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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.