Finneran: A Task for Mr. Trump
Tom Finneran, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™
Finneran: A Task for Mr. Trump
Can-kicking is a D.C. specialty. It’s a long and winding road and most people don’t pay attention, so kicking the can down the road is any easy choice. The fact that it will punish future generations of Americans does not seem to matter to many. The fact that it is the antithesis of leadership is rarely written. The fact that it is problem avoidance rather than problem solving, more Third-Worldly than real-worldly, is a harsh but true judgement.
Here’s the lineup of Democrats and Republicans who have surpassed even Adam Vinatieri as all-star kickers:
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTLyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. These are not Hall of Famers.
The last sixteen years---2000 through 2016/ the “W” Bush and Barack Obama years---have been particularly pathetic to watch. The “can” which they kick of course is the national deficit and its accumulated debt, now hovering just shy of $ 20 trillion dollars. Yes fellow citizens, the word is trillion, with a capital T, otherwise stated as a thousand billions. And you probably thought that your credit cards were badly maxed out............you’re likely a paragon of fiscal virtue compared to these D.C. folks.
For two full generations the country has been spending like a drunken sailor, full of pretense and bluster that we can have it all---war on the cheap, soaring domestic spending, tax cuts, no sacrifice by anyone at any time for anything. It takes an awful lot of liquor for the proverbial drunken sailor to empty his pockets. And when his shore leave is up and those pockets are empty a painful sobriety sets in.
That is not the case in Washington. There they just seem to order more Tito’s, more Jack Daniels, and more ink for the government printing presses, ever oblivious to the cost of their dereliction.
Enter Mr. Trump. Is he aware of the problem? Undoubtedly yes. Does he care about it? I don’t know. As a real estate developer he certainly understands debt and leverage. His recourse to the bankruptcy courts has been a road more travelled for him than for any reader of this column. The omens are not good.
And yet three things just might light the fiscal night in which we’ve wandered for fifty years. Those three things are, first, the hard facts, second, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and third, Mr. Trump’s hopes for a respected place in history.
The hard facts are brutal---$ 20 trillion in national debt and interest on that debt costing us about $ 300 billion dollars a year. That’s $ 300 billion every year, payable to our lenders, and therefore unavailable for road, bridge, and airport modernization. Unavailable for tax cuts. Unavailable for national defense. Unavailable for research and healthcare. Unavailable for cities and states. Unavailable for education. Unavailable for the environment. Unavailable for energy or space exploration. Remember the word—unavailable.
Add in the wrinkle that much of our debt is held by the Chinese, and that much of the annual interest we must pay them is being used by them to address every single one of the needs we neglect. Add in the further wrinkle that current interest rates are stunningly low. Should we ever return to more historic levels of interest rates we will be paying out considerably more every year.........
Speaker Paul Ryan seems to be a sober sensible fellow, a reassuring figure from the ever-sensible Mid-West. He seems to grasp the details of the budget and he seems serious about working our way back to budget sobriety. Wish him well as he embarks on a road less travelled. It will be a long journey for him and for all of us. It is long overdue..........
Mr. Trump has a big ego. All Presidents do. And all Presidents hope for a respected place in history.
It’s not normal for any rational American to consider themselves as presidential material. Normal Americans would shrink from the job itself as well as from the absolutely brutal ordeal of getting elected. Thus it takes a massive ego to even enter the arena. Then, upon election, we tend to put Presidents on an imperial pedestal, adding steroids to their pre-existing egos. Note the swagger of “W” and the cockiness of Obama. Humility is not a strong point for our last two Presidents.
Might Mr. Trump recognize the call of history which is now his? Might he embrace a more serious effort to begin balancing our budgets? He has children and grandchildren and while the Trump clan might be financially secure forever and ever, Trump’s place in history will not be earned by his family’s material comfort. Rather, that place in history might be gained by starting on the hard task of giving future generations of Americans relief from the burdens of kicking cans down the road.
He can either kick the can or kick some butt............
Trump's Win - What Does it Mean for Rhode Island?
Jennifer Duffy
Cook Report
"We don't really know what a Trump presidency means for the nation, never mind the smallest state. One of the unintended consequences of last night's results is that Sen. Jack Reed won't be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Chalk that up as a loss for RI."
Pam Gencarella
Head of Ocean State Taxpayers' Association
"Trump’s win means that his signature issue, illegal immigration, could have a big impact on RI, hopefully reversing our course as a sanctuary state and saving the state taxpayer millions of dollars. While we agree with his 'repeal and replace' Obamacare stance, we have no idea what that means to the RI debacle known as UHIP. It is not a stretch to believe that federal funding for this kind of system will be off the table so, will RI be stuck with this massively expensive system that still doesn’t work and that is expected to cost another $124 million to fix?
Trump's belief that there is significant fraud in the Food Stamp program and the policies that may come from that belief could have a negative impact on RI's local economy since there are businesses in certain cities that rely heavily on this program, fraud and all. On the upside, we may be able to ditch the UHIP program if there is significantly less need for processing welfare program requests (ie. Medicaid and food stamps) resulting from fewer illegal immigrants and less fraud. While we are ambivalent about his touted child care policies, if enacted, it may force our legislators to revisit the ever growing state cost of subsidies in this area and possibly reduce the fraud and abuse in this system."
Kay Israel
Professor at Rhode Island College
"With a Republican President and Congress, Rhode Island will probably be excluded from the 'fruits of victory."
The congressional delegation will be able to vocally make their presence felt, but in the long term it's more symbolic than substantive.
For Rhode Island it's a matter of holding on and waiting until '18 or '20 and a surge in Democratic influence."
Jennifer Lawless
Professor at American University
"The RI congressional delegation just became even less powerful than it was. With unified government, Trump doesn’t need to quell Democrats’ concerns or acquiesce because he’s worried about a Democratically-controlled Senate.
His appointments will reflect that. His executive orders will affect that. And the conservative policy agenda he puts forward will affect that."
Len Lardaro
Professor at University of Rhode Island
"Well there's a few things -- because there's not going to be gridlock, that's a big difference if it had been Hillary and a GOP Congress, in which nothing would got done. We'll at least get a half a billion in infrastructure that's going to pass which will have an impact.
I think you'll see there will be reduced reliance on government nationally -- and that's where we'll stick out like sore thumb. We've relied way too much on government -- and our government is highly inefficient and ineffective. Maybe, just maybe, in this who cycle of things we might be forced to be small and more efficient for once.
A couple of other things -- interest rates jumped. The one to follow is the ten year government bond rate -- which is tied to mortgages. It went from 1.7% to 2.05% in one day. The point is -- if the ten year stays high, mortgage rates will start going higher -- and in the short time people will run to re-finance.
That's the short term impact -- but then if rates stay hight, that will make mortgages more out of reach. And we just passed a bond issue to limit open space -- housing has limited upside here.
The next thing -- the Fed Reserve will go ahead with tightening next month. A strong dollar will hurt manufacturing. When the dollar is strong our exports become more expensive overseas.
Our goods production sector -- manufacturing and construction -- in the near term will do a little better, but as time goes on will be more limited. But something you won't hear, is there are lags in fiscal policy, of six months to year. So we won't really see the effects until the third our fourth quarter of 2017, going into 2018."
Mike Stenhouse
RI Center for Freedon and Prosperity
"As the unbelievable turned into reality this morning, it struck me that the presidential election was not really all about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It was about a fed-up people, revolting against a corrupt system - the "beast" - that relentlessly favors insiders. Hillary personified the beast, while Donald personified the slayer.
Sadly, based on election results in our state, Rhode Island's version of the beast lives on. I fear our political class has not learned the lessons from the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump movements - and will continue with their government-centric, anti-family, anti-business status quo."
Kristina Contreras Fox
VP of Young Democrats of America
"A Trump Presidency means the validation of the ugliest part of America. In RI, as with the rest of the country, the hammer of his hatred will fall hardest on minority communities. Being a blue state doesn't make us immune from this danger.
Trump won over 35% (39.5) of the vote here! We need to look in the mirror, and not lie about what the reflection shows us. No more hiding underneath a blue blanket. I expect those who claim Democratic values to be true to those values. The gulf between words and actions have turned into fertile ground for Trump's message to grow here in RI. If you call yourself a Democrat, if you claim to stand in opposition to Trump, now is the time to prove it. Show up and fight back."
