TRUMP BUDGET - The Rich First, the People Last

[Advertisement]  "Fire Sale, bargain basement prices! National Monuments and Parks, Easy Access to all agencies!"  Contact 'Trump Sales" at 1-800-666-SALE (all payments made through Trump PAC)  Brown people need not apply.

"What Trump’s proposed 2021 budget says about his policy priorities" PBS NewsHour 2/10/2020

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump unveiled a $4.8 trillion budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year on Monday.  His plan includes cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs, as well as an increase in funding for the Department of Homeland Security.  Yamiche Alcindor joins Amna Nawaz to discuss how the president’s “wish list” illustrates his continued commitment to a hardline stance on immigration policy.

AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS - 2020 Where It's Going

"What’s in the $1.4 trillion federal spending bill" PBS NewsHour 1/2/2020

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Before leaving town for the holidays, lawmakers came together to pass a huge federal spending bill that illuminates the government’s policy priorities for 2020.  The deal allocates a total of $1.4 trillion to the military, education, a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border and much more.  Lisa Desjardins joins Nick Schifrin to discuss where American tax dollars will be going this year.

RED INK - Senate's 2-Year Budget

Hay, America is already trillions of dollars in debt so lets just increase it.  Sound idea....it's NOT.

"The long-term debt implications of Senate’s new 2-year budget" PBS NewsHour 8/1/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Senate passed a new budget bill Thursday, delivering a rare bipartisan legislative agreement.  But critics say the spending it allocates and its temporary suspension of the debt ceiling represent runaway spending and fiscal irresponsibility.  Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the huge numbers at play, who opposed the new budget and the different types of spending it reflects.

TRUMPONOMICS - 2020 Budget

IMHO:  Economic growth for the rich and powerful, and continued stagnation for the lower and middle class. (aka, screw the common people)

"How Trump’s proposed 2020 budget hinges on significant economic growth" PBS NewsHour 3/11/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The White House has released President Trump’s proposed 2020 budget.  The record $4.7 trillion plan calls for increased military spending and $8.6 billion for Trump’s controversial border wall, along with significant cuts to domestic programs.  Judy Woodruff talks to the President’s Chief Economic Adviser, Larry Kudlow, about his priorities and why “growth solves a lot of problems” for the economy.

TRUMP AGENDA - The Wall Cost

"Will Trump’s Wall Pay for Itself?" by Robert Farley, FactCheck.org 3/16/2018

President Donald Trump cited a contested report from an organization that advocates low immigration to claim that a wall along the southern border will pay for itself, because those stopped from illegally crossing would not be a burden on taxpayers.

The report, from the Center for Immigration Studies, relies on data extrapolated from a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, or NAS.  Several of those who created the NAS report, however, say their data are being misused, and that keeping out those who cross the border illegally might actually cost the government money over time.

We caution that estimating the cost of immigrants well into the future is highly speculative business, and requires a number of assumptions.  Reasonable people may disagree about which assumptions are most appropriate.  But it is notable that several members of the NAS panel object to the way their data were used to support the president’s claim.

Trump first forwarded the claim via a retweet of a quote from a Fox News Story.

The same day, in remarks in San Diego after reviewing border wall prototypes, Trump put that claim in his own words.

The wall, Trump said, “will save thousands and thousands of lives, save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars by reducing crime, drug flow, welfare fraud, and burdens on schools and hospitals.  The wall will save hundreds of billions of dollars — many, many times what it’s going to cost.”

First, let’s get to the origin of the claim.

The Fox News story cited as its source a study from the Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, a group that advocates low immigration.  A Feb. 15, 2017, study, “The Cost of a Border Wall vs. the Cost of Illegal Immigration,” by Steven Camarota, director of research for CIS, does conclude that “if a border wall stopped a small fraction of the illegal immigrants who are expected to come in the next decade, the fiscal savings from having fewer illegal immigrants in the country would be sufficient to cover the costs of the wall.”

The CIS report puts the average lifetime cost to local, state and federal governments of border-crossers — the cost of government benefits minus taxes paid — at $74,722 in today’s dollars per person.  CIS then assumes a border wall would prevent 160,000 to 200,000 illegal crossings in the next 10 years.  Therefore, it concludes, the net savings would be $12 billion to $15 billion, enough to pay for the wall.  The CIS report counts those savings upfront, even though it would take decades to accrue.  (Also, the White House has since requested $18 billion for what it calls the first phase of the wall construction.)

As we said, these kinds of economic estimates are speculative and require researchers to make numerous assumptions.  So let’s look at the ones CIS made, and which several members of the National Academies panel contest.

CIS extrapolates data from a 2016 NAS report, “The Econonomic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,” [PDF download link] by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  The 500-page report was the consensus of a panel appointed by the NAS to answer, among other questions, what impact immigration — legal and illegal — is having on federal, state and local budgets.  The 18-member panel consisted of economists, sociologists, demographers and public policy experts.

The NAS report concluded that “first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are the native-born, in large part due to the costs of educating their children.  However, as adults, the children of immigrants (the second generation) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.”

The NAS panel considered eight different scenarios, each of which had different assumptions about future government spending and tax rates.  Projecting future budgets is the biggest uncertainty in the report, and it affects the results greatly.

Camarota said he chose to take an average of those eight NAS scenarios.  And he also decided not to include the net cost, or benefit, of the second generation children born to those who crossed the border illegally.

It is those two decisions that lie at the crux of the criticism of Camarota’s report.

Averaging the scenarios “makes no sense,” said Gretchen Donehower, a researcher in the Department of Demography at the University of California at Berkeley, who was hired as a consultant to the NAS panel to do calculations on the fiscal impact of immigrants.

“An average is appropriate when you have similar things with variation and you are trying to get a central tendency,” she said.  “Our eight scenarios are completely different ways of thinking about the question.  They are averaging not just apples and oranges, but watermelons and blueberries and saying the answer tells you something about fruit.”

Donehower also criticized the CIS decision not to include the contribution of future children of immigrants who may offset the net cost of the parents.  Camarota said he decided not to include the children of border-crossers because the fiscal impact for those children was considered over the next 75 years.  Camarota argued such a long time frame is too “speculative.”

“Well, the whole exercise is speculative,” Donehower said.  “We include 75 years of projected taxes and benefits for the immigrant and for his/her children, the cost of children 75 years from now is no less speculative than the cost of the immigrant 75 years from now.  I don’t see the justification for leaving them out as legitimate.”

Donehower believes the most reasonable scenario to use when estimating the cost of illegal immigration would be one in which immigrants are not assumed to contribute to an increase in the cost of such things as defense spending or interest on the national debt.  She said “keeping 200,000 people out over the next ten years will likely not lower defense budgets, for example.”

She also believes it makes sense to use the Congressional Budget Office’s long-term budget outlook, which assumes legislators will at some point rein in the deficit spending of our current path.  Other scenarios assume there are no budget adjustments, and that debt is allowed to explode over time.  In that scenario, the estimated cost of providing government services would go up for every American, as well as the cost of every new immigrant.

Under those assumptions, the children of immigrants are net contributors to the federal coffers, and more than offset the cost of their parents.

“Given that set of choices, and taking the CIS guess at the educational attainment of an illegal border crosser, my calculation is that each immigrant prevented by a wall would COST the government about $8,000,” Donehower said.

Camarota argues that Donehower has chosen the only scenario that produces positive results.

“By averaging them all, I do not privilege any one scenario over the other seven,” Camarota said.  His report, he said, “moderates the extreme values, which makes sense given all the uncertainty about the future.”

Kim Reuben, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center and one of the NAS panelists, agrees with Donehower that averaging the scenarios is inappropriate.

“Certainly, some scenarios are more relevant than others,” Reuben said.

Reuben agreed with the assumptions made by Donehower, noting that if you don’t include the cost/benefit of the inevitable children born to border-crossers, you are counting the cost to educate them but not the benefit of the taxes they pay once they enter the workforce.

“In my mind, adding $12 billion or $15 billion to pay for a wall is not realistically going to be a revenue-generating activity,” Reuben said.

Others on the panel — including Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Research Center and Christopher Mackie, the NAS study director who coordinated the panel’s efforts — questioned the CIS’ assumption that the wall would stop 160,000 to 200,000 illegal border crossings over the next decade.

Camarota said his estimate was based on stopping 9 percent to 12 percent of those expected to successfully cross in the next decade, based in part on recent apprehensions.  Passel counters that fewer unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and Central America are “settling” in the U.S. (as opposed to crossing temporarily and returning) and so fewer long-term immigrants would be stopped by a border wall.

Mackie, the study director, said the CIS math only addresses the fiscal cost of immigration and that “there is also an economic/labor market cost to slowing immigration.  To the extent that the wall would decrease immigration, it would shrink the economy, especially given the current demand for low-skill workers in certain industries (construction, food processing, farming).”

“This calculation by CIS is not a fair or accurate use of the report’s findings,” Mackie told us in an email.

We should also note that nothing in the CIS analysis (nor the NAS report) is related to the cost of drugs or crime, as Trump and the Fox News story suggested.

Again, we are talking about estimates for the fiscal cost or benefit of immigrants, and those numbers are based on assumptions about future spending and taxes, and immigration trends, among other things.  And in this case, several members of the NAS panel dispute the conclusions of the CIS report cited by President Trump.  Readers would be wise to take the claim with a grain of salt.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 2/9/2018

"Shields and Brooks on budget deal economics, White House domestic abuse scandal" PBS NewsHour 2/9/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the bipartisan budget deal that increases spending and add to the deficit, President Trump’s defense of a White House aide accused of domestic abuse, and questions about the future of Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  And now to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Gentlemen, welcome.

So, I’m sorry, Mark, to go from that great music in Appalachia to talking about the budget.  But that was the big thing that passed in the wee hours of this morning.  The President signed it today.  Both parties somehow came together.

What does it say about their priorities?

Mark Shields, syndicated columnist:  Well, first of all, Judy, step back.

And Edmund Burke, who was a friend of mine the 18th Century…

(LAUGHTER)

Mark Shields:  … conservative, said 'all government is compromise and barter.  And this was.'

This was a compromise and barter.  Each side got some things they wanted and other things they didn’t.  So that is sort of — it evokes echoes of an earlier era in this city.  At the same time, it was…

Judy Woodruff:  You mean because they agreed?

Mark Shields:  Because they agreed.  And the parties were split.  It wasn’t unanimous on one side or anything of the sort.

But, that said, I think it’s fair to say that the deficit itself is now dead as an issue.  All of us have gone to Republican Conventions where it was solemnly sworn that they would be for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.  That’s over.

Maya MacGuineas was on the show earlier today.  And she has been very conscientious, very effective.  But there is no move now.  The debt is out of control.  We went from were borrowing $436 billion more this year than we did last year, and that’s even before this latest agreement.

So, Republicans — Bill Clinton did balance the budget.  Nothing since has been remotely approaching that.

Judy Woodruff:  So, David, red ink as far as the eye can see forever and ever?

David Brooks, New York Times:  It was a compromise, but it’s the kind of compromise we always see.

Ever since we came, or since our segment started — maybe as Burke and Paine in the 18th century — it was…

(LAUGHTER)

They have been able to compromise when it comes to expanding the deficits.  And that’s consistently been true over the past many years.

If you’re just — if every side gets to spend on what they want to spend, that’s the way they can compromise.  They have never been able to compromise when both parties have to take some pain.  And so that’s the kind of compromise they can’t do.

What strikes me as special about this is that everyone is a hypocrite on the deficits.  They’re all for cutting red ink when they’re in the minority and they’re all against it when they’re in the majority.

But there is a shift in tone in the Republican Party that seems interesting to me, which is, it used to be a party that talked the language of economics first.  Its native language was economics, an economic language, and so the budget really did sort of matter, and the budget really mattered, and tax cuts mattered.

Now economics is a secondary language for the Republican Party.  Immigration is the first language.  It’s an identity party, not an economic party, right now.  And so they’re willing to compromise on a lot of spending if they can win on immigration.  And that’s sort of where the party has gone.

Judy Woodruff:  And because immigration wasn’t part of this deal, Mark, as David, that’s how the Republicans were able to sign on.

Mark Shields:  It wasn’t.  It wasn’t a part of this.

Judy Woodruff:  That’s what I said, that it wasn’t.

Mark Shields:  No, no, and that — I think it’s fair to say, though, Judy, that if the Senate were determinant, I think there’s at least 60 votes in the Senate, and maybe even a solid veto-proof majority, for immigration reform that provides relief for these young people who were brought here as children and who have been contributing members of our society ever since.

But it’s the Republican House, and it’s in particular the anti-immigration caucus that paralyzes Paul Ryan.

But I just — I do want to point out one thing on the deficit itself.  We went through two World Wars, the Civil War, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Great Depression, and ran up a total indebtedness of $1 trillion.  And the Democrats were accused of being the tax-and-spend party.

And then we got the tax cut and spend.  The debt quadrupled, quadrupled, under Reagan and Bush, and that really set the pattern.  It was successful politically.

Bill Clinton, for all his failings and all his foibles, in eight years went from the biggest deficits in our country to the biggest surpluses.  So, now we have had 17 years of war financed by three tax cuts, I mean, which I think does reflect what David was talking about.

Judy Woodruff:  So is one party or another more responsible for this, David, or is there blame to go around?

David Brooks:  I do think there is blame to go around.  Deficits tend to come down when we have divided government.

When one party has control, deficits go up, because they can spend on their priorities.  And the Democrats like spending.  The Republicans love tax cuts.  You get a little of both.

I’m not a big believer in third parties, but if there is a third party movement, I suspect the debt will be a big part of that.  Remember how powerful that issue was for Ross Perot.

Judy Woodruff:  Yes.

David Brooks:  And so we can say deficits are going away as an issue, but deficits aren’t going away as a reality.

And as interest rates go up, the burden of paying just down the debt begins to swallow more and more of the budget.  It cuts out of the defense spending.  It cuts out of domestic discretionary spending.  And you just become a government that just pays bankers.  And that could be a gigantic issue, especially as interest rates rise.

Mark Shields:  And I would just point out, for those who think about deficits at all, the borrowing on the interest rate, Judy, and the payment of the debt to bondholders is a transfer from people of ordinary income to the wealthiest Americans.

It’s an absolute anti-decency transfer of wealth to people who have to pay their taxes in order to pay off bondholders.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 9/1/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Hurricane Harvey unity, climate change politics" PBS NewsHour 9/1/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Miles O'Brien to discuss the week's news, including how Hurricane Harvey might redirect Republicans' fall agenda, the Trump administration's response to the emergency, how the government will pay for the long and arduous recovery, whether the storm will shift political discourse about climate change and more.

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  In addition to the grueling work of rescue and recovery on the ground, Hurricane Harvey has stirred up political challenges and marked the first natural disaster on President Trump's watch.

For what's at stake, we get the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Gentlemen, good to have you with us.

To what extent has the storm on Friday and what has ensued changed what's going to happen in Washington in September?  Do you think this is a reset in a sense, David?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  I have decided to take the most willfully confident or least optimistic point of view just maybe post-flood, that the dove comes bearing the olive branch.

And I do think there's potential for things to get better.  The Republicans were headed toward dysfunction this fall with the budget showdowns, with this fight over the wall, possible government shutdown.

And now they at least have a pretext, all the while knowing they look dysfunctional and they have to get something done.  Now they have a pretext to change the subject, to put some budget relief in there for the flood, without doing offsets, without trying to rip the money out from other programs.

And they could say, hey, we can't do the wall right now.  We got to rebuild Texas.  And, by the way, on the background, a lot of people are going to need a lot of construction workers in Texas.  And this is a construction with a construction worker flourish.

So, maybe this isn't the time to crack down on immigration.  And so I think there's a possibility, if they want to look functional, to seize this moment, whether they will or not.  But I'm going for maximal optimistic unrealism.

MILES O'BRIEN:  So, Mark, would you agree that the storm has given Republicans some cover for a kumbaya moment?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:  Not necessarily kumbaya moment, because I think that's impossible with Donald Trump; because he's so mercurial, so volatile, and so self-obsessed.

But I think it's great political opportunity for Republicans, partly for the reasons that David said.  The old maxim in combat in World War II was, there are no atheists in a foxhole.  There no libertarian, conservative, small-government people at a time when they're in the wake of a hurricane.

People turn — what's the government going to do?  I want it done.  Even the much ridiculed — and legitimately so — Ted Cruz, who ran for President proclaiming he was the most unpopular man in the Senate, earned that epithet, sobriquet by opposing any hurricane aid to the citizens of New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.

And 22 of the 23 Republican members of Congress from Texas, including John Cornyn, the senator and Cruz, opposed it [Sandy relief].  Now, of course, they are the biggest exhorters for federal aid, federal involvement, national government rushing in.

But I do think it's an opportunity for Republicans to unite and to get away from the wall and President's empty threat to close the government if it weren't funded.
-----
MILES O’BRIEN:  What about tax reform?  That was something that, in the midst of this storm, President Trump was talking about.  Is there any chance there will be any traction on that?

MARK SHIELDS:  There is no tax reform.

What it is, is a tax cut.  And they have concluded that there’s a real problem in this country when it comes to money distribution, that the poor have too much and the rich don’t have enough. [Republican view]  And this is the solution.

DAVID BROOKS:  Just to make Mark feel good, I don’t think anything is going to pass.

I was thinking, who was in office, who was in power in 1986?  You had Dan Rostenkowski in the House, a guy named Bob Packwood in the Senate, James Baker,

MARK SHIELDS:  Patrick Moynihan.

DAVID BROOKS:  Patrick Moynihan, Bill Bradley.

MARK SHIELDS:  Bill Bradley.  Dick Gephardt.  Yes.

DAVID BROOKS:  This was like the dream team of legislative skill.

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.

DAVID BROOKS:  And there’s just nobody like that, because they don’t — people do not have the experience to pass complicated legislation, let alone a White House.

Tax reform is incredibly hard, because every time you cut a loophole, there’s an army that wants to preserve it.  And it’s just hard to…

MARK SHIELDS:  Dick Darman.

DAVID BROOKS:  Dick Darman is another figure.

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.  Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVID BROOKS:  We have sort of lost human capital in Washington of people who know how to do complicated stuff.

MARK SHIELDS:  It’s a good point.  We have devalued it.

When you run against Washington long enough, and deprecate public service, I mean, after a while, you stop attracting or making it appealing for talented people to come and to stay.  And [back] then public service was an honorable and important…

(CROSSTALK)

DAVID BROOKS:  The talent is a side, but the experience is low.

Those people had put through, over the previous 20 or 30 years, lots of complicated legislation, especially under Johnson, and even under Nixon.

And the people now, they just don’t have the experience of doing that.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Time Running Out

aka "Time For Screwing the American People Running Out"

REMINDER:  The Federal Budget is NOT the important issue Congress and the media make it to be.  Budgets do NOT spend one single penny, money is actually spent by Appropriation Bills.

"Is the GOP's ambitious to-do list running out of time?" PBS NewsHour 6/6/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Members of Congress are back in Washington, ready to return to their legislative to-do lists.  Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate are diving right back into the debate over health care -- maybe the biggest item on the GOP agenda right now.  But infrastructure, tax and spending bills, and the debt ceiling are priorities too.  Lisa Desjardins and John Yang join Judy Woodruff for a closer look.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 5/26/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Trump's first trip, press bashing in Montana" PBS NewsHour 5/26/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss President Trump's first trip abroad and views on NATO, plus dramatic domestic cuts in the White House's budget proposal, a new CBO assessment of the Republican health care bill, and whether an alleged assault by a political candidate suggests growing hostility toward the press.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

All right, let's start this week on the foreign front.  The president met potentates, presidents, prime ministers, and a Pope.  There were magical orbs.

(LAUGHTER)

HARI SREENIVASAN:  There were tweet-sized messages stuck into a Wailing Wall.  How did he do?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:  B-plus.  No.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  Well, I'm not going to grade him.  I grade him on the curve.

I would say the visual highlight was with the Pope when he said, you know, the Pope is a very humble man, much like me, which he had tweeted earlier, and that's why I like him so much.

But just sort of they're polar opposites, of the two, one a champion of immigrants and refugees and almost disdainful of opulence and excessive wealth, and the other sort of the embodiment of it.

But I thought, quite frankly, the first part of the trip, he laid down the policy, and the policy is that we will stand on the side of Sunni autocrats against terrorism, and no questions asked.

And here, in addition, is a major weapons, a huge weapons sale that — and we're not going to ask how you use it or where you use it, and if people are killed in Yemen, and they're — made in the USA is on the weapon that kills them, and it's done indiscriminately, that's their business and not ours, because the operating and organizing principle of foreign policy is opposition to terrorism under Donald Trump.

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  Yes, I thought Melania had a very good week.  I thought a lot of good moments for her.  There was a lot of good judgments, actually.

He, by the standards of some of the competence of the previous week, I would say you would have to say the trip was, by competence standards, a success.  He did what he wanted to do in Saudi Arabia, at NATO, at various other places.

I do think, as Mark suggested, the chief oddity of the entire trip is that we seem to be mean to our friends and kind to our foes.  And so, Saudi Arabia — Fareed Zakaria had a very good column on this — we're supposed to be against terrorism, and Trump loves to talk about Iranians — Iran's influence on terrorism, but the main source of terror funding for both the ideas and sometimes the organizations is Saudi Arabia.  It's not Iran.

And so — but, somehow, we're super nice to Saudi Arabia.  Meanwhile, we're super mean to Germany and France and some of our NATO allies.  And so there's just been a perversion of American foreign policy, which is sort of based on the idea that character doesn't matter, and you can — whether the leaders from Russia or the Philippines or Saudi Arabia, that people of bad character are people we can ally with.

And, somehow, I think there is a consistency between the government here and some of the governments the Trump administration likes around the world.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  There was a bit of that we just saw …

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.  I'm sorry?

HARI SREENIVASAN:  There was a bit of that we just saw in the conversation that Judy had.

MARK SHIELDS:  That's exactly right.

I would just say that the NATO part of the visit, I found particularly disturbing, because there was nothing about the principles and values.  There was nothing about values and what we share and what animates us and what we respect and revere, whether it's individual rights or democracy.

That just seemed to be unimportant.  And all the criticism that the President had was stored up, as David pointed out, for these folks for somehow being welfare cheats or something.

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes.  And that's pure demagoguery.

He spoke as if we — they owe us money because they haven't been paying their dues, which is not true.

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.

DAVID BROOKS:  That's not the way that the — the problem is that they sort of pledged to gradually get to 2 percent of GDP in defense spending.

MARK SHIELDS:  That's right.

DAVID BROOKS:  And some of the countries have, and a lot of the countries have not.  And that's a legitimate issue.

But he portrayed it as if we're bailing them out, and they owe us money, and they haven't paid their bills, which is just actually untrue.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - Anti-Science and Anti-Regulation

From the Alternate Universe

"Trump Administration Says It Isn't Anti-Science As It Seeks to Slash EPA Science Office" by Lisa Song, ProPublica 5/24/2017

The Office of Research and Development has been at frontlines of virtually every environmental crisis.  Trump wants to cut its funding in half.

When the city of Toledo temporarily lost access to clean drinking water several years ago after a bloom of toxic algae, the Environmental Protection Agency sent scientists from its Office of Research and Development to study health effects and formulate solutions.

The same office was on the front lines of the Flint water crisis and was a critical presence in handling medical waste from the U.S. Ebola cases in 2014.

Thomas Burke, who directed ORD during the last two years of the Obama administration and was the agency's science adviser, calls the office the nation's “scientific backstop in emergencies.”

President Trump's 2018 budget would slash ORD's funding in half as part of an overall goal to cut the EPA's budget by 31 percent.

A statement from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt did not directly address the cuts to ORD, but offered broad defense of the proposed agency budget, saying it “respects the American taxpayer” and “supports EPA's highest priorities with federal funding for priority work in infrastructure, air and water quality, and ensuring the safety of chemicals in the marketplace.”

ORD has no regulatory authority, but it conducts the bulk of the research that underlies EPA policies.  ORD scientists are involved in “virtually every major environmental challenge the nation has,” Burke said.  Diminishing the role and input of the office, he said, risked leaving the country “uninformed about risks and public health.”

“In time, you're flying blind,” he said.  “Everything becomes a mystery.”

Trump's budget, released Tuesday, reflects the president's wish list.  The numbers likely will change by the time it goes through the congressional appropriations process, but the proposed cuts are consistent with the administration's push against environmental regulation and scientific funding.  Many of the cuts fall on agencies involved with climate change research, including the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters in a Tuesday briefing that the budget reduces climate science funding without eliminating it.

“Do we target it?  Sure,” Mulvaney said in response to a reporter's question.  “Do a lot of the EPA reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science?  Yes.  Does it mean that we are anti-science?  Absolutely not  (WTF! my comment).  We're simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the folks who pay the taxes, and say, look, yeah, we want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.”

Much of the EPA's climate research takes place in the Office of Air and Radiation, which is separate from ORD.  But ORD studies the strategic, long-term effects of climate change, including the effects on agriculture and the oceans, Burke said.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former EPA administrator who worked for George W. Bush from 2001 to June 2003, said the proposed ORD cuts are more drastic than anything she can remember.

Whitman said she expects Congress will restore much of the funding, but she worries about the message behind the budget.

“A budget to me was always a policy document,” she said.  Regardless of what Congress does, this administration's policy “indicates to me [that] they'll be looking for other ways to … stifle the research and slow it down,” she said.

OMB and the EPA did not return requests for comment about the ORD cuts.

ORD is one of several EPA programs listed under a section of the budget called “2018 major savings and reforms.”  The others include EPA enforcement (24 percent cut); Superfund, which cleans up toxic waste sites (30 percent); categorical state grants (45 percent); and funding for watershed protection, energy efficiency and voluntary climate programs, which would be eliminated.

The budget states the ORD reductions would allow the EPA to “focus on core Agency responsibilities … At lower funding levels for the Office of Research and Development, the Agency would prioritize intramural research activities that are either related to statutory requirements or that support basic and early stage research and development activities in the environmental and human health sciences.”

Whitman and Burke said ORD already does that — and halving the budget would make it virtually impossible to meet EPA's regulatory mandate.

ORD is “the backbone of the scientific research that goes on,” Whitman said.  “Every regulation promulgated by EPA is based in science.”

Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he worries Congress will use the budget to justify serious but less drastic cuts to the agency.  This administration's philosophy seems to be “if you don't measure it, you don't have to be held accountable for it.”

ORD also helps regional EPA offices.  Michael Mikulka, president of AFGE Local 704, a union representing scientists, engineers and attorneys at EPA's Region 5 office (in the Great Lakes area), said he relies on ORD's Cincinnati lab for advice on toxic waste cleanup.  “If their staff is cut significantly, there would be less people to advise us.”

Burke said ORD was always going to be a target.  The office came under fire from environmentalists in 2015 when it released a draft study that said hydraulic fracturing had no “widespread, systemic impacts” on drinking water.  After considering comments from the EPA's independent Science Advisory Board, the report authors reversed their findings, concluding there was insufficient evidence to support their previous statement.  This time, the report was widely criticized by the oil and gas industry.

ORD is also home to the IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System) program that sets exposure guidelines for chemicals.  The program has been criticized for dragging its feet and bowing to the interests of the chemical industry.

“I'm very concerned the IRIS program will be zeroed out,” Burke said.  “There's an endless challenge by polluters to delay the science.”

But aside from a few high-profile issues, much of ORD's work takes place under the radar.  The office has laboratories all over the country, working on air pollution, ocean acidification and vehicle emissions.

One of ORD's lesser-known responsibilities is dealing with homeland security.  “God forbid, if we have to clean up a water supply after a terrorist activity, it [would be] in this office,” Burke said.

Whitman said the EPA was tasked with cleaning up the Hart Senate Office Building in 2001 after then-Sen.  Tom Daschle received an envelope containing anthrax powder.  Whitman remembers asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a safe standard of anthrax exposure.  The CDC didn't know, she said, so ORD did the research and set it at zero.

“These are the kinds of things you lose” when you de-fund the “national nerve center of the science challenges facing not just the EPA, but all the states and all the communities,” Burke said.

REPUBLICAN AGENDA - The Spending Bill

aka "The Art of Screwing American Taxpayers, Again"

"The biggest spending bill trade-offs for Republicans and Democrats" PBS NewsHour 5/1/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Congress' first bipartisan deal of the Trump era is a massive spending deal that keeps government running through the fall and boosts funding for the Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  But to get needed Democratic votes on board, a number of President Trump's top priorities were cast aside.  Lisa Desjardins joins William Brangham for a closer look.

"Does the spending compromise set Congress up for a bigger fight later?" PBS NewsHour 5/1/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Congress was able to agree on a compromise deal to avert a government shutdown, but a bigger fight may come in the fall when the current spending bill runs out.  Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR join William Brangham to discuss the spending deal, plus the current state of Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare and President Trump’s 100-day rally.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 3/17/2017

"Shields and Brooks on GOP health care bill pushback, Trump's dramatic budget" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the conundrum for Republicans trying to pass a health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act in the face of different factions of opposition, the White House budget blueprint offering sweeping cuts, plus the continuing allegation of a Trump Tower wiretap.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentleman.

So, let's pick up with the conversation, David, that Jeffrey Brown was just having with the head of the American Medical Association.

President Trump is saying again today the health care overhaul is moving along very well, it's going to move through the House.

What do you see as the prospects?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  It has no critics. (satirically)

No.  I'm first all amazed that they did it first.  Of all the issues to tackle, health care is probably the hardest one.  And so every four or eight years, some President decides, you know, let's do health care first.  And it hurts them every single time.

Whether the prospects of this bill are good, I tend to doubt.  It has very few fans in the Senate.  And it has two wings of opposition which are in contradiction, what we call the coverage caucus, who want a little more expensive bill that will cover more people; and the Freedom Caucus wants a less expensive bill to cover less.

You can't — they have to win both of these groups.  And how do you do this, when they are mutually contradictory?  And so the Senate is very daunting.  So, therefore, you're asking the House members to vote for something that will take away coverage that already exists, for a bill that probably doesn't have great prospects in the long run.

I personally bet they get through the House, just because it's so hard to go against the sitting President in his first major thing.  But I wouldn't want to bet on the eventual passage of this.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And, Mark, what we hear is the main argument they are using now in the House as it gets closer to the vote is the political vote, you can't go against your President.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:  Yes.

It's an argument that used, used in 1993 for the Democrats and Bill Clinton on his major budget and tax increase, which, by the way, per what David was talking about, included a BTU tax that House members voted on.  It passed the House in a very difficult vote and died in the Senate.

Several moderate to conservative Democrats walked away from it.  And it left those House members with a vote that they really couldn't — it became politically mortal — fatal in several instances.  I think the same thing is true here, and for good reasons, Judy.

I mean, the Republicans — part of David's answer — they pledged in 2010, they pledged in 2012, they pledged in 2016.  That was the one pledge they had,  repeal Obamacare.  It was an applause line.

So, it really did take on almost a moral imperative, or at least a political imperative.  But, Judy, this is going to radically overhaul the Affordable Care Act.  It going to radically overhaul Medicaid.  You heard Dr. Gurman in his interview with Jeff.

The reality is, providers are not going to provide coverage.  They're not going to take on as patients people under Medicaid, because they are not going to have the money to pay for it.  They are talking — one figure that jumps out, beyond all the questions of deductibles and everything else, 24 million Americans.  That's what the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

And Republicans just kind of recoiled.  That is the number that has hung around — are going to lose coverage.  Lose coverage.  That just is — that is truly unforgivable.  It's morally indefensible.  And I think, in this case, it will be politically indefensible.

-----

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes.  I’m — was looking for the political philosophy that might be inherent in a budget.

And some of them are just weird, even for Republicans, as Mark said, $6 million — $6 billion off the National Institutes of Health.  That is an investment in scientific advance and economic growth.  And why would you do that?  That doesn’t even seem particularly Republican.

But, basically, what you’re doing, they are investing in everything that is hard power.  They’re investing in the military, in homeland security, everything that is about threat and fear.

And they are disinvesting in everything that has to do with compassion, with care, thinking, innovation.  And it’s almost like emotionally consistent.  It’s just hardness and toughness and fear.  And everything else just has to go.

TRUMP AGENDA - Buildup the Military Industrial Complex and Skimp On Human Beings

Alternate title: "War Mongering First and People Last"

"Trump budget prizes military buildup and sweeping cuts" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Unveiled today, President Trump's first federal budget embodies stark changes in federal spending priorities.  The more-than $1.1 trillion proposal would cut funding to the EPA and the State Department by almost a third, while boosting spending for the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.  John Yang takes a closer look.

"Does Trump's budget defend America or erode American power?  Lawmakers weigh in" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  From strong support to condemnation, President Trump's new budget proposal has garnered an array of reactions on Capitol Hill.  Judy Woodruff gets two views from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md), and Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind), who both sit on congressional budget committees.

CONGRESS - I the FDA Getting a Funding Increase?

"Major health bill would fund medical research, hasten FDA approvals" PBS NewsHour 12/6/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In Congress, lawmakers are close to passing a major bill that would increase funding for the FDA, the NIH, and the effort to fight opioid abuse.  The measure would also introduce more flexible standards for drug approvals, reducing the need for costly clinical trials.  Lisa Desjardins reports and Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Sydney Lupkin of Kaiser Health News and Ed Silverman of STAT News for more.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  While most attention has been focused on the action at Trump Tower in Manhattan, lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol are close to passing a major bill that would lead to big changes for drug approval, medical research and much more.

Lisa Desjardins kicks off our coverage with this report.

LISA DESJARDINS (NewsHour):  Weeks from the end of its term, Congress is on the verge of passing a whopper of a bipartisan bill.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, Majority Leader:  This legislation promotes critical investments in research.

SEN. HARRY REID, Minority Leader:  We're going to pass the Cures Act.

LISA DESJARDINS:  A godsend to supporters, a spending spree or corporate giveaway to critics, here's a look at the 21st century medical cures bill.  It is a mammoth $6 billion measure, now four major pieces of legislation packed in one, starting with a giant nearly $5 billion shot of funding to the National Institutes of Health for research.

That includes almost $2 billion for the 'Moonshot' effort led by Vice President Joe Biden to find a cure for cancer praised in a White House Web video today.

VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN:  A lot of lives will be affected by this bill, God willing.

LISA DESJARDINS:  That's one reason many Democrats are on board.  Another?  The bill now includes $1 billion to address the opioid epidemic.  It's a national crisis that's been in funding limbo for months.

A third major piece?  Mental health reform, including a new assistant secretary position for mental health and substance use.

Republican Tim Murphy, a psychologist, has pushed for this for years.

REP.  TIM MURPHY (R-Pa.):  This doesn't end the scourge of mental illness, but this puts us on a path to really make some substantial change and give people help.

LISA DESJARDINS:  Now for what Republican leaders love, the bill's core, reforming and speeding up the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval process.

To some, that's modernization that cuts red tape, but to others it's a safety risk.  And some lawmakers see it as a gift to drug companies.

Those voices are led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

SEN.  ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.):  I cannot vote for this bill.  I will fight it, because I know the difference between compromise and extortion.

LISA DESJARDINS:  But she is in the minority.  The bill has received bipartisan support in Congress so far, and the president plans to sign it into law.

For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Lisa Desjardins.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Let's dive a little deeper now into this bill, what would change, and some of the criticisms around it.

For that, we're joined by two reporters who have covered this field extensively, Sydney Lupkin of Kaiser Health News; and Ed Silverman, senior writer with STAT News, a site covering medicine and health care.

$NAFU - The Killing of Potential Cost Savings

"Why the Pentagon ‘buried and killed' a study on potential cost savings" PBS NewsHour 12/6/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Leaders at the Department of Defense periodically conduct efficiency reviews, looking for ways to cut costs.  One such report, ordered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work in 2014, was scrapped after it identified wasteful spending and suggested measures to save $125 billion over five years.  For background and analysis, Judy Woodruff speaks with The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Every few years, Pentagon leaders conduct efficiency reviews, looking for ways to save money.

Two years ago, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work commissioned a study that looked at how much the Defense Department spent on things like its supply chain, property management and health care.  But according to The Washington Post, when the results came back that said an estimated $125 billion could be saved over five years, the report was buried by top Pentagon officials.

Reporter Craig Whitlock broke the story for The Post, and he is here now to tell us more.

Craig Whitlock, tell us how all this started.  Why did — why was the study ordered in the first place?

CRAIG WHITLOCK, The Washington Post:  Well, a couple years ago, the Pentagon's budget, the defense budget, was under a lot of pressure.  It had been flat for a few years, and military leaders were worried that, under sequestration and the Budget Control Act, that they could actually be forced to stomach some pretty substantial cuts in the coming years.

So, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work ordered a federal advisory panel of private sector executives to start collecting a lot of data about how much the Pentagon spends on its back office functions as a way to find ways to save money.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And the work — the study got under way.  They asked them to do it in a relatively short period of time, just a few months.  It wasn't easy to do.  I gather there wasn't a great deal of cooperation across the board.

But they did come back with a report.  And what did it find?

CRAIG WHITLOCK:  Well, what they found was pretty striking.

This is kind of hard, I think, for most folks to understand.  But the Pentagon, actually up, until then had no idea how many contractors actually worked for it.  So they were trying to figure out how many people worked in its business operations.  And they found that more than one million people worked in these core business operations, like you said, health care management, human resources, property management, things that any organization needs.

But, you know, even for the Pentagon, one million is a lot of people.  These are essentially desk jobs.  And that compares to only 1.3 million active-duty troops.  So the backing of the Pentagon was almost as big as, you know, the tip of the spear, so to speak.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, Secretary Work, number two man at the Pentagon, when he and others saw this report, what did they do?

CRAIG WHITLOCK:  Well, they had touted this in advance, saying this was going to be really important, and that they had asked these private sector executives to help them make sure that the report didn't gather dust and that they would, you know, pass all these — or adopt these recommendations.

But when the numbers came back much bigger than they thought, and the recommendation that they could save $125 billion over five years, effectively, they buried and killed the study.  The data that had been collected internally for the first time to pinpoint how many people worked in these jobs was kept secret.

It is still classified and confidential.  We worked hard for months to get our hands on it.  We were unable to.  And I was working with Bob Woodward, my colleague here at The Post, who is pretty good at that stuff.  To this day, they have kept that data confidential.

GETTING IT DONE - U.S. Congress

"How Congress found a way to agree in 2015" PBS NewsHour 12/30/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Congress ended 2015 on an unusually productive note.  A $1 trillion compromise passed with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans, and problems that lawmakers had kicked down the road year after year finally made it into law.  Political director Lisa Desjardins takes a look back.

POLITICS - Congress and the Debt Limit

(aka: Tea Party Terrorists Loose a Battle)

"Treasury Secretary Lew on Congress ‘coming to terms’ with the debt limit" PBS NewsHour 10/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The bipartisan budget deal passed by the House is the product of negotiations between Congressional leaders and the White House.  Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sits down with Gwen Ifill to discuss how Congress achieved its moment of breakthrough, plus a rundown of some of the budget nuts and bolts.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Earlier this afternoon, I sat down with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew, thank you for joining us.

JACK LEW, Secretary of the Treasury:  Great to be with you, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL:  As we speak this afternoon, it looks like a vote is imminent on the budget deal and on budget deal that would also allow the debt limit to go up.

After kicking this can down the road repeatedly with Congress, what changed this time to allow a two-year deal to be on the verge of approval?

JACK LEW:  Well, I think a lot of things came together.

Obviously, the fact that the debt limit is going to be reached on Tuesday of next week, and they have to act before then, focused their minds on the debt limit in a very real way.  I have been communicating with Congress on a very regular basis.  It’s been getting closer and closer.  And I think it’s a good thing that they have reached an agreement, so that it certainly seems to be on track for the debt limit being raised in time to avoid that unnecessary self-inflicted wound.

On the budget side, there have been conversations going on for many years, but intensely for many weeks, to try and figure out how to resolve this year’s funding bills.  The approach is one that we have supported for a long time, which is to relieve the across-the-board cuts in sequestration by replacing the savings with a balanced mix of tax and spending items.

The breakthrough in the last week has enabled us to reach an agreement, where we have achieved that goal, and providing $80 billion of relief is going to give Congress the ability to write appropriations bills to meet our domestic needs and our defense needs.  This means that they will be able to invest in research and education and also in our national defense.

I think that’s what Americans want Congress to do.  It shouldn’t be so hard to get to these moments where these agreements can be reached.  And I hope this passes in a way that’s uneventful and enables Congress to get on with its work.

IRS - Budget Cuts Hamstringing Functions

"Are budget cuts and Obamacare confusion causing IRS bottleneck?" PBS NewsHour 4/13/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Bad news for taxpayers this year:  If you have questions for the Internal Revenue Service, getting through is going to take longer.  If you're waiting for a refund, you may face a delay.  The IRS attributes this to five years of federal budget cuts, which have led to a hiring freeze and a lack of resources.  Judy Woodruff interviews Commissioner John Koskinen about these problems and oversight of the IRS.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  As Tax Day approaches, the Internal Revenue Service has an unusual warnings for taxpayers:  Not everyone who calls the IRS help center will be able to reach an agent, which could result in refund delays this year.

The agency blames budget cuts.  But critics say the IRS should blame itself.

Judy Woodruff sat down recently for this conversation with the IRS commissioner.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And we are joined by the man in charge, Commissioner John Koskinen of the Internal Revenue Service.

Welcome to the NewsHour.

JOHN Koskinen, Commissioner, IRS:  Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, let me just start this interview by citing a couple of numbers we have on taxpayers’ experiences with the IRS this year.

We know that, last year, 70 percent of the people who tried to get through with a question were successful.  This year, that’s down to fewer than 40 percent.  The average wait time for taxpayers trying to get through to the IRS with questions shot up from 10 minutes last year to 24 minutes this year.

What has happened?

JOHN KOSKINEN:  The short answer is that Congress cut our budget and we have fewer people available to answer the phone.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Flesh that out for us.  How much of a budget cut?  What does that mean and how many…

JOHN KOSKINEN:  Well, over the last five years, our budget has been cut by $1.2 billion.

In December of this year, the last $350 million of that cut was provided.  We only had nine months left in the year, so we had to take difficult choices across the board.  One of them was, 70 percent or more of our budget is personnel.  So, had to immediately say we wouldn’t hire any new personnel.

We also had to not hire for as long a period of time as many seasonal workers that we bring in during the tax season, because that’s the busiest time of the year.  And we didn’t hire our couple thousand temporary employees we normally would hire.

And those are all decisions we knew would have a negative impact on taxpayer services.  We had warned the Congress about it, but we had no choice.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 3/20/2015

"Shields and Brooks on Netanyahu’s election provocation, human trafficking holdup" PBS NewsHour 3/20/2015

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including provocative pre-election comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the House Republicans’ budget priorities, the congressional standoff over the human trafficking bill, plus personal predictions for March Madness.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Let me turn you both to this country, to Congress.

Right now, the budget, Republicans — we now see, David, what the Republicans want to do with the budget.  Many of them are arguing we need to cut $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years, cutting Medicaid, cutting food stamps.  Democrats are screaming, this is way too much.  Do you see balance here?  What do you see?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  Yes, this is sort of happening on two levels.

One is the grand vision level, what do you want, and the budget — the Republican budget in the House does have a grand vision.  They’re right to say we need massive changes to get the balance in budget.  Over the next 10 years, the national debt is rising significantly up to about 78 percent of GDP.  It’s very high, getting way higher the 10 out years.

So they do need to do things.  I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up.  I salute for the way they’re attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they’re just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.

Then they’re taking huge cuts out of domestic discretionary spending, which is already at his historic lows.  And so I agree with the idea of cutting, but it should all be coming out of entitlements for the affluent and not out of domestic discretionary, which is welfare, education, all the stuff the government does, parks, FBI, and it shouldn’t be coming out of Medicaid.

So, I like their approach.  I just don’t like the priorities they demonstrate in the broad brush.  Let me just quickly on — the narrow thing is over where to cut defense.  And the Republicans are just hugely divided.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist:  I think they want to increase defense, Judy.  It’s part of the Republican creed.

And they — for the first time, understandably, they have a real advantage on national security.  And it’s measured in the polls.  We’re going into what they hope would be a national security election.  But it’s also part of what has been the consistent Republican position.

And they now are a more interventionist party than they have been at any time since George W. Bush left office.  But I — at the same time, you have got the deficit hawks who really are — it’s beyond — they have given a bad name to smoke and mirrors.  I mean, they are saying, we’re going to report — repeal the Affordable Care Act and we’re going to cut — we’re going to cut Medicare and Medicaid.

The Senate doesn’t do that, the Senate Republicans.  They voted for it when they were not in power, but they don’t include it as part of their agenda when they are in power.  So I think what we’re seeing is a lot of back and forth.  As long as Republicans won’t — won’t raise taxes and as long as Democrats won’t in any way make entitlements based on need, rather than just across the board, I really think that we’re doomed to this deadlock.
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JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, the other story out of the Senate this week has to do with holding up the nomination, the confirmation vote on Loretta Lynch, the president’s choice to be attorney general.

In fact, the President, in an interview today with Huffington Post, said, don’t hold the attorney general nominee hostage for other reasons.  It’s the top law enforcement job.  He’s been arguing that they need to break the logjam.

But, Mark, the argument that Democrats are making is — or that Republicans are making is that we’re going to hold this up until you pass this human trafficking bill.  That’s now being held up by language over abortion.

Is there a real difference here, or is it just — is it pure politics?

MARK SHIELDS:  It’s the Senate at its worst.

The human trafficking bill was reported out unanimously.  The Hyde amendment, which has been in power — been in office for 40 years, Judy, prevents the use of public funds for abortion, except in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

And it was on page four, page five of the bill.  It’s there.  And, finally, somebody at one of the pro-choice groups, ever vigilant, gets this language.  And it becomes a matter of faith for the Democrats.  You have to understand that Republicans are on lockstep on one issue.  They will not raise taxes.  Democrats are in lockstep on another issue, pro-choice in all cases on abortion.

So they have turned this in — human trafficking is lost.  Human trafficking is a human tragedy.  It’s an outrage against any decent people.  It’s — the victims are terribly, terribly treated, whether in sex trade or whatever.  This is a chance to get them back, to help them, to help local law enforcement do it.

And the Democrats are standing on one side, and the Republicans are playing games on the other.  Both sides are playing games.  They ought to pass the human trafficking immediately and they ought to confirm Loretta Lynch.

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes.  If we had a government that worked, the Republicans would say, OK, the attorney general has nothing to do with human trafficking.  We will let her go through.  And the Democrats would say, the Hyde amendment, it’s always been in these sorts of laws.  It has loopholes wide enough to drive a truck through.  It doesn’t have that much practical effect.  We will let that go through.

And both good things would get through.  But we don’t live in that country.

FEDERAL BUDGET - According to the GOP

"Trillion Dollar Fraudsters" by Paul Krugman, New York Times 3/20/2015

By now it’s a Republican Party tradition:  Every year the party produces a budget that allegedly slashes deficits, but which turns out to contain a trillion-dollar “magic asterisk” — a line that promises huge spending cuts and/or revenue increases, but without explaining where the money is supposed to come from.

But the just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground.  Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks:  one on spending, one on revenue.  And that’s actually an understatement.  If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the first decade.

You might be tempted to shrug this off, since these budgets will not, in fact, become law.  Or you might say that this is what all politicians do.  But it isn’t.  The modern G.O.P.’s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics.  And that’s telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum.

So, about those budgets:  both claim drastic reductions in federal spending.  Some of those spending reductions are specified:  There would be savage cuts in food stamps, similarly savage cuts in Medicaid over and above reversing the recent expansion, and an end to Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies.  Rough estimates suggest that either plan would roughly double the number of Americans without health insurance.  But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security.  What form would these further cuts take?  We get no hint.

Meanwhile, both budgets call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including the taxes that pay for the insurance subsidies.  That’s $1 trillion of revenue.  Yet both claim to have no effect on tax receipts; somehow, the federal government is supposed to make up for the lost Obamacare revenue.  How, exactly?  We are, again, given no hint.

And there’s more:  The budgets also claim large reductions in spending on other programs.  How would these be achieved?  You know the answer.

It’s very important to realize that this isn’t normal political behavior.  The George W. Bush administration was no slouch when it came to deceptive presentation of tax plans, but it was never this blatant.  And the Obama administration has been remarkably scrupulous in its fiscal pronouncements.

O.K., I can already hear the snickering, but it’s the simple truth.  Remember all the ridicule heaped on the spending projections in the Affordable Care Act?  Actual spending is coming in well below expectations, and the Congressional Budget Office has marked its forecast for the next decade down by 20 percent.  Remember the jeering when President Obama declared that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term?  Well, a sluggish economy delayed things, but only by a year.  The deficit in calendar 2013 was less than half its 2009 level, and it has continued to fall.

So, no, outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan.  It’s a modern Republican thing.  And the question we should ask is why.

One answer you sometimes hear is that what Republicans really believe is that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but they’re afraid that the public won’t find such claims credible.  So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.

But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation.  Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements.  What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts.  And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do:  make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.

But this is, of course, not a policy direction the public would support if it were clearly explained.  So the budgets must be sold as courageous efforts to eliminate deficits and pay down debt — which means that they must include trillions in imaginary, unexplained savings.

Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were never sincere?  Yes, it does.

Look, I know that it’s hard to keep up the outrage after so many years of fiscal fraudulence.  But please try.  We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.