The picture on my computer screen should be better so I tried adjusting it. That made it worse so I’ll hit it with a sledgehammer and see if that helps. Unfortunately, that foolish approach is being applied by President Trump to vital national interests like health care, defense, immigration, and budgets.
One of Trump’s competitors, Jeb Bush predicted the problem back in 2015 saying, “Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he’s a chaos candidate. And he’d be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe.”
President Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with something better: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody…There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”…“I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid”.
As President, Trump never proposed a way to provide health care regardless of Americans’ ability to pay for it and he did support cutting Medicaid. Obamacare has insured about 20 million Americans who had no benefits before the law passed; and at the same time it has slowed the growth of the nation’s healthcare spending. It’s a success but it needs improvement. When nothing that he or other Republicans proposed passed, Trump swung his sledgehammer at Obamacare’s most vulnerable spot, the individual markets. He announced termination of the federal subsidy to insurance companies for low-income subscribers. That will damage the already fragile individual insurance markets in some communities – breaking our healthcare system without a plan to replace it.
Trump threatens to withdraw from our agreement with Iran, under which they shut down their nuclear weapons program and gave up 98 percent of their nuclear materials. The agreement was designed with one goal in mind – don’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons. We managed to get Russia, all of Europe and China on the same page because they all agreed with that goal; and it was our combined power that made the deal possible. Trump can’t persuade Iran to do other things that he wants so out comes the sledgehammer to break the Iran agreement. If the deal falls apart and if China, Russia and Europe go their own ways, there will be nothing to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. By destroying the Iran deal without a plan to replace it Trump also tells other nations that any President can ignore commitments made by his predecessors. The USA will be seen as untrustworthy.
The DACA program for children brought to the US illegally is an imperfect solution to a problem that congress has been unwilling to address. Trump promises to hit it with his sledgehammer – forcing law enforcement to round-up and deport children and young adults who have lived most of their lives as Americans. Again, he has no plan for replacing what he will destroy. Many young adults will be driven to hide in an underground economy where they have little opportunity for success. That’s a breeding ground for dissension, hopelessness and crime.
Trump plans to hit your wallet with a sledgehammer too – by cutting taxes, mostly for the wealthy, while increasing military spending and our national debt at even faster rates than his predecessors. Americans will have to repay that debt at some future date. Our ability to borrow money for a true catastrophe or war is already impaired because so much of our debt capacity has been used. We currently owe $20 trillion. That is about $62,000 for every American or $161,600 for every American who works at a full or part-time job.
Donald Trump again proposes the sledgehammer approach saying, “I am the king of debt,”…”I love debt. I love playing with it.” and “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal”…”And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.” When he says “make a deal”, that means refusing to pay our debt, most of which is owed to Americans. It’s not the same as letting one of his casinos go bankrupt.
If the Republican congress allows President Trump to deliver more sledgehammer blows to our nation, the resulting chaos will belong personally to Donald Trump and each legislator who supported him. The GOP will own the chaos but the American people (including DACA kids) will pay a heavy price for it.