Trump's Shutdown Trap - Smoke Out the Resistance

General General Discussion
1

Saw this posted elsewhere and enjoyed the read. I don’t know if it will/can happen but it might be good.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/14/smoke-out-resistance/

"As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.

The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good."

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/trumps_shutdown_trap.html

“Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? In only five more days of the already “longest government shutdown in history” (25 days and counting, as of today), a heretofore obscure threshold will be reached, enabling permanent layoffs of bureaucrats furloughed 30 days or more.”

2

Interesting angle. I’d love for it to be true and see a mass extinction of beaurocratic federal glut.

We could cut 90% of the fed.gov and be so much better off.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this shutdown no matter how the chips fall.

3

I hope he’s that smart. Reagan stood up to the the air traffic controllers and fired them when they tried to illegally strike. Maybe he’s reading from the same playbook.

4

that would be funny and now its published if it had any chance its gone most likely ? but who knows

sadly I am not sure he can lay off so many as those in charge wont let it happen

this demise of our country and the over reach and power of our gov is a bit like trying to slow down a train or a tanker by putting your foot out I feel

5

To a certain extent, if you leave people furloughed without pay long enough they will have to move on to other jobs just to survive, so it’s not just a matter of evoking some layoff rule.

6

I agree. People need to STFU about this stuff. It’s like telling AQ that we were killing them using their cell phones.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

7

The idea that you can get rid of 90% of federal workers is just ludicrous. Most of what the federal government does is either contracted our or just moving money around to pay for programs.

There are only about 2.79M federal workers. Getting rid of 90% would mean taking it to 279,000. That means you can keep DHS and DOJ, combined, and nothing else.

Not going to happen.

If this article is correct, and it’s not, then once again you are seeing conservatives govern by soundbite, even if it isn’t effective.

And unless you reorganize the federal government (which Trump hasn’t tried) the Democrats will wait until they win in 2020 or 2024 and restock the government with their people.

8

I see that the myth of 64-dimensional chess playing DJT is still alive and well.

9

This is what we’re hoping for!

10

And yet we still have federal air traffic controllers.

Aren’t going to shrink the government like that…

11

Well, yeah. But he fired the ones that were illegally striking. Got rid of the turds and started over.

12

The air traffic controller issue wasn’t about shrinking the government. You should probably read up on it. It was about the air traffic controllers illegally going on strike, and Reagan called their bluff by firing all of them. Of course new ones were hired since it’s an essential occupation. But the ones who went on strike found out how serious Reagan was about not backing down.

So the only real simliarity between the two incidents is that you have a president who could have knuckled under, or who stuck to his guns and won the argument.

13

I feel for the fed workers who ARE WORKING and not getting paid, but I am GLAD he is sticking to his guns! It’s so refreshing to not have a politician in the WH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_previous_experience
Of the 44[a] different people who have served as President:

26 Presidents were previously lawyers.
22 Presidents had previous military experience; 9 were generals in the US Army.[2]
18 Presidents previously served as U.S. Representatives; 6 of 18 held this office prior to the four ‘previous positions’ shown in this table. Only one – James A. Garfield – was a Representative immediately before election as President. Only John Quincy Adams served as a U.S. Representative after being President. Additionally, after being president, John Tyler served in the Provisional Confederate Congress and was later elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but he died before taking his seat.[3]
17 Presidents previously served as Governors; 16 were State Governors; 9 were Governors immediately before election as President. Only one, William Howard Taft, served as a Territorial Governor.
16 Presidents previously served as U.S. Senators; only 3 immediately before election as President. Only one president, Andrew Johnson, ever served as a U.S. Senator after his presidency.
14 Presidents previously served as Vice President. All except Richard Nixon were Vice Presidents immediately before becoming President; 9 of the 14 succeeded to the Presidency because of the death or resignation of the elected President; 5 of those 9 were not re-elected.
8 Presidents were out of office (for at least one year) immediately before election as President.
8 Presidents previously served as Cabinet Secretaries; 6 as Secretary of State; 5 of the 8 served immediately before election as President.
7 Presidents had previous experience in foreign service.[4]
5 Presidents had never been elected to public office before becoming President: Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Donald Trump. Most of these had, however, been appointed to several prominent offices. Hoover’s contributions toward the Treaty of Versailles preceded his appointment as Secretary of Commerce. Taylor, Grant and Eisenhower led U.S. forces to victory in the Mexican–American War, American Civil War and World War II, respectively – each occupying the highest-ranking command post of their time. Trump is the group’s sole exception, having never held any public office nor any military position.
2 Presidents served as Party leaders of the House of Representatives, James A. Garfield and Gerald Ford.
1 President served as an ordained minister, serving as a pastor in the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church. James A Garfield. [5] [6]
1 President served as Speaker of the House of Representatives, James K. Polk.
1 President served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate, John Tyler.
1 President served as Party leader of the United States Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson.
1 President served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Howard Taft. He did so after his presidency.
1 President served as President of the United States for two non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland.
1 President served no major elective or appointive offices, or periods of military service prior to election to the Presidency, Donald Trump.

14

My point is that in this thread alone you have multiple Trump supporters ascribing multiple motives for Trump’s shutdown.

He could be trying to build the wall.

Or he could be trying to shrink government.

Or he could be trying to improve the government that we have.

Which is it? Or is it more convenient to keep shifting the narrative around to keep Trump looking like he’s got a plan when he clearly doesn’t.

15

You guys forget that such a trap has consequences: unemployment is now beginning to float back up and many of the furloughed workers are eligible for unemployment benefits:

https://money.cnn.com/2013/10/01/news/economy/shutdown-federal-unemployment-benefits/index.html

Long term I’m not so sure it wouldn’t be just shooting ourselves in the foot.

The other side of this shutdown exercise in brinkmanship is that in past shutdowns furloughed employees have ultimately been paid for their furlough time, in essence a double paid vacation.

Let us all be honest here. this is no more than a class of personalities that is going to cost us, the taxpayers, several million dollars each day it is extended.

16

Reagan didn’t shrink the government: In fiscal 1982, which began before Reagan took office, there were 2,110,000 federal employees, according to OPM. In fiscal 1985, that number was 2,252,000, more than today.

He also tripled the debt:

In 1980, Jimmy Carter’s last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of “national income” (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of “national income.”

Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government. Their combined presidential terms account for an increase of 1.4%—compared with Reagan’s 3%—in the government’s take of “national income.” And in nominal terms, there has been a 60% increase in government spending, thanks mainly to Reagan’s requested budgets, which were only marginally smaller than the spending Congress voted.

The budget for the Department of Education, which candidate Reagan promised to abolish along with the Department of Energy, has more than doubled to $22.7 billion, Social Security spending has risen from $179 billion in 1981 to $269 billion in 1986. The price of farm programs went from $21.4 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987, a 140% increase. And this doesn’t count the recently signed $4 billion “drought-relief” measure. Medicare spending in 1981 was $43.5 billion; in 1987 it hit $80 billion. Federal entitlements cost $197.1 billion in 1981—and $477 billion in 1987.

Foreign aid has also risen, from $10 billion to $22 billion. Every year, Reagan asked for more foreign-aid money than the Congress was willing to spend. He also pushed through Congress an $8.4 billion increase in the U.S. “contribution” to the International Monetary Fund.

His budget cuts were actually cuts in projected spending, not absolute cuts in current spending levels. As Reagan put it, “We’re not attempting to cut either spending or taxing levels below that which we presently have.”

The result has been unprecedented government debt. Reagan has tripled the Gross Federal Debt, from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion. Ford and Carter in their combined terms could only double it. It took 31 years to accomplish the first postwar debt tripling, yet Reagan did it in eight. https://mises.org/library/sad-legacy-ronald-reagan-0

17

How do you know? Even if he didn’t come up with a plan himself, you don’t think he has advisors?

18

Bottom line: Trump knows if he doesn’t win the fight over the wall, then he’s like George H.W. Bush breaking his promise “Read my lips: No new taxes.”

It’s going to make or break his presidency and he knows it.

It’s as simple as that.

19

Are you implying, against evidence, that he listens to advisors?

20

Trump’s presidency has amounted to nothing and stands only to get worse from here.

Even if he got his wall, it isn’t going to do anything.