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Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

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Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#171

Post by JumpCrisscross »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying. Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it. The scariest things for me are the backing out of cli…

2-for-1 need not be a law, just executive guidance around what Trump will or will not veto. If it doesn't take two substantive--to him--pieces of regulation off the table for each one proposed, he'll send it back for more cutting.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#173

Post by bsilvereagle »

Jtsummers wrote: post #73
thetrb wrote: post #32

There's a lot of really scary stuff in there: - Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects - Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation - Drastic tax cuts - Massive immigration changes

The hiring freeze for federal employees is concerning as well. One of the major issues is that we've had several hiring freezes in the US civil service in recent decades. It causes a bathtub effect. You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people ( You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service wh…

> You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service which has many long running programs (for various reasons both good and bad)).

NASA and DoD research labs are still dealing with the experience and cultural gaps from the hiring freezes of the 90s. I think for a lot of Americans it's easy to think of the "lazy bureaucrats" of the federal government (which definitely exist) and see a freeze or Reduction in Force as an overall good thing. However, every freeze and RIF has long lasting damage in the federal scientific community.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#174

Post by mr_tristan »

carlob wrote: post #139

Wow did he just take a page directly from Berlusconi's book? Berlusconi did the exact same 100 days contract about ten years ago!

The first 100 days is actually a tradition for new US Presidents to create a plan (and a litmus test), which started with FDR in 1933.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_100_days_of_Franklin_D._...

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#175

Post by pnathan »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying. Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it. The scariest things for me are the backing out of cli…

Some of these ideas are, I think, able to stand on their own merit. In particular, the revolving door has been identified in a bipartisan fashion to be a real problem.

I defer to actual political experts to discuss the proposed solution and its nuances.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#177

Post by ben174 »

cesarbs wrote: post #95

A lot of what's in there seems pretty reasonable, but: 1) The whole border wall thing is just ridiculous. I thought he had given up on that. Why would Mexico have to pay for that? If the US wants to build a wall, fine, build it and pay for it. It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it. 2) The FDA thing is scary. Regulatio…

You can find more detail on how he plans to make Mexico pay for the wall here:

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#178

Post by knz »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #137
GVIrish wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual. Tax cuts are all well and good in a vacuum, but how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt when we enact a massive tax cut on top of a tax rate that is already at historically low levels? Some people say we can cut all of this govern…

Medicare and Social Security are funded through their own dedicated payroll tax, not the general income tax. Roosevelt intentionally did it this way to make it impossible to repeal. My working assumption is that the military is mismanaged, and spends trillions of dollars on wasteful projects. I think you can get a pretty big tax cut by just managing the military better.

I take it you missed the last point:

> Restoring National Security Act: Rebuilds our military by ... expanding military investment;

It reminds me of the "plan" to replace the ACA/Obamacare. Sounds great on paper but probably does fuck all to address the real issues.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#179

Post by fisherjeff »

jdc0589 wrote: post #122

> FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal This is what I have the biggest problem with. The ONLY WAY we are going to continue making progress towards widespread clean renewable energy is if it is financially beneficial for corporations to continue investing in R&D. Sure, there are s…

In addition to that, I'm not sure what the benefit is to energy producers - oil prices are already not far above a 15-year low and domestic crude production is at a 25-year high, currently almost 10% of global consumption.

Even without subsidies or other incentives, I just can't see where the demand comes from to drive significant oil supply increases. I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#180

Post by [deleted] »

doctorshady wrote: post #94
thetrb wrote: post #32

There's a lot of really scary stuff in there: - Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects - Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation - Drastic tax cuts - Massive immigration changes

Maybe I just don't understand how light touch government works, but wouldn't removing two regulations per new regulation help special interest groups in a lot of cases?

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