House Speaker Paul Ryan’s attempts to act happy about Donald Trump’s budget aren’t being imitated by the members of his caucus. In fact, Republicans sound unhappy about a lot of things in the budget:
Longtime GOP Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky declared proposed cuts to safety net and environmental proposals “draconian.” [...]
GOP Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina questioned the rosy economic projections that allow the budget to balance over a decade even without touching Social Security or Medicare.
“Part of what’s going on here is supposedly you can put these different pieces of the puzzle together in a way that you don’t touch entitlements, but the reality is you can’t,” Sanford said. “So it creates a lie that we all then either address or don’t address, but it makes for a make-believe debate that I find frustrating.”
There you’ve got one Republican saying Trump goes too far in attacking the traditional Republican targets of poor people and the environment, and another pointing out that the budget is founded on a lie. Here’s the best one, though:
Several GOP lawmakers also complained that the administration made little or no effort to consult with them before putting forward a roster of cuts that Congress would clearly find unacceptable. These include slashing agriculture spending for crop insurance and food stamps; a cut of more than 30 percent for the State Department; as well as billions in cuts to an array of other domestic programs from Superfund cleanup spending to student loans.
“You would hope that they would want to ask the folks who know the most about it,” said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, adding he and his staff were not consulted.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! A member of the party that actively mocks the idea of expertise on science—climate especially—and a host of other issues is suddenly all “you should ask the folks who know the most about it” when it comes to something where he considers himself one of the folks who know the most about it. But this highlights the Trump regime’s hamhandedness at dealing with people who should be their allies, and Donald’s terrible polling. If he was in a stronger position with the public and wasn’t weakened by investigations and his own awful behavior, Trump could get away with annoying congressional Republicans. And if he was better at dealing with congressional Republicans, he might be getting a little more support and might have a couple more accomplishments to his name. But alienating allies while being widely unpopular is a dangerous combination.
Unfortunately, congressional Republicans do sign on to many of the damaging ideas in Trump’s budget—it was, after all, drawn up by Mick Mulvaney, who was until recently one of their own—and they will eagerly do a lot of damage to poor people and the environment and education and a long list of other things. Even if what they want us to pay attention to is the stuff Trump asked for that they didn’t do.