To put this another way, CBO finds the Trump 2019 budget woukd add the current market value of 125,313,283,000 Trump North Korea Summit coins (now 20% off!) more to the deficit than the White House claimed. #winning
"Trustees said the change in the Medicare fund forecast was the result of the GOP tax cut and the repeal of the individual mandate in Obamacare"
Report: Medicare will be depleted within 8 years, Social Security will be insolvent in 16 years ajc.com/news/national/…
Quite telling.
"The Cabinet secretaries for Treasury, HHS and Labor serve as the Social Security and Medicare trustees, along with 2 independent trustees who are supposed to represent the public. The public trustees are usually more candid, but **those posts remain unfilled**"
The Industry Financial Protection Bureau.
Usurper @CFPB acting director @MickMulvaneyOMB dissolved a group of outside experts that advised the (formerly) watchdog agency on important economic and financial issues apnews.com/amp/c12e629d73…
"Make no mistake: After they borrow $1.5 trillion to pass a windfall tax break for corporations and the rich, Trump, Ryan, and McConnell will seek cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to pay it back" – @RepAdamSchiff, Dec 23, 2017
Trump proposes major reorganization of federal govt, including
• merging Departments of Education & Labor
• relocating many social safety net programs into a new megadepartment to make them easier to cut, replacing HHS nyti.ms/2K0VOfm
"The new agency for social programs may include the pejorative "welfare" in its title ..
At the heart of the plan is an attempt to shift SNAP, which serves more than 42 million poor and working-class Americans, to the new agency from the Agriculture Dept"
Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nation’s wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.
Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, and workers are asking whether they are getting a raw deal. #GOPTaxScamnyti.ms/2LkdKCo
Share of nation's total income in
2000 (last time unemployment was under 4%):
• corporations: 8.3%
• workers: 66%
Now:
• corporations: 13.2%
• workers: 62%
If workers’ share had not shrunk, they would have had an additional $532 billion, or about $3,400 each #inequality
Revised OMB estimates project annual budget deficits to rise nearly $100 billion more than previously forecast in each of the next 3 years, pushing the federal deficit above $1 trillion starting in 2019 due to increased spending and interest payments wsj.com/articles/defic…
The forgotten man.
"Over 97% of the benefits [of a tax cut on capital gains] would go to the top 10% of income earners, and nearly 2/3 would go to the top 0.1%"
Trump considering unilateral $100 billion tax cut for the wealthy nyti.ms/2K8Jjxw
Treasury Department sees second-half U.S. government borrowing at most since 2008, raises projection for 2018 total net borrowing to $1.33 trillion bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
After several years of declines,the number of U.S. families without the financial means to buy enough food rose last year, and those with children were hardest hit cbsnews.com/news/more-amer…
Turkey has concluded that Jamal #Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this week by a 15-member Saudi team sent “specifically for the murder" washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e…
"#Khashoggi visited the consulate to obtain documents related to his upcoming wedding.
The killing, if confirmed, would mark a stunning escalation of Saudi Arabia’s effort to silence dissent, rounding up clerics, business execs & women’s rights advocates"
"The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. #Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate." reuters.com/article/us-sau…
Interpol president Meng Hongwei reported missing after trip to his native China; his wife hasn't heard from him since he left France at the end of September nbcnews.com/news/world/int…
"China has not commented officially on Meng Hongwei's disappearance & there was no mention of him in official media"
French police investigate disappearance of Interpol chief, place his wife under protection after receiving threats by phone & social media irishtimes.com/news/world/eur…
"The initial working assumption of Western investigators was Mr Meng had antagonized Chinese authorities in some way and had been detained as a result."
American Bar Association reopens evaluation of #Kavanaugh's "well-qualified" rating, based on his unhinged performance during a Senate hearing last week pbs.org/newshour/polit…
"A report by Washington Economics Group, whose clients include businesses like Nascar, projected that automatic restoration of voting rights would lead to $365 million/year in gains for Florida's economy, from lower prison costs and increased productivity"
Amazing statistic: the recidivism rate for people who had their voting rights automatically restored under Gov. Crist is 12.4%, vs a state average of 30%.
Also noteworthy: Charles and David Koch's network has declared support for Amendment 4.
.@nycsouthpaw: When career prosecutor Rachel Mitchell asked #Kavanaugh about his drinking & the July 1 party where Judge and Smyth were in attendance – a key date that aligns with Ford's account – Republican senators then came to his rescue and benched her yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh…
Trump says he rejected a one-on-one meeting with Justin Trudeau at the #UNGA, threatens tariffs on Canada auto exports: "We're going to tax the cars coming in, and we'll put billions and billions into our treasury .. Canada has treated us very badly"
Aside from his economic illiteracy (Americans pay the tariff, not foreign exporters), his personal animus towards Trudeau and Canada – neighbors, close allies, brothers and sisters – is senseless and destructive.