US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4482

Q: Would you cut departments?
TRUMP: Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace.ÿEvery week they come out with new regulations.
Q: Who's going to protect the environment?
TRUMP: We'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses.

After the administration has been in place, then we will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” he said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’ll start taking a hard look at those to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way.” Clovis later explained that a Trump administration wouldn't start slicing and dicing immediately, “because we can’t predict the growth” from tax cuts. However, he added that, “We have to start taking a look not just at Medicare and Social Security but every program we have out there, because the budgetary discipline that we’ve shown over the last 84 years has been horrible.”

CHUCK TODD:

--do you want to see the voting laws changed to make it easier to vote?

DONALD TRUMP:

I want to see voting laws so that people that are citizens can vote. Not so people that can walk off the street and can vote, or so that illegal immigrants can vote--

CHUCK TODD:

So you're not for same-day voter registration?

DONALD TRUMP:

No, no. I want to make the voting laws so that people that-- it doesn't make any difference how they do it. But I don't think people should sneak in through the cracks. You have to have -- And whether that's an ID or any way you want to do it. But you have to be a citizen to vote.

The food stamp program was originally created as temporary assistance for families with momentary times of need. And it shouldn't be needed often. Thankfully, 96 percent of America's poor parents say their children never suffer even a day of hunger. But when half of food stamp recipients have been on the dole for nearly a decade, something is clearly wrong, and some of it has to do with fraud.

The really infuriating thing is that the Obama administration doesn't seem to care about how taxpayers are being shaken down by this outrageously mismanaged government program.

The blatant waste of taxpayers' dollars doesn't bother Obama, because it's all part of his broader nanny-state agenda. Perhaps that's why his administration doesn't give a rip about policing fraud or administering responsible oversight-he's buying votes.

Q: Picketers have gathered demanding an immediate hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Are you sympathetic to the protesters?
DONALD TRUMP: I can't be. We are a country that is being beaten on every front economically & militarily. There is nothing that we do now to win. We don't win anymore. [If our] wages are too high, we're not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is. People have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we can not do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can't do it.
Q: So do not raise the minimum wage?
TRUMP: I would not do it.

“Trump is trying to appeal to union workers, but how can he in good conscience try to help them with Pence on the ticket?” Salles asked. “Pence has opposed labor on every single issue that has come up, whether it’s helping unions organize, increasing the minimum wage, anything that has to do with unions, he’s been against.”

In late March, the Republican Pence’s campaign bought $250,000 worth of ads supporting the repeal of common construction wage, with the governor saying the law “is outdated and costs Hoosier taxpayers millions in additional building costs.”

The Republican-controlled House passed the legislation before it was taken up by Pence allies in the Senate, which is expected to debate the measure Tuesday and take a final vote on it later in the week.

Congress must act. Our elected representatives in the House and Senate must:

Completely repeal Obamacare....
Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines....
Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns under the current tax system....
Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Contributions into HSAs should be tax-free and should be allowed to accumulate. ...
Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals....
Block-grant Medicaid to the states....
Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products.....

...providing healthcare to illegal immigrants costs us some $11 billion annually. If we were to simply enforce the current immigration laws and restrict the unbridled granting of visas to this country, we could relieve healthcare cost pressures on state and local governments

CBS releases an excerpt of its interview with Trump that aired Sunday morning. Asked again about abortion, Trump’s position seems to change yet again.

“The laws are set now on abortion and that’s the way they're going to remain until they’re changed,” he said, according to CBS’s transcript. “I would’ve preferred states’ rights. I think it would’ve been better if it were up to the states. But right now, the laws are set.... At this moment, the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way.”

On June 26, 2015, following the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, Trump tweeted, "Once again the Bush appointed Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has let us down. Jeb pushed him hard! Remember!"[12]

On the issue of gay marriage, Donald Trump said during a November 2013 interview on MSNBC, "I think I’m evolving, and I think I’m a very fair person, but I have been for traditional marriage. I am for traditional marriage, I am for a marriage between a man and a woman.”[13]

In a March 2011 interview with The Des Moines Register, Trump said gay couples should not be allowed to marry or receive the same benefits as married heterosexual couples.[14]

“First of all, we want to bring education back to Wisconsin, right? So, we end Common Core. And Department of Education can — I mean, the Department of Education is massive, and it can be largely eliminated. Now, you maybe want to have a little bit of tentacles out there, make sure everything, — but largely, we can eliminate the Department of Education.”

Trump, who released a statement to the Daily News—in reference to what the paper referred to only as “the Brooklyn Museum’s elephant-dung Madonna”—saying, “As president, I would ensure that the National Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort.” (The Daily News pointed out that the organization’s correct title is “National Endowment for the Arts,” and that the NEA did not give any funding to the Brooklyn Museum’s show that featured Ofili.) Regarding the Ofili, Trump continued: “It’s not art. It’s absolutely gross, degenerate stuff.” Note the word “degenerate.” There was, of course, another politician who used that adjective to describe works of art that offended him. (Trump, for what it’s worth, would later lob the word “degenerate” at Rosie O’Donnell.) ......

But as a citizen, Trump has had a more tangible effect on the NEA beyond his mere endorsement of slashing government funding for the arts. In 2013, when Trump took over the lease of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in order to build a 270-room hotel, among the occupants that were forced to vacate were the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (One of the potential leaseholders that lost their bid for the building to Trump was a National Museum of the Jewish People, according to the Post.) In a final bit of irony, James Lankford, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, claimed that Trump received a $40 million tax credit for his renovations of the building.