All they do is take. They give nothing; they create nothing.
It dawned on me - maybe I'm slow - that what's different about this "administration," if that's what we can call it, is that it gives nothing to the nation. It only takes. It has been taking away the benefits, programs, rights and expectations that have been part of the normal operation of government for as long as anyone can remember. For those past years the debate has been how much the government should do, and for whom, and in what form - never that the government shouldn't do anything. Even the taxation issue has now become only a question of how much to take from taxpayers, and from which ones. The rich are destined to benefit from less tax-taking while more, in the form of taxes and everything else, will be taken from the rest of us.
It used to be that legislation was intended to provide for "the general welfare," as the Constitution directs. So programs and benefits were created for that purpose - Social Security and Medicare to benefit the elderly and disabled; rules to reduce environmental pollution, other rules to ensure the safety of products, programs to fund scientific research to cure diseases, programs for disadvantaged groups to gain equal access to education and employment, laws prohibiting racial and gender discrimination, and many other efforts to improve the general welfare of the people. And we have come to rely on these long-standing programs and laws and rules. It was assumed, even by conservatives, that these programs were generally useful and appropriate; the debate was only about how much they should cost - not whether they should exist at all.
They also know at some level that taking an existing benefit away tends to be more controversial than providing it in the first place - which was why the GOP fought the ACA so hard. They're still trying to get rid of it by chipping away at it, but they see that it's become popular and therefore more difficult to kill altogether. Nevertheless, Trump's DOGE and his supine GOP have decided to fuck the general welfare and take away everything all at once. A party that thinks it's OK to deport an American citizen - a child with cancer - has clearly lost its moral compass altogether, never mind the Constitution's direction to promote the general welfare. But I think they might begin to realize that in the long run their taking away will be much more difficult than they expected.
= new reply since forum marked as read
