Austerity for thee but not for me

Republicans are blaming social programs for the ballooning deficits and national debt. Setting aside the fact that the US debt/GDP ratio was higher at the end of WWII and that Japan has a far higher debt/GDP ratio, what would a serious discussion about federal spending look like?

Obviously, it would decry the squandering of tens of billions on an elective war with Iran that the US lost. Then there are the billions wasted on ICE, Trump’s gang of thugs rampaging and criming on US streets. There’s the money Trump spent demolishing the East Wing. And the ongoing defending retribution lawsuits filed by Trump’s DOJ that are ultimately thrown out of court.

But perhaps most emblematic of the waste, fraud and abuse of this administration is the tragicomedy of the Reflecting Pool. 

“This watery boondoggle is exactly the kind of thing they've criticized for years.

 

“President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to spend $14 million to fix up the Reflecting Pool on Washington’s National Mall offers a perfect example of the selective fiscal conservatism that defines Republican governance. The president has made a massive show of the restoration effort, which was contracted out to a Trump-connected company that took on the project without needing to competitively bid for it. Within a week of the project’s completion, the fruits of the effort were plain to see: The pool was an Olympic regulation–sized petri dish of algae, hydrogen peroxide, adhesives, fragments of “American Flag Blue” coating, and at least one dead duck.

 

“Unable to accept the possibility that his shoot-first, denounce-whatever-was-hit-later administration may have erred, Trump is now blaming the reflecting pool’s squalid conditions on vandalism, a subject on which he appears to have flip-flopped.

 

“The pool now must be drained again for repairs, meaning even more taxpayer funds must be spent on it. So I spoke to some of the fiscal fauxhawks on Capitol Hill about this becoming a money pit. After all, isn’t this a good example of just the sort of willy-nilly government spending they ought to address?

 

“They offered various answers, but all of them were careful to avoid the appearance of any criticism of the project.”

Then there’s the ongoing expense of hiring Park Police, National Guard troops, and a U.S. Marshal to guard the pool.

Expect House Speaker Mike Johnson to launch a congressional investigation of the Reflecting Pooldoggle coterminous with the first verified report of porcine aviation.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/gop-fiscal-hawks-turn-chicken-on?r=2133ns&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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