No. of Recommendations: 6
Reading minds now. I had always felt you were above this.
BTW Trump is tolerating tons of political consequences. He has the democrats swearing and singing their opposition, complete with f-bomns and threats of taking it to the streets. Then there are the myriad of lawsuits; the regular condemnations from what's left of MSNBC and CNN; whining from NGO's who have lost their grip on the Federal teat.
Yep lots of consequences that liberals cannot notice, since none of them have delivered the death blow that so many liberals counted on to collapse the Presidents support by his base.
It's not reading minds. I could have caveated that by saying that Trump has given no indication that he shares the priorities or preferences of the "cut entitlements" wing of the party. The Grover Norquist faction has been utterly iced out of leadership, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Medicare and Social Security cuts are off the table, and has expressed support for making the debt ceiling go away. The "establishment" GOP - the old Paul Ryan wing of the party - cared very very much about those types of things. Trump has shown no sign of making them a priority. Or caring about levels of deficit or debt. All of his political policies are in line with a populist who wants to deliver the government services his voters support.
Trump isn't suffering any political consequences yet because he hasn't yet cut any services his voters support. He doesn't care about the recriminations of democrats or MSNBC or CNN or liberal-leaning NGO's. Those are good for him, politically. They strengthen his position with his base and help the party on the Hill.
But if veterans start losing access to basic and fundamental health services (like having someone on staff to take an X-ray at the VA facility), then that type of thing can cause him some political pain. Which is why I think that any employees who take early retirement from jobs that are in areas that conservatives support (which is most federal jobs) will end up being replaced, rather than this program offering any material savings. Given the low uptake, I think it's actually far more likely that this ends up costing the federal government more than if they had done nothing.
