just cleared one hurdle.

Snip:
Approved 51-49 on Thursday night — Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul joined Democrats in opposing it — the budget differs significantly from one passed by the House on Oct. 5, especially in the amount the national debt can be raised by tax cuts.

Each chamber must pass identical measures for them to have any effect. But even then, the budget's real impact is not on how much the government will spend or borrow — it's how much it will tax, because the measure included language that would prevent a tax bill from being filibustered by Democrats later this year or next year.

Filibusters require 60 votes to break, which means Democrats could derail the tax bill even though they are in the minority. A bill brought up under reconciliation requires only 51 votes to pass, and Republicans hold 52 seats (plus, they have Vice President Pence to break a 50-50 tie).

However, senators from both parties emphasized this week the passage of "reconciliation instructions" telling the Senate Finance Committee that a tax bill cannot be filibustered if it adds $1.5 trillion or less to the deficit.

Over the next 10 years, the budget calls for $473 billion in cuts from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid. They are part of $5 trillion in cuts mentioned overall, but most are not specified.

It is not a law, so the budget cannot actually cut or raise spending or taxes. And this year, it is widely assumed the spending levels for the fiscal year — which actually began Oct. 1 — will not really be used by appropriators.

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

Over the course of two days, the Republican majority voted almost en bloc against amendments that included a requirement that no one making $250,000 or less would face a tax increase, to prevent tax cuts from increasing the deficit, to require a "score" on a tax bill's impact from the Congressional Budget Office before a vote could be taken, and to prevent cuts to Medicare or Medicaid.

The budget approved by the House on Oct. 5 said tax cuts had to be offset with tax increases or spending cuts and could not add to the deficit; the Senate measure would allow debt to increase by $1.5 trillion.

The House measure also required $200 billion in deficit reduction be found later through reconciliation, while the Senate measure only included a token $1 billion reconciliation cut.

Either the House must pass the Senate's version, or both chambers must appoint a conference committee to develop a compromise that would have to be approved again in each chamber. Key votes will come from conservatives who have railed against deficit spending in the past.

Full piece: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli...780610001/

[Carsman]

Back during the "campaigning" days, a couple of times I mentioned Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Trump having access to the "nuke key" (no pun intended) as to what a dangerous dilemma that would be.

Never in a million years did I ever believed that would/could happen, (as I thought Trump would never win) and yet, holy shit, here we are!
Dilemma Time!

[Duchess]

The deadline for implementing the Russian sanctions has come and gone. There is no enforcement of them by this president. Anyone here know why that would be?

[HairOfTheDog]

The deadline for implementing the Russian sanctions has come and gone. There is no enforcement of them by this president. Anyone here know why that would be?

I don't know, but I'll take some stabs at it...

1. He's too busy thinking up his next feud-tweet aimed at the grieving widow of a soldier who was killed while serving our country.

2. He's too busy thinking up new nicknames and prefixes for his most vocal Republican critics -- McCain, Corker and Flake ("Little", "Lil" and "Liddle'" are getting stale).

3. He's too busy promising to get a debt-increasing and deficit-increasing tax reform bill approved by Congress (which will be even more difficult if even one of those most vocal Republican critics doesn't get on board).

4. He's too busy obsessing over how to get athletes fired over kneeling in silent social protest for a minute or two before football games.

5. He has no intention of taking punitive action against Russia, no matter what Congress legislates, because he's personally vested or enamored with Russia, its leader, or dictatorship.

6. It's hard to enforce anything from inside a moving golf cart.

7. He'll do it soon and those will be the biggest most beautiful sanctions anyone has ever seen, believe me.

[Maggot]

Trump is winning this week. The house has passed his budget and America looks like its heading for a better year next year too. Go go Donald!

[HairOfTheDog]

The budget approval today was definitely good news for Trump and the administration.

As I understand it............it means there's no chance of Democratic congresspersons blocking his tax reform bill.......so long as he can get the required Republican votes to pass it.

President Trump has gone back and forth about whether that bill would halt or seriously scale back non-taxed 401k savings. Doing either one in order to minimize lost revenue resulting from the proposed tax cuts could affect a lot of middle class and upper middle class earners and prevent some Republican lawmakers from getting on board.

The draft tax reform plan also disallows state/local tax deductions on federal returns (which is a big deal for some of the people in the states where it's currently allowed). I think that could keep some Republicans in congress from voting in favor of the plan, but suspect Trump and company would probably roll over on that one.

Plus, reducing government revenue without cutting spending and thereby increasing deficit spending......is not something most Republicans would have approved in the past. Trump and his spokespeople are saying something to the effect that lower personal and corporate taxes is going to generate more activity and tax potential, but I don't think that's been detailed, quantified or released yet.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I would like a tax cut and more money in my pocket as much as anyone else. But, not at the cost of important federal projects, economic stability, and assistance to those who need it most.

[HairOfTheDog]

Today President Trump also repeated his commitment to fighting the opioid problem in this country. He didn't declare it a national public health emergency -- that's what he said he'd do and I wished he'd done. But, I don't think there's any budget or plan in place to start moving forward yet.

Now that the idiot drug czar who was in bed with the pharmaceutical companies has been forced to resign, I'm hoping the administration gets upstanding and serious people focused on the opioid epidemic.

It's so past time that major action is taken to help addicts get off that shit and to greatly reduce the insane number of addictive prescriptions written in the U.S. every year. Fatal drug overdoses now exceed vehicle and gun related fatalities. The U.S. consumes 99% of the world's hydrocodone and over 80% of the world's opioids, even though we constitute less than 5% of the world's population. AND, we pay way higher prices for the prescriptions than anywhere else in the world.

It's unforgivable, to me, how so many politicians (from both sides of the aisle) have looked the other way when it's been clear for years that this country has a very serious opioid addiction epidemic which has really negative impacts on the addicts, their families, crime rates, community prosperity, etc.... Big pharma business connections and lobbyist influence with congresspersons -- I think that's why so little has been done. A lot needs to be done to clean up the mess and offer alternative non-addictive treatment.

Anyway, if President Trump sincerely prioritizes this public health problem as urgent, follows-through on his related campaign promises, and succeeds in significantly reducing the number of opioid addicts and opioid-induced deaths per day...............it'll be a very big and meaningful accomplishment, quite worthy of boasting a lot about.

[BigMark]

They become heroin addicts.

[HairOfTheDog]

They become heroin addicts.

Yeah, you can't prescribe addictive drugs by the hundreds of millions for two decades, get people hooked, and then severely cut down or cut off the supply and expect that to solve the problem. People who've become addicted to prescription drugs need serious and effective treatment or else most will simply find a substitute high. It took too long for officials to start regulating the legal supply chain (pharma and doctors) and nothing was done to address the demand side.

I misspoke upthread. I watched the press conference video tonight. Trump did declare the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency, but he didn't declare it a 'national emergency' as he'd previously promised. The 'national emergency' designation would have allowed for quicker and broader action and dedicated federal funding.

Under the Public Health Services Act designation he instead applied, no additional federal funding will automatically be directed to the crisis, but federal agencies will be directed to devote more grant money already in their budget. Trump will be required to renew the designation every 90 days until he no longer thinks it's needed.

The Trump administration has said it will work with Congress to fund the Public Health Emergency fund and to increase federal funding in year-end budget deals currently being negotiated in Congress. I hope that's true and it's not all talk to convince people he's really doing what he promised on the trail. We'll see if he follows through with required action.

I felt like I'd traveled back to the 80s listening to Trump talk about how easy it is to 'just say no', like he did (in regards to booze and cigs) on advice of his now-dead alcoholic older brother. That's not a valid comparison when the drugs in play are prescribed/distributed by trusted medical professionals. I also think his statement about how a "really tough, really big, really great advertising campaign could make it really really easy to convince people not to do drugs in the first place" was naive or disingenuous for the same reasons (though such a campaign couldn't hurt and might help).

Anyway, I really hope Trump is serious and successful in aggressively addressing the complex and deadly epidemic.

[BigMark]

Heroin is way cheaper than pills.

[HairOfTheDog]

Heroin is way cheaper than pills.

That may be true. But, the huge spike in heroin use over the last several years is not primarily due to the fact that heroin is cheaper than pills, as I understand it.

A lot of patients who were addicted to doctor-perscribed opioids were only paying low co-pays for the prescriptions anyway. The health insurance companies or Medicaid was paying the bulk.

When the patients finally got cut off from continually refilling those prescriptions, they turned to heroin for a similar high.

[Duchess]

The trump dossier -

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documen...ations.pdf

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks for posting that Duchess. It was a pretty interesting read.

To me, the contents are very vague and much of it is unsubstantiated (it might be true, but there's no proof in the dossier).

I understand that the dossier research was first funded by a Republican client during the primaries (not publicly identified). When that client dropped it, Clinton's campaign picked it up and funded it, which is when the British former intel specialist, Christopher Steele, was hired to drive it.

None of that is unusual -- politicians frequently do such research to dig up dirt on their opponents. And, using UK sources doesn't equate to collusion (they're allies, not adversaries, and there's no indication that the Clinton campaign attempted to have a foreign government intervening in U.S. elections).

But, based on the vagueness and unsubstantiated contents of the linked contents, I think it was probably right-headed of the Clinton campaign not to use it, even though it might have helped her. I mean, plenty of people believed all the fake news about Clinton being on death's door with a doctor posing as her Secret Service guard, Clinton running a pedophile ring out of a pizza shop with John Podesta, and a lot of other crazy shit which didn't stem from research, just fabrication.

I don't know how much the targeting/spreading of those baseless conspiracy theories hurt Clinton and helped Trump in the last stretch of the campaign cycle, but it sure didn't help her.

Anyway.......Philip Bump's analysis of the main dossier points is objective and a good read, in my opinion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/poli...it-doesnt/

I'm more curious to see what, if any, evidence of collusion between Russian officials and Trump campaign staffers is turned up by the Mueller investigation.

[Duchess]

I'm more curious to see what, if any, evidence of collusion between Russian officials and Trump campaign staffers is turned up by the Mueller investigation.

Special Counsel Mueller's associates interviewed Christopher Steele and there was a time that the Feds considered paying him to continue his work. There is speculation that it was Jeb Bush who originally paid for the beginning work on the dossier. I wonder if we'll ever know.

[HairOfTheDog]

Yeah, if I had to guess.........I'd say the original funding probably came from either low-energy JEB! or Lyin' Ted. ')

[Jimbone]

Turns out it was the Washington Free Beacon. Who knew?

Looks like they engaged Fusion in the fall of 2015 to research the background of Trump and several other Republican primary candidates. They abandoned the arrangement on or around May 3 - the day Trump won the Indiana primary. Here's their statement:

Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.

Representatives of the Free Beacon approached the House Intelligence Committee today and offered to answer what questions we can in their ongoing probe of Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier. But to be clear: We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods. We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce. The First Amendment guarantees our right to engage in news-gathering as we see fit, and we intend to continue doing just that as we have since the day we launched this project.

Matthew Continetti
Editor in Chief


Key part is that their abandonment of the oppo research in May ended any republican involvement with Fusion about Trump. Fusion was engaged by the DNC and Clinton campaign in mid-late April, and Steele (who put together the Russian dossier content) was engaged after the Free Beacon ended their arrangement with them.

The most salacious and unsubstantiated information came from Steele, and was paid for by the DNC and Hillary. And they've actively lied about their involvement in it for months.

[Jimbone]

Also, looks like Mueller is getting his first scalp. CNN is reporting a grand jury has approved charges against someone.

I hope Paul Manafort has a great weekend, because my guess is he's getting charged Monday with a charge relating to money laundering.