Trump 2.0 might as well use bombs and arson
If citizens feel whipsawed by the contradictions and backpedaling by Trump 2.0 policy malfeasance, it is hardly surprising. It’s not just the obvious intention to privatize government services things ought to be public (and not-for-profit), it’s the threat those privatizing efforts pose to “Americans’ health, safety, and economic security,” writes Heather Cox Richardson.
Social Security is a perennial target for the right, and is once again. Trump 2.0 will sabotage it, collapse it, then argue that Republican dysfunction by design is reason to kill it:
In another blockbuster story that dropped yesterday, the Social Security Administration announced it will begin to withhold 100% of a person’s Social Security benefits if they are overpaid, even if the overpayment is not their fault. Under President Joe Biden the agency had changed the policy to recover overpayments at 10% of monthly benefits or $10, whichever was greater.
Those who can’t afford that level of repayment can contact Social Security, the notice says, but acting commissioner Leland Dudek has said he plans to cut at least 7,000 jobs—more than 12% of the agency—although its staff is already at a 50-year low. He is also closing field offices, and senior staff with the agency have either left or been fired.
How about some more whipsaw?
Dudek yesterday retracted an order from the day before that required parents of babies born in Maine to go to a Social Security office to register their baby rather than filling out a form in the hospital. Another on Thursday would also have stopped funeral homes from filing death records electronically.
One new father told Joe Lawlor of the Portland Press Herald that he had filled out the form for his son’s social security number and then his wife got a call saying they would have to go to the Social Security office. But when he tried to call Social Security headquarters to figure out what was going on, the wait time was an estimated two hours. So he called a local office, where no one knew what he was talking about. “They keep talking about efficiency,” he said. “This seemed to be something that worked incredibly efficiently, and they broke it overnight.”
Why Maine, asked Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent. I can think of one reason.
Cruelty may be the point, and retribution may be Trump 2.0 policy, but chaos is the plan. It’s also an M.O. Streamlining government to save money isn’t the goal. Whatever else they fail at, Republicans are hell at sowing chaos. And sabotage.
You may recall how in Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 passed a strict voter ID bill that disproportionately impacted “elderly voters, young voters, students, minorities and low-income voters.” To obtain the IDs, they would have to visit their local DMV offices with sometimes hard-to-get documents. Then Walker announced plans to close as many as 16 of them across the state before reversing after the backlash.
I wrote recently about a North Carolina bill that would make holding voter registration drives using official voter registration forms a misdemeanor. Making government user unfriendly is policy.
Musk-Trump chaos is already hurting the economy and the people who live with it, the New York Times editorial board suggested on Saturday. They need “a government that is steady and reliable“:
But in their campaign to shrink the federal government, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have defied laws passed by Congress, and they have challenged the authority of the federal courts to adjudicate the legality of their actions. Mr. Trump recently referred to himself as a king and then insisted he had been joking, but there is no ambiguity in his assertion of the power to defy other branches of government. It is a rejection of the checks and balances that have safeguarded our nation for more than 200 years. Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are not trying to change laws; they are upending the rule of law.
That’s not a byproduct. That’s their program, sabotaging democracy and replacing it with something far worse except for everyone except the elite.
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