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| The World According to Sesame Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
First up is tax reform. In the century since the government started requiring folks to report their incomes by a certain date every year, the road to reform has been lined with the ruined reputations of those who tried and failed to change the tax code. It seems too many people have too much invested in not losing the tax advantages they're getting under the present system. And you're never going to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, no matter how hard you try, so what you have is another futile attempt at windmill-tilting.
The President often whines that America doesn't win any more, despite evidence to the contrary. That's why he's more than willing to back out of trade deals such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific partnership, or gutting environmental laws just so American (or the well-meaning folks who voted for him) can find employment in the smokestack industries that became obsolete long ago.
Trump is also proposing a so-called "skinny budget" which fattens the coffers of the military, and that wall along the Mexican border he keeps wanting to build while slashing spending on the arts and other social programs.
The military buildup is another sign that Trump wants to win, even though we are now living in the age of terrorism, where you don't need a whole army to hold back the murderous intentions of a jihadist or two. Instead, Trump just wants an excuse to win a nice, easy war in a small country and claim credit for it.
The President also wants to cut back on public broadcasting. As much as everyone wants to save good old Big Bird (who's now the property of HBO, the pay cable service that bought the rights to the long-running "Sesame Street"), Trump's apparent agenda is to do away with PBS' and NPR's news programming and anything else on those networks that's been critical of his administration. On this he could do more than yell "fake news" at them, then switch the remote to Fox News Channel.
The Republican-controlled Congress has the final word on the President's budget. But after the health care disaster, do you really think they have the will to oppose him when they've been exposed as a laughingstock to the rest of America?
Oh, there's always another chance that President Trump and the GOP will try again to "repeal and replace" Obamacare once it ultimately crashes and burns (or so they hope). But the more they alienate people with their policies, the more likely they're going to see the streets of Washington filled with angry people carrying flaming torches and pitchforks coming after them.
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