Lord Fauntleroy took out his magic marker and signed four executive orders at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey on Saturday, which, as I understand it, was a huge inconvenience for his lordship. Normally he reserves his weekends at his resorts for cheating at golf and schmoozing his donor base for campaign contributions. But, to steal a line from the seminal Mel Brooks' movie Blazing Saddles, "the affairs of state must take precedence over the affairs of state."
In all seriousness though, and I realize it's hard to take anything Trump says or does seriously, the four executive orders he signed were nothing more than political stunts designed to boost a sagging campaign that is badly trailing Joe Biden with less than 90 days to go before the election. Let's break them down in order of magnitude.
1. The Payroll Tax Deferment. Let's be very clear here. Trump cannot unilaterally cut the payroll tax on his own, nor can he promise to do so if he's reelected. Only Congress has that authority. What he can do is direct the Treasury Department to stop collecting the 6.2 percent in FICA deductions that come out of every worker's paycheck.
There are three problems with this. The first is that this deferment, or holiday if you want to call it that, will do nothing for the roughly 30 million unemployed workers in the country since they wouldn't have been required to pay the tax in the first place. Secondly, since it is only a deferment, the money will have to be repaid, both by the employers and the employees next April when they file their yearly taxes.
And lastly, but most importantly, Trump's executive order will have the effect of undermining the solvency of Social Security, which has long been a target of Republicans, since the payroll tax is the sole source of the entitlement program's funding. Most economists believe that around 2030 - ten years from now - there will be insufficient reserves in the fund to pay out the millions of recipients who depend on the monthly check for their survival. When that moment arrives, one of two things will have to happen. Payroll taxes will have to go up, which is never politically popular, or disbursements will have to be reduced, which is equally perilous.
Trump knows this, and I suspect so do his cohorts in the Senate. That might be why so many of them are doing their damnedest to distance themselves from this executive order. That Trump would even attempt to do something so reckless this close to an election is a sign of just how desperate he is.
2. The "$400" extension of unemployment benefits. The reason I put $400 in quotations is because it's actually only $300. The other $100 has to come from the states, which at this point are so badly hemorrhaging financially they barely have enough money to keep the lights on, let alone pick up an additional hundred bucks per week. Thanks to the pandemic - the Trump Virus as it should be rightfully called - a majority of these states will be forced to slash thousands of jobs that will profoundly impact teachers, cops, firefighters, sanitation workers and hospital personnel. That last one is particularly cruel given how badly the country needs these people now more than ever.
And here's the thing most people don't know. Since Trump went around Congress - AGAIN! - he actually doesn't have the money to pay out the $300, so he's going to literally steal $44 billion from the Department of Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Fund - that would be the fund that pays for natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. - to cover the costs. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, "$44 billion would cover less than five weeks of payments for 30 million unemployed Americans. That isn’t enough money to make it to October, unless the number of people on unemployment falls dramatically." If anything, the number of unemployed workers will likely grow.
3. Moratorium on evictions. There is nothing in this executive order that actually stops or defers the eviction of millions of tenants from their apartments by their landlords. In fact, all it does is direct the HHS Secretary and the Director of the CDC to "consider" what measures, if any, would be needed to temporally halt those evictions. For a president who had no trouble directing his officials to put children in cages, this executive order is about as toothless as a newborn baby. He might as well have said pretty please to the landlords.
And because Trump didn't include any financial assistance in the executive order, even if by some miracle the evictions are somehow stopped, the tenants will still be responsible for paying their past-due rent once the pandemic is over. Only someone like Trump, whose father was once sued by the Nixon Justice Department for discrimination, could be so callous.
4. Student Loan Deferral. Like the above executive order, this is a nothing burger. Yes, all interest is waived through the end of December, which is good, I'll admit, but full payments will resume starting in January. Basically, students got a four-month forbearance, again with no financial assistance to help them going forward. In other words, if the country is still in the midst of this pandemic come next year, and all signs are pointing to that, they will be right back where they started.
Absent from Trump's executive orders was any mention of financial assistance for states that are facing economic armageddon this fall or any extension of PPP loans that are vital for the millions of small to mid-sized businesses which are the heart and soul of this country's economy. I guess he didn't have enough time to consider that in-between his rounds of golf.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will challenge any or all of Trump's executive orders. Frankly, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Bunker Boy is just looking for an excuse to get up on his soap box and proclaim to the world how magnanimous he is. Yeah, right, he's the fucking Grinch descending Mount Crumpit with all the toys for the children of Whoville. Meanwhile, he's the one who stole the toys in the first place.
No, if I’m Pelosi, et al, here’s what I’d do. I'd ignore his executive orders. Pretend they never happened. Then I’d take the original $3 trillion House bill and trim it down to, say, $1.5 trillion: $500 billion for states and hospitals, $500 billion for PPP and $500 billion for unemployment benefits and renters relief. Then after it passes, I’d dump it on McConnell’s desk and let the world know how a functional system actually works. Just in time for dickhead's convention. Then the DNC and the Biden campaign should start running ads in every swing state on how Trump is destroying Social Security and Medicare for a cheap political stunt.
To be honest, I was a bit surprised that House Democrats passed such an enormous spending bill, knowing that it was DOA in the Senate. I’m not questioning their intentions, mind you. Given what we’re going through, $3 trillion sounds about right. But Pelosi should’ve known that McConnell and Mnuchin were never going to go for something that ambitious. To some degree, she and her cohorts are partly to blame for the breakdown that led to Trump jumping the tracks.
Part of the problem is that for well over a decade, the party that controls the House often passes legislation they know won’t fly in the Senate. In the good old days, each chamber would pass its own bill, then the two bills would be reconciled into one bill that both Houses could pass and would then make its way to the president’s desk for a signature.
Well those days are over. Nowadays House majorities don’t pass legislation; they pass bucket lists. Rank and file members end up caving to their respective bases primarily out of fear of facing a primary challenge from the left or the right. The result is that virtually nothing gets done. How many times did House Republicans pass repeal bills for the Affordable Care Act? I lost count, that’s how many. Not one of them went any further than Harry Reid’s desk.
In my opinion, House leadership needs to be considerably more pragmatic when it comes to which bills they take up. If Joe Biden does win the White House and Democrats manage to retake the Senate, they will be fortunate if they wind up with 51 seats. That means initiatives like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All will have to be shelved for other, more workable alternatives that stand a chance in the Senate. Remember, for every Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren there’s a Joe Manchin and a Jon Tester. Any legislation that doesn't have at least 50 "yes" votes is a waste of time and resources.
Biden knows this; it’s high time House Democrats got the memo.
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