Infrastructure Deja Vu

Infrastructure Week? Yesterday was the beginning of another infrastructure week yet the focus remains on the Porter domestic abuse affair and the White House and Trump have only themselves to blame for all the unwanted attention.  Trump still refuses to say anything more on the subject and won’t express any sympathy for the victims, in all likelihood he’s decided that condemning abusers, especially if they are likeminded Republicans, is a tacit admission of his own transgressions.  Back from a short vacation, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was in the unenviable position of having to explain the White House’s increasingly inconsistent version of events to the White House press corps.  Those troublesome White House reporters have latched on to the wildly divergent timeline of events emerging from various White House aides, Chief of Staff Kelly and the press office. Though their voices remained moderated, their questions were pointed and relentless. True to form, Sanders’ responses were increasingly evasive and deceptive.  She insisted that Trump didn’t have to say anything more on the subject because he spoke through her and then went on to say that he had actually dictated her statement.  Then instead of admitting that the White House had failed to adequately respond to the FBI’s report that there were problems with Porter’s security review, problems so detrimental that they couldn’t recommend that he be cleared to see or handle any confidential information, she argued that the failure was the FBI’s fault, a narrative that fits in with Trump’s “blame the intelligence services for everything” strategy.  She refused to acknowledge that the FBI had done their job, that the failure to act lay within the White House, probably shared equally between White House Counsel McGahn and Chief of Staff Kelly.  When pushed to explain why so many people at the White House, particularly Jared Kushner, still lack permanent security clearances, Sanders pivoted into an attack on Trump’s other favorite punching bag, the press, asserting the problem was that by publishing leaked confidential information they were jeopardizing national security.  So to be clear, the problem is not the leaking sieve of a White House, it’s not Trump sharing Israeli secrets with the Russians, it’s not Trump abetting his toady Nunes, it’s members of the free press doing their job.  Little about infrastructure was discussed at the press conference in part because there was little to discuss.  It’s kind of hard to believe that $200 billion, some of which comes from cuts elsewhere in infrastructure spending, will really morph into $1.5 trillion in construction.  And few people believe that the government is really going to move forward with the sale of Reagan and Dulles airport, two of the other ideas tucked into the infrastructure plan.

The Budget:  As expected, the White House’s 2019 budget plan is nothing more than an aspirational wish list, one that seeks to fulfil the dreams of right wing ideologues at the expense of everyone else.  The outline increases defense spending and generously funds Trump’s border wall but slashes virtually everything else although it does retain $10 million for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.  Some of the cuts are drastic, many of them, like the elimination of arts programs and huge cuts at the State Department were already rejected last year. Trump’s plan once again calls for the elimination of Obamacare, replacing it with a form of the block grant program that Senators Cassidy and Graham pushed last year, an outcome that just won’t happen during an election year.  The plan also attacks the supplemental nutrition program commonly referred to as food stamps, replacing food cards with boxed deliveries, kind of a “Blue Apron” approach, only instead of interesting healthful meal components, the boxes would contain US sourced peanut butter, dried fruit and grains, a plan reminiscent of the Reagan era pronouncement that ketchup counted as a vegetable.  The boxed food plan won’t see the light of day, mostly because in addition to being a ridiculously stupid, poorly thought out idea, major food retailers like Walmart have already expressed their concerns about losing the significant portions of their customer base who shop with government food cards.  The budget plan also hammers low income housing, by cutting subsidies and eliminating funding for repairs. The bottom line is that as written the budget would leave many lower income people hungry, cold and without access to health care and the rest of us swimming in dirty waters and breathing polluted air, your basic Trump-Ryan-Mulvaney fantasy.    

The Other Fantasy:  Senators Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Graham, Chair of the subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism are still lashing out at all things Obama.  Yesterday, they reupped their war against former security advisor Susan Rice, sending her a letter demanding an explanation for a note to the files that she wrote right before departing the government.  Rice’s note summarizes a January 2017 meeting with Obama where he stressed the importance of the intelligence agencies continuing to complete a “by the book” investigation into Russia’s election interference.  Rice goes on to say that Obama from a “national security perspective wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia” and that Obama asked then FBI director Comey “to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.  Comey said he would." Apparently Graham and Grassley find that last part to be odd, bordering on criminal.  In a normal universe that part would have been peculiar, but times are not normal, Obama had just learned from the intelligence agencies that Michael Flynn, the Trump team member who was about to become National Security Advisor, had been overheard colluding with Russian  Ambassador Kislyak, telling him not to worry about those nasty Obama sanctions, the ones that kicked Russian spies out of the country and confiscated the three Russian compounds in the US, because they would be rescinded shortly after Trump’s inauguration.  Obama and Rice were trying to figure out how to deal with a bigly problem. They shared the information with the incoming team but also papered the files.  Flynn was subsequently fired purportedly due to lying about that call.  Maybe, just maybe Grassley and Graham should focus on the real problem, Russian interference and Trump team complicity.  Just a thought.