One more in the continuing series of both unprecedented and un-Presidential moves by The Donald. I’m guessing he won’t submit a budget for at least three reasons (I invite others to supply additional reasons): 1) he doesn’t have the slightest idea how and won’t allow himself to be shown how, 2) he doesn’t want to give away any surprises that he has up his sleeve (like the con man that he is), and 3) he hasn’t thought that far ahead.
Trump already dominates the news every time he urps out a tweet. Don’t need no stinkin’ budget to make the news – the whole world is already talkin’ about me all day every day!
Read the whole Forbes article to find out what they think his reasons are.
Or you could summarize for us, and prevent Forbes from getting more clicks and tracking us (it won’t show the page unless I turn off AdBlocker Plus). Please?
First of all, I thought she did summarize. Second, what I do in such cases is open the article in an incognito window. (I still have to see the ads, but don’t get the tracking cookie.
Those are ThelmaLou’s guesses for why Mr. Trump would not submit a budget (hence the phrase 'I’m guessing").
Her quoted text ends with a teaser and then she instructs us to give Forbes more money by reading the article ourselves, also a hint that there is information in the linked article that is not in the OP.
I did try as you suggested and pasted the link into a new Private Window, but it seemed to have difficulty turning off my AdBlocker and thus would not display the page.
That’s gutsy, Mr. P-word. If you don’t stick it out, it can’t get slapped.
Where Obama operated on the principle of *transparency *(let’s not debate whether he accomplished that, as I’m trying to make a point), Trump will operate on the principle of opacity.
Not how he rolls. If taking up Trump’s slack would forestall a serious problem for the country, he would go ahead and do it. Knowing that it might well succeed and Trump will take credit for it, he would still do it. If he can’t fuck Trump without fucking us, he won’t.
Other than W, who disappeared off the political map, and Nixon, who was shunned (and not entirely), every ex-President of our lifetimes has seen an obligation to help successive administrations in any way they could, and for the same reason they took the office in the first place: for the good of the country and its citizens.
Obama is an extraordinary example of this, and let’s just bow Carter’s way, but even Gerald Ford put in a day’s overtime when called on.
And now we have a “President” who apparently thinks it’s too much trouble to do the job, except as it permits him to tweet nonsense and convoke rallies chanting his name.
It would be pointless, though. Obama’s proposed budgets have been largely ignored by the House for years and wouldn’t have any of Trump’s priorities or policy items that require funding. We’ll probably have another year of continuing resolutions like we have had for the past few years. If anyone is actually going to do the work of putting together a proposed budget, it’s going to have to be Paul Ryan. AARP will need to have their blood pressure medication on stand-by.
What are the actual consequences here, in terms of Obama’s decision?
After all, if the Obama administration submits a budget based on its own budget priorities and principles, and based on the taxing and spending framework that Obama believes is appropriate, there’s no way on earth that Trump (or the Republican Congress, for that matter) is going to abide by it. As ganthet suggests, Obama’s budgets have been treated like shit by the Congress for much of the past four years, at least.
And if we know that Trump is just going to pursue his own economic policies, without regard for what Obama or the Democrats want, does it really matter very much whether Obama produces a budget as part of his outgoing administration?
It’d be excellent political theater in favor of the Democrats if the one and only budget ever proposed this year is the one full of Democratic priorities and policies. Trump can’t very well say “Obama’s budget is terrible, and I’m not going to replace it, because it was his responsibility and I can’t do any better”.
Wait, scratch that, Trump can very well say that, because he’s Trump. But at some point, eventually he’s going to start looking idiotic even to his base.
He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t plan on doing anything about the job. He plans to delegate, so someone else will make it, then he’ll present it as his own, to comply with the law–mostly because other people will tell him he has to, and that’s the only way it will get done.
Trump is mentally ill. He’s only showing it more and more. I just hope he’s taken from office sooner rather than later. Either he’ll listen to his betters, or they’ll get him declared mentally unfit. I’m starting to think that’s always been the backup plan.
It seems like it. But continuing resolutions would leave Trump unable to build his wall or hire more Customs and Border Protection/Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and immigration court personnel that would enable them just to get out of the massive current backlog of deportation cases they have now, let alone add millions to it.
Or fund any trillion dollar infrastructure plan, or increase the size of the military, or…