More and more, I wonder if the disgruntled senior Trump administration official who wrote the anonymous Op-Ed in The New York Times was actually representing a group — like a “Murder on the Orient Express” plotline where every senior Trump adviser was in on it.
Why? Because the article so perfectly captured the devil’s bargain they’ve all struck with this president: Donald Trump is an amoral, dishonest and disturbed person, a man totally unfit to be president, but, as the anonymous author self-servingly wrote: “There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”
This view is not without foundation. Economic growth and employment have clearly been on a tear since Trump took office. I’m glad about that.
But what if Trump is actually heating up our economy by burning all the furniture in the house? It’s going to be nice and toasty for us — at least for a while — but where will our kids sleep?
Let's take that view for a spin:When Trump simultaneously cuts corporate taxes and withdraws America from the Paris climate accord, tries to revive the coal industry by lowering pollution standards and weakens fuel economy standards for U.S.-made cars and trucks, he is vastly adding to the financial debts and carbon debts that will burden our children.
And he is doing this despite many economists warning that increasing the deficit when your economy is already growing nicely is really, really reckless — because you may need that money to stimulate your way out of the next recession.
In June, the Associated Press reported on the latest International Monetary Fund survey of the U.S. economy, which concluded that as a result of Trump’s “tax cuts and expected increases in defense and domestic programs, the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the total economy will exceed 4.5 percent of GDP by next year — nearly double what it was just three years ago.”
Faced with so much debt, which the country will not be able to grow out of, The AP story continued, paraphrasing the IMF report, the U.S. “may need to take politically painful steps,” such as cutting Social Security benefits and imposing higher taxes on consumers. (We’ll probably also have to limit spending on new roads, bridges and research.)
You might want to let your kids know that.
There were responsible ways to cut taxes on things we want more of — like corporate investment — while boosting them on things we want less of — like carbon, reckless financial speculation and diabetes — that could have stimulated jobs and growth but also left us more financially and environmentally resilient. But both Trump and the anonymous-Republican crowd rejected them, just as they rejected smart improvements to Obamacare, preferring a total scrapping.
So when Republicans say they’re disgusted by Trump’s ignorance and indecency but love his “deregulations” and “tax reforms” — those very sanitized words — this is what they love: taking huge fiscal and environmental risks — effectively throwing away our bumpers and spare tires that we may soon need to drive through the next financial or climate storm — for a short-term economic and political high.
How different is that from Trump’s indecency? Let’s be clear, Trump cheated on his wife, but his party’s now cheating on their kids. You tell me who’s worse.
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