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Trump Promises a Federal Technology Overhaul To Save $1 Trillion (technologyreview.com)
New submitter threc shares a report from MIT Technology Review: The tech world descended on Washington, D.C. yesterday to attend a tech summit at the White House. According to MIT Technology Review associate editor Jamie Condliffe: "Trump suggested he might relax his stance on immigration as a way to get tech leaders to help his cause. 'You can get the people you want,' he told the assembled CEOs. That sweetener may be a response to a very vocal backlash in the tech world against the administration's recent travel bans. Trump may hope that his business-friendly stance will offer enough allure: if tech giants scratch his back, he may later deign to scratch theirs." The report continues: "'Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,' said Trump at the start of his meeting with the CEOs, according to the Washington Post. 'We're embracing big change, bold thinking, and outsider perspectives.' The headline announcement from the event was Trump's promise to overhaul creaking government computing infrastructure. According to Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and advisor, there's much to be done: federal agencies have over 6,000 data centers that could be consolidated, for instance, while the 10 oldest networks in use by the government are all at least 39 years old. The upgrade, said Trump, could save the country $1 trillion over the next 10 years."
Readers here may recall that Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney published a budget that had a $2 Trillion dollar math error.
Republicans (think Paul Ryan) often (always?) produce budgets that contain all sorts of tax cuts for upper brackets and then a "magic asterisk" that gives no detail but says the shortfall will be made up by a) economic growth stimulated by the tax cuts and b) cost savings from cutting government waste.
So my take is the bad optics of all this finally bubbled up to Trump (I guess Fox News couldn't filter it out totally) and he gave the command to his minions to find trillions of dollars of "government waste and inefficiency" to save the budget. So they came up with this.
It doesn't have to make sense. All he wants to do is get headlines out there that proclaim Trump Saves Us Trillions and for most of his base and way too much of the swing voters that is all they will see. It is ideal for this media purpose. If the topic gets the slightest bit technical he can count on the talking airheads to gloss it over and he'd up with "opposing views on this story" in the worst case.
What that means: enough voters will think have this view: Trump and Republicans produced a budget that will save our economy and Democrats are Fighting It. . They don't have to be right. They just have to throw up enough chaff to confuse the voter and Republicans win the mid-terms again.
Doubts that it's going to save $1 trillion. Trump lies constantly and he won't stick to anything he says...
I'm sure he'll close Gitmo and end warrantless wiretapping any day now, just like he promised when he was a Senator running for President.
Oh, and if you like your insurance plan, you'll be able to keep your insurance plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Hmmm, I wonder how many times you posted how Obama lied about fundamental things he actually did have direct control over, and not just promises about things in the future.
I'm betting zero.
There's different kinds of surprise. Am I surprised a politician, any politician, changed their tune? No. Trump specifically? My sense is that Trump quickly found himself lacking in people who would back him politically and has unfortunately begun to align himself more and more with the huckster caucus of the Republican party, those Republicans interested in enriching themselves and their corporate minions even further.
So Trump's turnaround in this issue is less than surprising in light of that, too, as those kinds of Republicans will all be leveraging that issue and it's just another thing for Trump to sell out on. I don't know that this is "bad Trump" or just another politician seeking political expediency.
I'm more surprised working technology professionals also bought into the con man's words.
You roll the dice and take your chances. What kinds of choices did people have? Hillary was bought and paid for and would have never considered H-1B reform because of her affiliation with Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Further, Democrats are allergic to any talk surrounding immigration that sounds like limits on immigration. They've drank their own kool-aid on immigration control being racism and also work hard to cultivate to every minority constituency.
So were technology people duped? Maybe, but only by their own misguided hopes that a politician would buck a lot of money influence. I think you can say that the issue got a lot more press because of Trump's statements on it, so maybe in some sense they got out of it all that could reasonably be expected.
At this point I think there's just too much money being made/saved on H1-Bs to get much traction on the issue. The nominal wage savings runs into the billions and the side money made probably some substantial fraction of that, and nearly all of it is short-term-result kinds of money, which seems to have a value multiplier among corporate types.