Donald and Deportations
This post is partly inspired by “The cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Republicans” by Amber Phillips at The Washington Post. My general impression is that the article mainly shows that cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Donald Trump. More generally, the fact that Trump and the other Republicans are lying a lot about what Obama has done makes it almost impossible to determine how they will change things.
A case can be made that there plan is to mainly stick to current policy (except by cutting taxes on rich people of course) and to rename the current policy and claim credit for what Obama has done and continue to claim he did something horrible. I wish I believed this is what will happen. I am sure they will make major changes. The point is that their statements are vague and often based on false factual premises, so it is impossible to figure out what they will actually do.
Consider deportation of undocumented aliens.
Trump: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, a lot of these people, probably 2 million. It could even be 3 million,” he told CBS’s Lesley Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday. “After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about, who are terrific people.”
One plausible interpretation of this is “We are going to stick to current policy, and consider possible policy changes late in my second term”. Under current policy, people with criminal records are deported. Trump proposes sticking with that policy. He doesn’t explain how sticking with current policy will cause an increase in the rate of deportations. He doesn’t even claim that, under his policy, people will be deported at a higher rate than under Obama’s policies. He says 2 million people will be deported, but he doesn’t say when. According to ABC “President Barack Obama has often been referred to by immigration groups as the “Deporter in Chief.”Between 2009 and 2015 his administration has removed more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders, ” Trumps 2 maybe 3 million people claim is consistent with between two and three million in the next six years (with Trump assuming he will be re-elected).
The quoted statement is perfectly consistent with sticking to current policy including the conditions for deportation and the rate of deportations.
It is also possible that Trump proposing sticking with current policy but says the outcome will be bigly more winning, because Trump is a winner. He might argue that, because of his excellent management and winnerness, la migra will do things much more quickly.
It is fairly likely that Trump believes that applying the current policy will cause a large increase in the rate of deportations, because he doesn’t know what current policy is.
Finally, it is possible that he is just lying and plans to deport people who wouldn’t be deported under current policy.
Trump is so vague that it is not possible to prove that there is any “crack” separating Trump and Congressional Republicans. In fact, it is not possible to prove that there is any “crack” between Trump and Obama.
This also true of other policy issues. For example, Trump and the other Republicans agree that they will repeal Obamacare and replace it with something which protects people with pre-existing conditions and is based on consumer choice and markets. One reasonable interpretation of this is that they plan to replace Obamacare with Obamacare. This will come as no surprise to Obama who told us they would do this.
Also they continue to denounce the Obama stimulus and propose a big increase on infrastructure spending
McCarthy: McCarthy said on Fox News that “there is a place we could find common ground with Republicans and Democrats” on infrastructure. But he seemed unable to explain how Trump’s infrastructure spending plan differs from President Obama’s 2009 stimulus. “Obama never had infrastructure in his stimulus,” he said. (Infrastructure spending was a major part of Obama’s stimulus.)
So far this post has been wildly optimistic. Again, I don’t really hope that Republicans will mostly stick with Obama’s policies except for cutting taxes on the rich. I’m sure they will do horrible things. I am also sure that they haven’t told us what horrible things they will do, because they are still promising all things to all people. They haven’t switched from messaging to policy making yet. I hope wish they never make policy.
On the other hand, I think that the strategy of copying Obama while continuing to denounce him is likely to be politically successful. Republicans have managed to convince many Americans that Obamacare is horrible in some mysterious way. The hope was that people would notice that, for example, there aren’t any death panels. If Republicans stick with Obamacare but call it TrumpCare, there won’t be any new proof that Obamacare doesn’t have horrible provisions.
The public doesn’t know what current policy is. Many are convinced that Obama policy is extremly leftist and unsuccessful. This makes it easy for Republicans to convince them that the repealing Obama’s policies and replacing them with Obama’s policies is a huge improvement and that Republicans deserve credit for Obama’s gigantic accomplishments. The strangest thing is that I suspect that Obama is OK with that.
The thing is this, the early returns mean nothing. You have to understand that there is no one in this entire group that has a fen clue what they are doing. They are lost.
McConnell and Ryan will figure it out for them. And that absolute horror of a human being Pence may be allowed to talk.
Well Obama has been called “deporter and chief”…….
Biggest coming problem for the Republicans is the coming auto-bust. Much like with Tech,RE and Oil, a bubble inflated in auto-financing which allowed to much debt during the recovery which artificially boosted sales. In fairness two 2 big auto-makers in America, they have been setting aside cash since they know it won’t end well. I am also hearing there is one large Japanese automaker that is seriously FUBAR when this blows and may require a bailout.
Now this kind of debt bubble isn’t in the large systematic league with the 00’s RE bust, but it isn’t as small as the oil bust either. It is large enough to have enough shockwaves to create a “NBER” recession especially if we get another 2- 3 years of “expansion”. Secondly, I don’t think the market is done expanding yet. I don’t think the cows will come home until 2019-20 and when these loans crash, it will send us into the next tailspin as sales decline and production is idled. The answer isn’t in privatization(aka, the Republicans actually meaning of “infrastructure spending”) or tax cuts.
Anti-wall campaign slogan:
Pink Donald (not swarthy): The Wall
Situation: 12 million illegal immigrants — maybe 2/3 overworked/underpaid Mexicans. So what?
Just think: 1 out of 40 persons among us is an overworked/underpaid Mexican — and it’s all our fault for not spending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building a Maginot Line barrier to keep them out. Just imagine: we still have time to build the laughing stock of the world. Can’t think of the link but: according to US and Mexican authorities, Mexican emigration to US steadily down for 10 years — one source said by three; the other by ten. Maybe someone can dig it out — may have been at The Big Picture/Barry Ritholtz.
Hundreds of years from now archeologists are going to dig up the ruins of American civilization and find that it was 8 million underpaid/overworked Mexicans who brought everything down.
“I am also hearing” -The Rage-
CoRev and now this.
The end of facts and competency.
Your knowledge of auto finance is probably equal to CoRev’s knowledge of climate.
Hope and no Change, eh?
No, lots and lots and lots of change, I’m afraid. Check out my new post and the article I excerpt that it’s based on.
Very well put, Robert, and I suspect that there will indeed be a lot of replacing Obama policies with Obama policies renamed. If so, could easily be a lot worse, and unfortunately there remains a good chance of that.
I don’t believe Trump deeply cares what happens to the illegal but otherwise law abiding. He might have a generous program provided he can credibly explain it as in the specific interest of American citizens, which actually sounds like a good basis for policy here. But what is that explanation? He is also thin-skinned so I expect that immigrant anti-Trump demonstrations and insistence on maintaining “sanctuary city” status are probably poor ways to get moving on this.
Republicans have always done this. Take away the cookie jar when Democrats are in office and bring it back when they get into office. It’s totally clear with the talk about infrastructure funding. They don’t really know how to govern (well), and so they copy first. Then they usually get carried away and overreach. We shall see. As Barkley Rosser said above, there remains a good chance it will get worse, because this time around they seem determined to make it worse. They want it to be worse.
I wish I could stop being interrupted by frequent tears. I think I may have to get used to that.
Well the Affordable Care Act IS horrible in many actual ways. Somewhat ironically, part of the problem is that the penalties for not having insurance were mild enough that they didn’t incentivize people very much to buy insurance. So in many markets it is in a death spiral of ever sicker people buying ever more-expensive insurance. Of course going back to the pre-ACA rules where pre-existing conditions were never covered would be even worse for the people who need insurance most. And Trump’s idea of only keeping the “good” parts of it just accelerates its demise. (“But free markets are always the right answer” – Every Republican)
“So in many markets it is in a death spiral of ever sicker people buying ever more-expensive insurance.” Funny how that works, getting sick increases healthcare prices and costs which are covered by healthcare insurance. PPACA has little to do with this phenomena.