The unique “Midterm Convention” by the Republicans in Dallas this week featured the faithful filling an arena (mostly, but there were quite a few empty seats) to hear the faith (mostly, but a Democrat Senator, too, spoke by video).
I’ve voted Republican since Ronald Reagan, including three times for Donald Trump. I didn’t think I would learn anything by watching the spectacle, and I didn’t think it would be amusing entertainment, so I didn’t watch.
But I did hear that President Trump promised to pay each adult citizen $5,000 if the Republicans hold both houses of Congress in November. I have two thoughts on this.
First, the odds that he’ll ever pay the $5,000 are approximately zero. The Republicans are sure to lose the House, and stand a good chance of losing the Senate as well. Even on the slim chance that they hold both, the $5,000 payments would require an act of Congress. The odds that Congress would go along are approximately, well, zero.
The odds that the Republicans will hold both houses of Congress, and Congress will go along with the $5,000 payments, are, if my math still serves, approximately zero times approximately zero, which is well nigh . . . zero.
So, don’t spend the money yet.
My second thought is that this money amounting to something over $1,000,000,000 has to come from somewhere. Oh, you say, it just gets printed.
But didn’t we learn for the umpteenth time during the Biden administration that money that “just gets printed” still comes from somewhere? Didn’t we learn that it comes from us, through inflated prices?
If that were not the case, then why make the payments only $5,000? Couldn’t we all be rich by letting the government simply print and mail to each of us $5,000,000?
Heck, why stop there? Let’s all be as rich as Elon Musk by having the government print and mail to each of us, say, a trillion dollars.
Okay, I said I have two thoughts on the matter, but actually I have three. Trump thinks we’re stupid.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” James Madison
There is a reckoning coming.
It was an interesting promise. Cash.
Money instead of “free” housing, food and medical care for non-citizens.
Cash.
Money, like the fraudsters in Minnesota, California and elsewhere pilfer from the treasury.
Direct payments. Not like the laundered through USAID kind with plenty of sticky fingered middlemen.
Maybe that’s why to some it seems so offensive, it’s up front, cards on the table. No byzantine reams of forms to fill out.
It’s simple, direct. Not lying and applying for benefits.
Since, and I agree with you, Trump will likely not win both houses, whether he would have paid out is a moot point.
We have a prime minister who promised 275 dollars off our power bills. He said it almost a hundred times. He never delivered,. In fact our bills increased by, I think, triple the amount we used to pay. Our PM has been working hard for 4 years now on shutting down free speech and finally found a formula that is bound to work – he bribed journalism schools. I don’t trust politicians, but some do less harm. He’s imported a million grateful voters into the country to make sure he can rule over us for ever.
If you, as I do, believe that Iran was close to producing nuclear armaments, I couldn’t be more grateful he came along when he did. I’m just sorry Biden got in the way. I had high hopes for the Abraham accords.