2017 Mar 13th

A few months ago when the unemployment rate had dropped from its enormous high of about 10 percent to just over 7 percent Donald Trump wasn’t buying it. He rejected the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) number. He insisted that unemployment was more like 17 percent, maybe even over 40 percent. Now that Trump has been president for a while his tune has changed; the recent BLS unemployment numbers, below 5 percent, are a credit to his leadership and the expectations economic leaders have for his programs. The current low unemployment rate is just a continuation of the rates dropping over the last year but Trump wants some credit here.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about this contradiction at a news briefing after the report’s release. His response: “I talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly. They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” OK, stop laughing; the man was serious.

The same weaseling is happening with “Trumpcare;” he begins by getting testimony about the awfulness of Obamacare from less than a dozen people, never mind that even more have testified that Obamacare saved their lives. The notion that a nationwide program of any sort should be evaluated by testimonials is so hopelessly naïve as to defy logic.

Sean Spicer spent the beginning remarks of his press conference today condemning Obamacare, but also taking care to denigrate the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office, a politically neutral group charged with estimating costs and expected to be unkind to Trumpcare.

Spicer was also asked about the abrupt firing of the U.S. attorneys appointed by the Obama administration. He said this was no different than actions of previous administrations which also dismissed previous appointees. It was different of course. Previous administrations allowed a reasonable time period for the “old timers” to depart; this time the dismissed attorneys were to pack up their rolodexes and leave the building that day. These U.S. attorneys were treated as if the Trump administration expected them to steal their office chairs. Why should we expect curtesy from an administration headed by a man who brags about his ability to sexually assault women.

The Trumpcare program being pushed by Paul Ryan has some very juicy benefits for the wealthy who will surely support it. We’ll list a few of them here but listing them all would run a little long: When Obamacare was being considered so were tax increases on the wealthy to help pay for it. There were an increase in capital gains taxes and an increase in Medicare taxes. The tax increase on capital gains boosted that tax from 20.0 percent to 23.8 percent. The Medicare tax increase was bumped up by just 0.9 percent. Someone who makes 10 million a year suddenly gets a 4.7 percent increase in income because the 4.7 percent tax surcharge has been eliminated. That amounts to about 460 thousand extra dollars if you earn ten million dollars a year. Thank you very much Speaker Ryan. I’ll bet some of the beneficiaries of Speaker Ryan’s health care plan will make a nice contribution to the Republican party; they can certainly afford it.

 P.S. I have discovered that the White House has a website where people are invited to share their stories of disastrous experiences with Obamacare.