President Trump's Budget Includes a $2 Trillion Math Error (time.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TIME: President Trump's budget includes a simple accounting error that adds up to a $2 trillion oversight. Under the proposed budget released Tuesday, the Trump Administration's proposed tax cuts would boost economic growth enough to pay for $1.3 trillion in spending by 2027. But the tax cuts are also supposed to be revenue-neutral, meaning that trillion dollars is already supposed to pay for the money lost from the tax cuts. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the oversight an "elementary double count" and "a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course" in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
That remains to be seen. There's this thing in the Constitution called the Emoluments clause that restricts members of the government from receiving gifts, emoluments, offices or titles from foreign states without the consent of the United States Congress. Trump maintains, through at least his family members and a paper-thin revocable trust, a LOT of property interests (hotels, resorts, golf courses, vacation homes) that rich foreigners can dump money into in return for a little kind attention from Herr Donald.
He still hasn't released his tax returns either (is he still being audited, not that that means anything), which might show substantial financial obligations to foreign stake-holders (there's a lot of borrowing that goes on in the real-estate business).
Then there's this little matter of involvement of a foreign power in the matter of an election, and obstruction of justice for trying to cover up any link to that foreign power.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I disagree. I think Trump is a complete idiot. He can't make a statement over two sentences long that doesn't become a rambling filler-filled pile of nothing that is also impossible to parse. My belief is that he's suffering from dementia, but whatever the cause, the man is a moron. Now Reagan was a moron too, but at least he surrounded himself with some fairly rational individuals, and that's fine, no one expects a President to actually personally run every branch of the Government. But now you have someone probably mid-way through a serious cognitive decline who still believes he's some sort of super-genius.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From your own link, HUD made lots of errors in both directions totalling $500 billion. The actual effect was $3 million. They should check their work better, but the HUD audit is entirely different.
Like sanctuary cities that think they're above the law?
Actually, the vast majority of sanctuary cities are within the law, even by Trump's standards.
Like the federal government under Obama not enforcing immigration laws on the books.
It is well within the powers of the President to prioritize law enforcement, especially immigration. It's not like deportations dropped suddenly under Obama. Would you rather deport X felons or X/2 felons + X/2 otherwise innocent people? This kind of thing happens all the time at every level of government. District Attorneys don't prosecute every case that comes in front of them, they have to prioritize. Would you claim a cop is "not enforcing the traffic laws" because they choose not to pull over a speeder while on their way to a homicide? Probably not.
The Trump administration has done nothing counter to Constitution.
Well not successfully at least. Federal judges from all over the country found enough of a Constitutional issue in Trump's travel bans to warrant indefinite injunctions until the cases are settled (assuming the Administration still intends to fight them at all).
Keep in mind, the Administration didn't try to justify the bans in court, but instead claimed that they didn't have to provide justification. From the 9th Circuit Ruling (source):
[T]he government has taken the position that the president’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. ... There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You don't understand. When Republicans/Conservatives/Righties do it, it's noble and bravely challenging rampant over political correctness. When Democrats/Liberals/Lefties do it, it's proof that they're all evil monsters.
I'm aware of how the Laffer curve works, but most reputable economic studies show the top of the curve is at around a 60% top marginal tax rate. Anything lower than that and you are losing revenue. In any case, I am just going by what the budget itself claims. It counts the same two trillion twice, read the articles, it's a basic math error.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing above the law about sanctuary cities. The federal government can request assistance with immigration enforcement but the local governments are not compelled to cooperate. There is no law that says they must assist the INS on demand.
INS claims (falsely) that they're only focusing on undocumented immigrants if they have committed serious crimes, and in such cases even sanctuary cities cooperate and turn the prisoners over. The case that riled so many against sanctuary cities when an illegal immigrant killed someone in San Francisco, there was no active warrant for the killer and there was no reason to continue detaining him. ICE requested he be detained but there was no legal basis for further detaining. The killer had no history of violent crimes, his deporations were due to drug laws and attempting re-entry to the US.
Now would it have been above the law to detain a person when no charges had been filed, no warrant or evidence presented, but merely because a federal agent asked for this?
Deportations under Obama administration were higher than under any other president, it's really a stretch for some people to call him soft on illegal immigration given the numbers.