I/II. [Winners: law enforcement and the military; NATO; immigrants of all kinds; the “dishonest media”. Losers: Obamacare repeal and replace; immigrants of all kinds.]
http://www.vox.com/2017/3/1/14772538/trump-address-congress-2017-winners-losers Updated by Dylan Matthews@[email protected] Mar 1, 2017, 12:01am EST Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress was an unusually important occasion. While it wasn’t technically a State of the Union, it served the same purpose: to outline his priorities and policy agenda for the coming year. For many presidents, the SOTU can feel a bit rote. They reiterate policies they’ve already suggested in press releases or past years, trying in vain to get Congress to pass them anyway. It didn’t make news when George W. Bush called for privatizing Social Security in 2005; he’d been doing that for months. It didn’t make news when Barack Obama called on Congress to pass immigration reform in 2013; that was a longstanding priority of his. But Trump is harder to pin down than his predecessor — for better and for worse. He is infamously prone to repeating the opinion of whoever spoke to him last, and the public is forced to resort to Kremlinological interpretations of his statements and those of key aides like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, along with leaks of behind-the-scenes infighting. Tuesday night’s speech was Trump’s chance to clarify what he stood for and issue clear directives for what Congress should do on Obamacare, tax reform, infrastructure, and immigration. It was his chance to bring his party in line behind a specific, common agenda. And … none of that happened. Instead, you got a repeat of his usual greatest rhetorical hits. So without anything more specific to go on, here are a few Kremlinological interpretations of what Trump said, and left unsaid. Winner: law enforcement and the military Donald Trump Delivers Address To Joint Session Of Congress Top military brass looks on during the speech. Alex Wong/Getty Images Trump’s critics sometimes interpret his martial rhetoric and encomia to law enforcement and military personnel as sinister — a sign of a leader who privileges institutions of state violence and would be unafraid to use them to secure his hold on power. That remains debatable. All the same, it was striking how Trump not only offered rhetorical tribute to America’s men and women in uniform but also promised overflowing, Scrooge McDuck-esque piles of cash to the armed forces, as well as executive branch non-interference in the work of police officers. “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history,” he declared, adding, “My budget will also increase funding for our veterans.” He was less specific on his promises to law enforcement, but made it clear that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not going to be commissioning the kinds of damning reports examining police department misconduct that Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch did. "We must work with — not against -– the men and women of law enforcement," he said, emphasizing the phrase “not against” in case the implied swipe against anti–police brutality activists wasn’t clear. "We must support the incredible men and women of law enforcement. And we must support the victims of crime." All this in a speech where the opening set of accomplishments included “a hiring freeze on nonmilitary and nonessential federal workers.” The message was clear: Law enforcement and soldiers are a protected class, to be shielded from the cuts affecting every other government activity (save perhaps for infrastructure). Whether Trump will actually deliver all this remains to be seen. It’s easy enough for Sessions to neglect enforcement of civil rights laws as applied to local police and sheriffs, but Trump’s budget plan appears to raise defense spending a great deal less than he’s claiming, and the details on money for veterans are murky. But the speech solidified cops and soldiers as the poster children of Trump’s brand of aggressive nationalism. His plans have always had villains — immigrants, Muslims, foreign workers — but establishing heroes is just as important for the message. Loser: Obamacare repeal and replace Paul Ryan Holds Weekly Press Briefing At The Capitol Poor buddy. Mark Wilson/Getty Images Here’s the grand total of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan, as offered in Trump’s speech: First, we should ensure that Americans with preexisting conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the health care exchanges. Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts — but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the government. Thirdly, we should give our great state governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out. Fourthly, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance — and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs, and bring them down immediately. Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care. With this, Sarah Kliff explained, Trump merely "told party leaders they are on the right track, but he did not provide any further direction or a pitch for unity." The plan Trump is describing above strongly matches the Better Way plan that House Speaker Paul Ryan and allies unveiled last summer. Both preserve a tax credit system to pay for insurance, expand health savings accounts, block-grant Medicaid and turn it over to the states, and demand insurance sales across state lines. But think about what Trump left off: He didn’t say whether the tax credits should be refundable, as in A Better Way and Obamacare, or nonrefundable, so that people not paying income taxes can’t benefit. A lot of conservatives in the House and Senate have denounced refundable credits as “Obamacare lite,” or “a major and unstoppable entitlement” because they redistribute money to pay for low-income people’s health care. It seems like Trump disagrees with that. But does he? And how does he plan to convince those skeptics? Trump says he wants to kick Medicaid back to the states. Will he do that through a per capita cap or a full block grant, the latter of which would let states aggressively drop people from rolls? Should Medicaid expansion states continue to get federal money they started receiving under the ACA? Will all states see funding cuts? What about congressional Republicans who appear skeptical about all this? How will Trump continue to ensure that people with preexisting conditions get coverage? Will the legal requirement remain? Some other weaker measure? How will Trump’s plan keep healthy people buying insurance? Obamacare does this with the individual mandate. Will Trump require people to maintain insurance coverage continuously or else face penalties in the future — even though that could be unpopular for the same reasons as the individual mandate? Trump promises “a stable transition” for Obamacare enrollees. How? When would the law be phased out? How much time would enrollees get to find new arrangements? Will Trump sign a repeal bill before this transition is specified in law? All of these things are controversial, all offend various stakeholders and please others, and each will provoke a major fight in Congress. Presidential guidance can help steer his party’s legislative path and minimize conflicts on these points. But Trump offered little to none. Effectively, this was a punt back to Ryan: Trump is not going to step in and help him get the caucus in line. The result will be months more of wrangling over repeal options, with no clear path to passing anything. Winner: NATO NATO Holds Warsaw Summit NATO Secetary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Sean Gallup/Getty Images This is sort of a “soft bigotry of low expectations” judgment, but it was nonetheless striking how much less critical of NATO and America’s European allies Trump was in this speech than he’s been in the past. “We strongly support NATO — an alliance forged through the bonds of two world wars that dethroned fascism and a Cold War that defeated communism,” he began. It’s normally here, in a Trump speech, that the “but” comes. Recall that right before the inauguration, Trump reiterated his claim that the alliance is “obsolete.” And sure enough, his next sentence was, “But our partners must meet their financial obligations.” And he continued this way: “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.” What is this based on? Earlier this month, he declared the exact opposite: We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close. Trump’s claim is that in the span of less than a month, he managed to completely shift the defense spending priorities of an entire continent. This, suffice it to say, did not actually happen. But if it’s what it takes for Trump to stop disrupting the Atlantic alliance structure, Angela Merkel and Theresa May probably won’t be complaining. To help matters, Trump made literally no reference of Russia, Vladimir Putin, or Syria, the major points of contention between him and our NATO partners (not to mention most other US politicians). He wasn’t standing down, but he was purposely not escalating this particular conflict. Loser: immigrants of all kinds Immigration Activists Protest At ICE Detention Center In New Jersey An anti-ICE raid protest. Spencer Platt/Getty Images Trump usually cloaks his anti-immigration rhetoric in security concerns. That was the rationale behind his Muslim ban proposal after the Paris attacks, and then his initial executive order restricting entry from several majority-Muslim countries. It was even present in his speech announcing his presidential run, when he declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.” But senior members of his team, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, have always embraced a comprehensively nationalistic opposition to immigration, on the grounds that it endangers not only Americans’ safety but their economic livelihood. As Bannon said on a radio program with Miller in March 2016, "the beating heart of this problem" is that "we’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration." The problem isn’t just criminals — it’s any immigrants serving as competition to American workers. This was the view that Trump expressed in his speech Tuesday night. "Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal immigration,” he argued. “The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers and puts great pressure on taxpayers." Here, Trump, like many immigration restrictionists, is relying on the contested assertion by Harvard economist George Borjas that immigration reduces wages for low-skilled American workers. It’s worth noting, first off, that even Borjas agrees that immigration makes the US richer overall; his analysis is only an argument against immigration if you think it’s impossible for the US to tax the winners from migration and give the proceeds to workers who might face more competition. But more importantly, the best quasi-experimental evidence we have from big, unexpected migrations like the Mariel boatlift from Cuba to the US, or the influx of Russian Jews to Israel in the 1990s, suggests that native workers’ wages don’t fall at all in response to big waves of immigration. If anything, they rise. Borjas has tried to knock down this result, only to be quickly debunked. A fair read of the evidence is that immigration probably doesn’t hurt US workers at all, and that even if there is damage, restricting immigration further is a ham-handed and inefficient remedy. The fact that there’s still strong opposition to immigration despite this is not surprising. It just indicates that the opposition to immigration has, as in Trump’s case, traditionally been motivated mainly by a desire to preserve the majority culture and a fear of demographic change, and has little to do with economics. But the shift to economics is important for what it portends for policy. Because all immigrants, legal or not, are supposed to have these negative effects on native workers, Trump is laying the groundwork for a crackdown not just on the undocumented population but on legal immigration in the future. That’s been a longstanding priority of Bannon and Miller’s, and this speech was a strong indication that it’s now Trump’s. Winner: the “dishonest media” For at least one night, we in the press corps — be it the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, or some new enemy — were spared a rant from the president about how the media is the opposition party, the enemy of the American people, or otherwise undermining the country. This is clearly a respite, not an actual shift in Trump’s beliefs and behavior. But it was nice in a very, very small way to see that Trump could avoid off-topic jeremiads when forced to deliver a formal address to Congress. II. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-speech-fact-check-lies-claims-joint-address-congress-jobs-immigration-pipeline-a7604861.html Donald Trump fact check: Almost every big claim he made in his Joint Address to Congress was false Much of the speech was focused on rhetoric and policy commitments, but it included a huge range of false claims Andrew Griffin @_andrew_griffin 9 hours ago [Video: President Trump's speech wasn't short of large claims] Donald Trump has completed his first ever speech to Congress as President. And almost every major claim made in it appeared to be false. He appeared to wrongly claim that he was responsible for a vast reduction in the price of the F-35 jet, as well as falsely characterising a report into the problems of immigration. The President's speech made contested claims about the value of immigration, his success in office, his plans for tax reform, and healthcare coverage. While much of the speech was focused on the same rhetoric that Mr Trump led his campaign with – including a commitment to bring jobs back to the US and boost the military – he also made a number of factual claims about his work as president. Here are some of those false claims in full, as fact checked by the Associated Press. ——— TRUMP: "According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America's taxpayers many billions of dollars a year." THE FACTS: That's not exactly what that report says. It says immigrants "contribute to government finances by paying taxes and add expenditures by consuming public services." The report found that while first-generation immigrants are more expensive to governments than their native-born counterparts, primarily at the state and local level, immigrants' children "are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the population." The report found that the "long-run fiscal impact" of immigrants and their children would probably be seen as more positive "if their role in sustaining labor force growth and contributing to innovation and entrepreneurial activity were taken into account." ——— TRUMP: "We've saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price" of the F-35 jet fighter. THE FACTS: The cost savings he persists in bragging about were secured in full or large part before he became president. The head of the Air Force program announced significant price reductions in the contract for the Lockheed F-35 fighter jet Dec. 19 — after Trump had tweeted about the cost but weeks before he met the company's CEO about it. Pentagon managers took action even before the election to save money on the contract. Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group, said there is no evidence of any additional cost savings as a result of Trump's actions. ——— TRUMP: "We will provide massive tax relief for the middle class." THE FACTS: Trump has provided little detail on how this would happen. Independent analyses of his campaign's tax proposals found that most of the benefits would flow to the wealthiest families. The richest 1 percent would see an average tax cut of nearly $215,000 a year, while the middle one-fifth of the population would get a cut of just $1,010, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint project by the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. ——— TRUMP: "Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force." THE FACTS: That's true, but for the vast majority of them, it's because they choose to be. That 94 million figure includes everyone aged 16 and older who doesn't have a job and isn't looking for one. So it includes retirees, parents who are staying home to raise children, and high school and college students who are studying rather than working. They are unlikely to work regardless of the state of the economy. With the huge baby-boomer generation reaching retirement age and many of them retiring, the population of those out of the labor force is increasing and will continue to do so, most economists forecast. It's true that some of those out of the workforce are of working age and have given up looking for work. But that number is probably a small fraction of the 94 million Trump cited. ——— TRUMP: "Obamacare is collapsing ... imploding Obamacare disaster." THE FACTS: There are problems with the 2010 health care law, but whether it's collapsing is hotly disputed. One of the two major components of the Affordable Care Act has seen a spike in premiums and a drop in participation from insurers. But the other component, equally important, seems to be working fairly well, even if its costs are a concern. Trump and congressional Republicans want to repeal the whole thing, which risks leaving millions of people uninsured if the replacement plan has shortcomings. Some critics say GOP rhetoric itself is making things worse by creating uncertainty about the future. The health law offers subsidized private health insurance along with a state option to expand Medicaid for low-income people. Together, the two arms of the program cover more than 20 million people. Republican governors whose states have expanded Medicaid are trying to find a way to persuade Congress and the administration to keep the expansion, and maybe even build on it, while imposing limits on the long-term costs of Medicaid. While the Medicaid expansion seems to be working, the markets for subsidized private health insurance are stressed in many states. Also affected are millions of people who buy individual policies outside the government markets, and face the same high premiums with no financial help from the health law. Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation says "implosion" is too strong a term. An AP count found that 12.2 million people signed up for this year, despite the Trump administration's threats to repeal the law. But a health care blogger and industry consultant, Robert Laszewski, agrees with Trump, saying too few young, healthy people have signed up to guarantee the stability of the insurance markets. ——— TRUMP: His budget plan will offer "one of the largest increases in national defence spending in American history". THE FACTS: Three times in recent years, Congress raised defence budgets by larger percentages than the 54 billion dollars, or 10%, increase Mr Trump proposes. The base defense budget grew by 41 billion dollars, or 14.3%, in 2002; by 37 billion dollars, or 11.3%, in 2003, and by 47 billion dollars, or 10.9%, in 2008, according to Defence Department figures. ——— TRUMP: "According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offences since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. We have seen the attacks at home - from Boston to San Bernardino to the Pentagon and yes, even the World Trade Centre." THE FACTS: It is unclear what Justice Department data he's citing, but the most recent government information does not back up his claim. Just over half the people Mr Trump talks about were born in the US, according to Homeland Security Department research revealed last week. That report said of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to attempt or carry out an attack in the US, just over half were native-born. Even the attacks Mr Trump singled out were not entirely the work of foreigners. Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his Pakistani wife killed 14 people in the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California, was born in Chicago. It is true that in the immediate aftermath of September 11, the FBI's primary concern was with terrorists from overseas feared to be plotting attacks in the US, but that is no longer the case. The FBI and the Justice Department have been preoccupied with violent extremists from inside the US who are inspired by the calls to violence and mayhem of the Islamic State group. The Justice Department has prosecuted scores of IS-related cases since 2014, and many of the defendants are US citizens. Additional reporting by Associated Press -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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