The Age Of Austerity Is Coming

It's going to be a race to see who can cause more misery with draconian austerity cuts: Paul Ryan and the House (who have been cooking up brutal Medicaid Medicare and Social Security cuts for years and will almost certainly get them) or the Trump regime, who is apparently working on cutting everything else in the budget.

Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. 

The changes they propose are dramatic. 

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely. 

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years. 

The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition. 

Similar proposals have in the past won support from Republicans in the House and Senate, who believe they have an opportunity to truly tackle spending after years of warnings about the rising debt. 

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

Congrats, America.  You're not going to get a "government small enough to drown in a bathtub", you're going to get a government that drowns you in one instead.

So many Americans voted for Trump on the basis that he would hurt those people instead of the people ignorant enough to buy his con.  So many Americans are about to find out they were always going to get screwed by him.  Sure, there are plenty of folks who will be content to suffer just as long as it means anyone darker than a paper bag ends up back in crushing poverty, but as I keep reminding people, the majority of Americans on cash welfare, SNAP food assistance, SS disability checks and housing assistance programs are all white people.  When they start really hurting too, maybe they'll come around.

Probably not though.  At least they wont be, you know, black.  Long as Trump can keep that scam going, he can end the New Deal and start a new Gilded Age, no problem.  So as the Trump regime takes power (I refuse to call them "administration" because that would assume they 1) care about governance, 2) are capable of competent governance, 3) aren't a bunch of actual thieves and con artists, 4) aren't a white nationalist movement) this afternoon, remember:

It gets darkest just before it all goes pitch black.