The Daily Combover - February 22, 2017

Another relatively slow news day. But while the world media was focusing on some nobody named Milo, Trump attended a budget meeting this afternoon and gave a quick 4 minute speech:

12:39 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you all.  This will be somewhat of an informal meeting.  I want to congratulate Mick Mulvaney, who’s been confirmed finally -- we waited a long time -- by the Senate.  And he’s going to be an absolutely great director.  Total confidence in Mick.  Known him for a long time.  He loves those budgets.  

Hahahaha what a joker! But really, who doesn't love those budgets?

Unfortunately, the budget we’re inheriting -- essentially inheriting -- is a mess.  The finances of our country are a mess.  But we’re going to clean them up.  Things that we’ve been doing, including negotiating deals that have already been negotiated, so you call it re-negotiating -- on airplanes and lots of other things, military items -- we’ll end up either getting many more planes free, or we’re going to save a lot of money.  But we’ve already saved a lot; billions and billions of dollars have been saved.

Obviously he's full of crap and nobody there is going to call him on it. But billions and billions? I find it interesting that he's claiming these renegs on military and airplane deals which are generally the purview of the Pentagon. The Pentagon was already being forced to make massive cuts by the Obama Administration thanks to the revelation that they covered up $125 billion in wasteful spending. How many of Trump's billions were already included in that number?

A quick Google search yields 125 million results for "Trump claims credit." Here's the first few:

We have enormous work to do as the national debt doubled over the last eight years.  Our debt has doubled over a short period of time.  I want the American people to know that our budget will reflect their priorities.  We’ll be directing all of our departments and agencies to protect every last American and every last tax dollar.  No more wasted money.

True, it did increase under President Obama, but it didn't double. It actually increased by 68%, the bulk of which was in President Obama's first two years in office as he had to fight off the Great Recession. Fast forward 5 years and under President Obama's stewardship, deficits fell by a record amount. Interestingly enough, the debt always grows more under Republicans than it does under Democrats: 47% with Ford, 43% with Carter, 186% with Reagan, 54% with Bush I, 32% with Clinton, 101% with Bush II, 68% with Obama. So when a Republican says this...

We’re going to be spending the money in a very, very careful manner.  Our moral duty to the taxpayer requires us to make our government leaner and more accountable.  We must do a lot more with less.  And we must stop the improper payments and the abuses, negotiate better prices, and look for every last dollar of savings.

...DON'T BELIEVE HIM!

We’ve already imposed hiring freezes on nonessential government workers, and part of our commitment is to continue to do that for the American taxpayer.  We have appointed a Cabinet that knows how to manage dollars wisely.  I’ve known many of the folks for a long time.  They’ve been tremendous winners -- whether it’s Steve or Gary or another Steve, right here.  And that’s why I will direct them to manage the country’s dollars and your dollars very wisely.  We won’t let your money be wasted anymore.  We’re going to run government smoothly, efficiently, and on behalf of the very hardworking taxpayers -- something that the taxpayers haven’t seen in a long time.  I will be holding everybody accountable for that, and I have no doubt that this group -- in particular, this group will do a fantastic job.  

I want to congratulate Steve Mnuchin as our new Secretary of the Treasury.  He’s going to be outstanding.  Tremendous track record -- he has a tremendous track record.  I have great confidence in him.

No Trump speech would be complete without him being a braggart about his team. It is, of course, no surprise that he's absolutely full of it when he says he's going to run government on behalf of the taxpayers. After all, it was only a few days ago that we learned how much his weekly visits to Mar-a-Lago are costing the taxpayers (more than $3 million a piece).

So we’re going to continue on, and we’re going to take this budget, which is -- in all fairness, I’ve only been here for four weeks, so I can’t take too much of the blame for what’s happened.  But it is absolutely out of control, and we’re going to do things that are going to be tremendous over the years.  We have to take care of our military.  We have no choice, we have to take care of our military.  It needs work; it’s very depleted.  And we have to take care of a lot of other things. 

Actually, now that you mention it, you are to blame. Obama left you with a consistent downward trend in the budget deficit. The last time we saw that was under Clinton. So when you screw it up like President Bush did 16 years ago, it falls on your lap.

Healthcare is moving along nicely.  It’s being put into final forms.  As you know, before we do the tax -- which is actually very well finalized -- but we can’t submit it until the healthcare, statutorily or otherwise.  So we’re doing the healthcare.  Again, moving along very well.  Sometime during the month of March, maybe mid- to early March we will be submitting something that I think people will be very impressed by.

Read that as: come March, you're going to be fucked over so the top 0.1% of the country can get a massive tax cut.

And with that, we’re going to have a little meeting.  And I think the press knows pretty much all of the people at the table, so thank you very much.  We appreciate it.

END

12:43 P.M. EST

It's going to be a long, long year...

The Combover will be off tomorrow. Catch you Friday.