Don the Con tries for tax, spending cuts that are literally impossible

This is what you get when a minority group of dumb, weak people are allowed to hire a senile, foolish con man for President.

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— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 22, 2018

THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS, DONNY! Jerkoffs like Trump have already been so rich and connected they think policy is all a game, and as long as enough rubes and vapid fucks buy their BS and allow them to stay in power and enrich themselves, who cares about the consequences for anyone else?

Budget Guy Stan Collender has called out two of Trump's empty statements on the increasingly messed-up budget in recent days. Collender notes that passing any kind of tax cut in the post-election lame duck session is nearly impossible, partly since Dems have 49 votes in the Senate, so Trump's transparent gimmick would be laughed at and filibustered.

And then once Trump Tax Scam 2 is filibustered via cloture, Collender says it would be delayed more because the GOP-controlled House and Senate haven't passed a budget resolution. And why is that? Because they didn't want to have people remember their part in the Tax Scam 1 ahead of the election. So they'd have to go through all that before we even try to consider passing this absurdity in a time of trillion dollar deficits.

3. But reconciliation may only be done if both houses of Congress adopt a budget resolution conference report with reconciliation instructions ordering it…and neither the House nor Senate have passed a budget resolution yet this year. The House Budget Committee has approved one but there has been no activity in the Senate.

4. Therefore, before a new Trump tax plan could be considered, a budget resolution with its projected trillion-dollar deficits would have to be adopted. That will be much easier to do after than before the election, but still won’t be a simple vote for some GOP members even if it would make a tax cut easier..

5. And it will take time. Even with a truncated process, adopting a budget resolution is likely to take at least two weeks…and probably closer to three or four.

6. Meanwhile, votes become less reliable the longer a lame duck continues as retiring and defeated representatives and senators become less interested in their current job and more concerned about what’s next. If the past is any guide, some will even stop coming to Washington entirely.

But hey Stan, Trump indicted last week that he wanted to cut spending in all federal agencies by 5%, and maybe that will keep us afloat, allowing this tax cut to work out.

Leaving aside the immediate recession and hardship that would be forced on a lot of people if those cuts were ever to happen, Collender notes that such talk "shows that Trump's weak," as he's making a pathetic pose that wouldn't do anything for nearly a year anyway.

1. The plan isn’t for the current year (fiscal 2019); it’s for 2020, the budget that Trump is legally required to submit to Congress early next year and won’t start to be implemented almost a year from now. In the meantime, Trump’s own Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget project that the deficit will grow by $306 billion to almost $1.1 trillion. Trump isn’t proposing to do anything about that.

2. Trump could have proposed that Congress “un-appropriate” spending in the current year by using the impoundment control procedures specified in the Congressional Budget Act. He didn’t.

3. Trump’s pronouncement was that his cabinet come up with a plan to reduce “discretionary” spending within their agency or department. That’s only about 25 percent — roughly $1.1 trillion — of the total amount expected to be spent in 2019.

(Note: The $1.1 trillion in discretionary spending is roughly equivalent to the total projected 2019 deficit. Trump would have to propose to eliminate all of it to completely balance the budget this year.)

4. If Trump had wanted to propose something impactful he would have included most of the rest of the budget — mandatory spending other than interest on the national debt. But just before the election that would have subjected him to the very politically damaging charge that he was going to propose cuts in Social Security, Medicare and veterans benefits.

Then again, Mitch McConnell just admitted last week that Republicans want to use the growing deficit as an excuse to cut Social Security, Medicare, health care and other earned benefits, so maybe that's hidden in Trump's future plans (not that Don the Con would ever say so).

I'm so sick of the GOP cynicism, two-steps and fiscal insanity. I'm less distressed by the fact that con men like Trump and Walker are floating unaffordable tax plans before an election than I am about the fact that they think enough gutless rubes will buy it. Let's do better than that on November 6, shall we? And let's get some adults in office that actually want to deal with reality before things completely collapse.