US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7385

Looming above Washington as Congress and the White House attempt to avert a funding shutdown in only five days’ time, Donald Trump’s central campaign promise to build a wall on the Mexican border threatens to bring the US government to a halt this week in a national display of dysfunction.

On Sunday, even White House officials expressed uncertainty about whether the president would sign a funding bill that did not include money for a wall, which Trump has promised since the first day of his presidential campaign.

“We don’t know yet,” said the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, on Fox News Sunday. “We are asking for our priorities.”

The president himself waded into the negotiations on Sunday, holding out two sticks and no carrot. “ObamaCare is in serious trouble,” he tweeted. “The Dems need big money to keep it going – otherwise it dies far sooner than anyone would have thought.”

“The Democrats don’t want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members,” he continued, suggesting he would accuse Democrats of being soft on international crime.

But Trump also retreated from a related pledge to the American people: that he would “make Mexico pay” for the wall, which is estimated to cost billions.

“Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall,” the president tweeted, without offering a plan or timeline.

Without a deal, funding for the government will run out at midnight on 28 April, Trump’s 100th day in office. The secretary of homeland security, John Kelly, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday he suspected the president would push for the wall.

The proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border could be paid for by reducing erroneously issued tax credits that go to “mostly Mexicans,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Sunday.

Speaking on ABC’s "This Week," Sessions weighed in on the fight over funding for the wall, which is becoming part of the high-stakes negotiations between the White House and Congress over keeping the government funded after Friday.

“We're going to get paid for it one way or the other,” Sessions said of the wall. “I know there's $4 billion a year in excess payments, according to the Department of the Treasury's own inspector general several years ago, that are going to payments to people — tax credits that they shouldn't get. Now, these are mostly Mexicans. And those kind of things add up — $4 billion a year for 10 years is $40 billion.

"There are a lot of ways we can find money to help pay for this.”

Presumably the report that Sessions was citing was a July 2011 report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration that said individuals who are not authorized to work in the U.S. have been paid $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits. But it did not mention Mexicans or any other nationalities.

As a presidential candidate in 2015, Donald Trump cited the $4.2 billion figure to criticize U.S. immigration policy.

Democrats on Sunday criticized the Trump administration for focusing on the wall. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on NBC’s "Meet the Press": “The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic leader in Congress, said on "This Week": “I'm still trying to figure out who believes that a medieval situation to fix our broken immigrant situation is what we need.”

On April 24 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:

He killed the TPP and shelved the TTIP, which I have to say I approve of.

On April 24 2017 03:54 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
You think someone would remind the man that his party controls all three houses of Government. Or is this him having a temper tantrum I wonder?



Source

On April 24 2017 05:03 Danglars wrote:
There's two big squishes running the Congressional side and Trump's just doing his usual schtick, so there's no shutdown. It's just political theater, and I've half a mind to believe both sides enjoy it underneath it all.

God is Ben Carson’s favorite subject. Brain surgery is a close second. Housing is somewhere further down the list.

“I was told that as a government leader, I really shouldn't talk about God. But I have to tell you, it's part of who I am,” Carson said last month, in one of his first speeches as Housing and Urban Development secretary.

Less than two months into the job, Carson still holds forth on God and neurosurgery, but his views on housing policy remain largely a mystery. While he's making good on a promised listening tour to learn about the $48 billion agency he now leads, he's done little public speaking about the urgent issue at hand — a lack of affordable housing.

That's one reason why early excitement over his nomination has given way to bewilderment and now frustration. Every policy job at the agency remains vacant, and advocates who thought Carson’s celebrity would raise awareness of affordable housing have been disappointed. President Donald Trump doused any remaining hope when he said he would slash HUD funding by 13.2 percent.

Carson told POLITICO that policy proposals are in the works, but in public appearances the one-time presidential candidate is sticking to his stump-speech staples. He prescribes “godly principles” as a cure for the country’s political division and praises housing advocates for “putting God’s love into action.”
...

With that, the secretary — an acclaimed pediatric neurosurgeon — was off and running to his other favorite subject. Housing experts brought on stage to analyze his remarks were flummoxed.

“I was trying to take notes on what he was saying about housing,” said Armando Falcon, chief executive at Falcon Capital Advisors, waving a piece of blank paper. “I could have filled a page with neurosurgery notes."

Faith groups are deeply embedded in the affordable housing firmament, which has greeted Carson’s speeches as part motivational, part sermon and part lecture. The secretary offers no apologies.

“One of the most important parts of our Constitution is freedom of religion. There’s a mistaken thinking that we’re not supposed to talk about God,” Carson told POLITICO. “Godly principles and loving your fellow man and caring about your neighbor, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

But lately, his up-by-the-bootstraps message has been falling flat with anti-poverty audiences.

“It’s a great story, but it’s a dangerous message because not everybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. “Nobody does that, including Secretary Carson. He had a lot of support — his mother, his family, his faith. He had a whole context of support.”

On April 24 2017 06:16 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
this shouldn't surprise anyone



http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/23/ben-carson-housing-surgery-god-237471

On April 24 2017 05:03 Danglars wrote:

Someone needs to remind StealthBlue about Trump's opposition within his own party. Else, he would've been able to bully people into healthcare reform and we'd be discussing Ryancare right now.

There's two big squishes running the Congressional side and Trump's just doing his usual schtick, so there's no shutdown. It's just political theater, and I've half a mind to believe both sides enjoy it underneath it all.

On April 24 2017 07:05 ChristianS wrote:
@GH: I don't think I disagree with anything you've said there. I'd add that. I'd add that I don't just not know how disliked HRC is (justifiably or no); I don't care. She doesn't matter. Whether we remember her as a McCain or a Quayle might matter to her but matters very little to the outcome of 2018 or 2020.

Despite Trump's low approval numbers, the poll showed him retaining support among his base, with 96% of people who said they voted for him saying they would do so again. The poll showed only 85% of those who voted for Hillary Clinton would do so again, with most of those who would not saying they would either go with a third-party candidate or not vote at all.

That difference in remaining support for the two candidates would mean Trump would best Clinton 43 to 40% in a hypothetical rematch today.

On April 24 2017 07:29 ChristianS wrote:
Understanding why Dems are disliked is absolutely interesting and worth exploring. Understanding why HRC was so disliked is just as useless as understanding Comey's impact on the election - it doesn't apply in the next election so it's useless.

On April 24 2017 08:11 LegalLord wrote:
The man has a pretty remarkable ability to selectively find the things in the news that praise him, valid or not, and make a big deal out of them. I can only wonder if he thinks that most of the country secretly loves him.