#and republicans have been blocking measures and chopping bills for just as long
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"voting blue is a requirement to ensure things dont backslide rapidly" and "dems have failed for 10+ years to enact meaningful change" are both true statements.
just because theyre spineless politicians whod rather BE elected than actually serve the people and causes they promise to focus on doesnt mean electing them anyway isnt important.
because unfortunately, in the end, better the spineless coward who might be persuaded to help than the people who actively want you dead and powerless
#this situation is COMPLICATED#and republicans have been blocking measures and chopping bills for just as long#and yes trump tossed a lot of power around but it also wasnt how things were MEANT to work#and the dems care more about image than anything else#they want to cater so badly to a centrist america. they want conservatives to vote for them#THATS their audience because as long as human rights are on the line they figure people further left dont have a chocie#we're being held hostage.#BUT.#without 2/3 control of house and senate and a blue pres.#which is a HARD thing to get#legislation will be shut down. and no change will happen.#its easier to kill or freeze a bill forever than it is to pass one#tags arent organized but again. complex issue. nuance. politics.#if any of the 'voting doesnt work' crowd clown on this theyre blocked#voting DOES work. but only if you clean house entirely. you need 2/3. nothing passes without a supermajority#and i mean. if trump had lost in 2016 this wouldnt matter.#a man who conspired/committed treason appointed a third of the court#we SIMPLY wouldnt be here if hed lost.#it wouldnt have mattered if conservatives kept trying to block appointments#they couldnt have done it forever
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Uprising
SAT JUN 06 2020
Since I last wrote, the George Floyd protests that began in Minneapolis, and spread to other major US cities over many nights, has now turned into nothing less than a new civil rights movement, in 2020 going under the banner of, “Black Lives Matter,” which began as a hashtag in 2013 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin... and which was subsequently shouted down by two counter movements, “all lives matter,” and “blue lives matter.”
BLM had inspired some demonstrations in the 20-teens, but remained mostly a social media movement, occasionally getting some mainstream press.
At the time of my last entry, as I said, the protests were about George Floyd, and holding the four officers responsible for his death accountable. And there was progress when all four officers were not only fired, but arrested and charged, with varying degrees of murder or manslaughter.
But because these charges took so long to materialize, the anger of the crowds did not immediately evaporate. Protests continued, and continued to filter down to the smaller towns in every state... even as they grew bigger in Washington DC outside the White House.
Trump actually holed up in the bunker beneath the white house for a night or two, with all the lights off above decks, while men outside worked day and night to build a wall around the compound.
But, he was criticized for this massive act of cowardice in the media, and was given the nick name, “Bunker Boy,” which enraged him.
So... on Monday, June 1st, after giving a blood curdling speech about how all the protesters were basically terrorists, and how, if governors did not dominate them, he’d send in the military to do so for them... he unleashed a small army of law enforcement and paramilitary goons on Lafayette square, in the middle of the afternoon (broad daylight once again), hours before curfew, to brutalize and drive back the crowds so that he could walk across the square to Saint John’s Church for an unplanned and pointless photo op, in which he held up a Bible, weirdly, saying nothing.
Amazingly, that Bible did not burst into flames in his hand... which speaks to Yaweh’s restraint... though word is he did strike two national guardsmen with lightning just tonight.
The peaceful, law abiding protesters were gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten back by officers with shields and batons, and further intimidated not only by a cavalry of officers on horseback, but also by and extremely low hovering army helicopter, which could easily have crashed and burned at such a low elevation with so many obstacles like trees and power lines nearby.
Last entry, I had said that Trump and his junta were too shy to go full dictator, but this act, last Monday, demonstrated to the nation and the world, that, in his mind at least, full dictator is not off the table.
This move, on Trump’s part, was met with shock and horror on all sides, and lead to General Mattis, his former National Security Secretary, who resigned late last year, to publish a scathing op-ed, in which he not only called Trump a threat to the constitution and democracy, but reminded the US military they... need to not be taking unconstitutional orders from this ass hole.
His words were praised and echoed by many on the right, and many more on the left who normally don’t like to agree with Mad Dog Mattis.
Joe Biden’s numbers rose in the election polls, in all swing states, and turned a few solidly red states into swing states... just as Allan Lichtman’s keys would seem to have predicted.
And lastly, Trump’s dictatorial stunt, crystallized the protest movement into the full blown, new civil rights movement that it’s become today. The Black Lives Matter movement is now stronger, more organized, and more determined than ever to fight for systemic change.
It’s more than just George Floyd and four guilty officers now. This is about systemic racism, police brutality, and anti-fascism.
(It’s also secondarily about the wealth gap and the total failure of those in power to keep us all comfortable enough not to bother taking to the streets.)
Rather than backing down, people all over the country are going out in greater numbers... better prepared for the attacks of the police. And armed with their smart phones, videotaping events live, and streaming them to the cloud for the world to see in real time.
They are exposing the fact that most of the fires and property damage, such as broken storefront windows, are being done by the cops themselves... as helped along by white nationalist citizens trying to blend into the crowd to cause mayhem (shades of kristallnacht, but for two weeks and counting).
Much of the looting too, is being done by opportunists who are traveling long distances to exploit the mayhem in local municipalities they’ve never visited before in their lives, much less reside in.
Peaceful protesters are getting much more savvy, not only about exposing these bad players on video, but sussing them out before they can strike. And they’re getting more savvy about protecting themselves, with padded motorcycle jackets, goggles and other measures to mitigate teargas and pepper spray, bluetooth devices, scouts and lookouts to maintain situational awareness.
It’s definitely worth noting here that all the 2nd Amendment nuts, who for decades have justified their right to bear arms citing exactly the scenario we are now seeing, in which the government becomes tyrannical... are nowhere to be found in this confrontation. They, in fact, are siding with the fascists in power... because... racism.
Back to the BLM movement...
BLM has now (thanks to Trump) passed the tipping point at which it can be put down by force. Too many people are involved, and they have too much support, both at home and abroad (78% support domestically, as gauged yesterday).
To put it another way... the effort now required by those in power to quash this movement, is too drastic to be practical.
Why? Well, they are desperately clinging to a stock market bubble right now... which is being inflated by optimistic speculation in the face of all that’s beset the nation... that everything will get back to normal in a year.
Killing protesters, or disappearing them is out of the question... it will only bring more unrest. Confiscating smart phones, in order to quash the videos of police wrongdoing... out of the question, because smart phones are economic tools used to make purchases, view ads, pay bills, etc.
Internet black outs... out of the question, for the same reason.
Anything that threatens to pop that delicate stock market bubble is instant death for Trump and his junta.
And even if they don’t pop that bubble... every day the BLM movement gains more steam... with people out of work, out of money, stuck at home because no progress has been made with virus testing and contact tracing... the junta still moves ever closer to the end of their reign.
Talk now is not only that Biden’s numbers are climbing... but that Republican control of the Senate is also on the chopping block this November.
People have not forgotten who impeached this guy last November... warning us about the danger he posed... and who blocked his removal from office back then, just before Covid19 reared it’s ugly head in China.
Who voted to acquit Trump?.. the same ones who oppose stimulus checks now, and who continue to enable all of the needless suffering and hardship we, as a nation are enduring together in this moment.
Even if these Senators break from Trump... which most are yet unwilling to do... we still remember how they failed us at that critical juncture, when he could have been removed in advance of the national crisis.
We still remember how they brushed aside warnings about how history would remember them... at best, not giving a shit about history... but often with mockery, that such a warning had any teeth at all.
We still remember...
We...
...not just the political junkies who always pay attention... but now the ones who, at the time, had better things to focus on.
The Millennials, who though they’d finally recovered the ground they lost in the Bush years, and were about to try and settle down to own homes and start families.
The Zoomers (or GenZ) just graduating high school, and just starting college, thinking the economic nightmare suffered by their predecessors could not befall them too.
Together, these two youngest generations of voters, who had been the most apathetic, but have now become the most activist... outnumber, by percentage of population, the boomers in their own activist hayday of the 1960s.
And unlike the young boomers of old, who were at odds with some of the Silents, and all of the Greatests... Gens Y and Z have nearly full support of X, and growing support from the aging boomers, who, as of late, have been asked to sacrifice their lives for the economy.
This is a moment in American history like few before it, in which revolution is now pregnant.
But at the time of writing tonight, I still believe it will be a mostly peaceful revolution... sweeping Trump and his junta out of power this November, and establishing some meaningful and lasting reforms in the aftermath of the nightmare they visited upon us, these past four years.
That’s all I have to say about things for a Saturday night.
It’s time for bed.
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Remote Learning? No Thanks. – The New York Times
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Good morning. Virus hospitalizations are surging. The Trump administration will send more agents into cities. And desperate parents are thinking about home schooling.
The coronavirus is so widespread in the U.S. that many schools are unlikely to reopen anytime soon. Already, some large school districts — in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, suburban Washington and elsewhere — have indicated they will start the school year entirely with remote classes. Yet many parents and children are despondent about enduring online-only learning for the foreseeable future.
So it makes sense that the topic of home schooling is suddenly hot.
Parents who never before considered home schooling have begun looking into it — especially in combination with a small number of other families, to share the teaching load and let their children interact with others. Some are trying to hire private tutors. One example is a popular new Facebook group called Pandemic Pods and Microschools, created by Lian Chang, a mother in San Francisco.
Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who writes about parenting, has predicted that clusters of home-schooling families are “going to happen everywhere.”
Of course, many middle-class and poor families cannot afford to hire private tutors, as my colleague Eliza Shapiro pointed out. But there is nonetheless the potential for a home-schooling boom that is more than just a niche trend among the wealthy.
Consider that the population of home-schoolers — before the pandemic — was less affluent than average:
Eliza told me that she thought many families, across income groups, were likely to consider pooling child-care responsibilities in the fall. Children would remain enrolled in their school and would come together to take online classes in the same house (or, more safely, backyard). In some cases, these co-ops might morph into lessons that parents would help lead.
As for high-income families, they may end up having a broader effect if a significant number pull their children out of school and opt for home schooling. “We could see a drain on enrollment — and therefore resources — into public schools,” Eliza said.
As Wesley Yang, a writer for Tablet magazine, asked somewhat apocalyptically, “Did public schools in major cities just deal themselves a deathblow?” And L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, a professor at New York University, recently told the science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer that any increased privatization of education was likely to “widen the gaps between kids.”
It’s too early to know whether home schooling is more of a real trend or a social-media fad. But the U.S. is facing a dire situation with schools: Remote learning went badly in the spring. The virus continues to spread more rapidly than in any country that has reopened schools. And, as Sarah Darville points out in an article for the upcoming Sunday Review section, the federal government has done little to help schools.
No wonder parents are starting to think about alternatives.
How can school districts respond? Jay Mathews, a Washington Post education writer, has a suggestion: Superintendents should abandon trying to devise a single solution for an entire school system.
“Let principals and teachers decide,” Mathews writes. “They know their students better than anyone except parents, who would just as soon get back to work.” His column includes specific ideas he has heard from teachers.
THREE MORE BIG STORIES
1. The biggest bet yet on a vaccine
The Trump administration announced a nearly $2 billion contract with Pfizer and a smaller German biotech company to produce a potential coronavirus vaccine. The contract is the largest yet from Operation Warp Speed, the White House program to fast-track a vaccine.
The government won’t pay the drugmakers until the vaccine gets F.D.A. approval. “It’s like a restaurant reservation,” explained Noah Weiland, who covers health care for The Times. “You pay for dinner when you eat it, but you’ve got yourself the prime table in the restaurant instead of having to wait in line.” If the vaccine works, individual Americans would receive it for free.
2. Where the virus is under control
No region of the United States suffered a worse virus outbreak this spring than the Northeast — but few places have managed to bring it under such good control in the last couple of months.
“It’s acting like Europe,” Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. After cases and deaths surged in Europe and the Northeast, both places responded with aggressive lockdowns and big investments in testing and tracing efforts. Residents have also been willing to follow public health advice — wearing masks, staying out of confined spaces and more.
In other virus developments:
3. Trump sends more agents to cities
The Trump administration says it will send hundreds of additional federal agents into cities to confront a rise in violence. The plan calls for sending about 200 more agents to Chicago, 200 to Kansas City, Mo., and 35 to Albuquerque.
In Portland, Ore., early this morning, federal officers fired tear gas near the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, who had joined demonstrators outside the federal courthouse. Coughing and scrambling to put on goggles, Wheeler called the officers’ tactics an “egregious overreaction.”
Media watch: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative pundits have seized on the Portland protests as a pro-Trump rallying cry.
Here’s what else is happening
After ordering the Chinese Consulate in Houston to close, the State Department accused Chinese diplomats of spying and attempting to steal scientific research.
China began what it hoped would be its first successful journey to Mars, launching equipment on a voyage that will last until next year.
The House voted overwhelmingly — with 72 Republicans joining the Democrats — to remove statues of Confederate figures and white supremacists. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, is likely to block the measure.
President Trump again sought to showcase his mental fitness by repeatedly reciting what he said was a sample sequence from a cognitive test. “It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy,” he told Fox News.
Employees of Hearst Magazines — the publisher of Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire — described a toxic work environment, including lewd and sexist remarks by the company’s president, Troy Young.
Lives Lived: “My analyst told me/That I was right out of my head.” The woman who wrote and first sang those memorable lines was Annie Ross. Best known as a member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, probably the most successful vocal group in the annals of jazz, she was also, later in life, a movie actress and a cabaret mainstay. Annie Ross died at 89.
By 2070, the extremely hot zones that now cover less than 1 percent of the Earth’s land surface — like the Sahara — could cover almost 20 percent. Water sources would vanish. Farms would go barren. And hundreds of millions of people would be forced to choose between flight or death.
“The result,” writes Abrahm Lustgarten in a new story for The Times Magazine, “will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.”
The Times Magazine and ProPublica have modeled what that migration could look like. “Northern nations can relieve pressures on the fastest-warming countries by allowing more migrants to move north across their borders, or they can seal themselves off, trapping hundreds of millions of people in places that are increasingly unlivable,” Lustgarten writes.
The article is part of The Magazine’s climate issue, which also includes pieces on Argentina’s fearsome thunderstorms; the teenage activists leading the climate change movement; and the Louisiana communities that may be lost in a plan to protect the coastline.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT, MUPPETS
Eat some cheese
Cervelle de Canut — which translates to “silk worker’s brain” and describes a simple cheese spread — is a mainstay in Lyon, France, where the author Bill Buford researched French cuisine for his book “Dirt.” You can whip up the spread in about 10 minutes by blending fromage blanc with chopped shallots and fresh herbs. Serve with a baguette (or just eat it with spoon).
And Pete Wells recently spent more than six hours on a Zoom call with Buford to learn the art of poaching a chicken.
Read something thought-provoking
Zadie Smith — the acclaimed author of “White Teeth” — is back with a timely collection of short essays, “Intimations,” that covers the killing of George Floyd, the class divides exposed by the pandemic and more.
“The virus map of the New York boroughs turns redder along precisely the same lines as it would if the relative shade of crimson counted not infection and death but income brackets and middle-school ratings,” she writes in one essay. “Death comes to all — but in America it has long been considered reasonable to offer the best chance of delay to the highest bidder.”
Good news for Muppets fans
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The Bachelor in the West Wing: Happily Never After
Illustration by Honeybones
For the first several months of the current administration, every day was an adventure in outrage. There were people being turned away from the United States under a travel ban that hadn’t existed when they boarded their flights. The administration threatened to strip grant money from Sanctuary Cities. Environmental and banking regulations were attacked. The Cabinet has been filled with some of the most unqualified people to ever hold their respective positions, people with the cruelest ideologies. Donald Trump did not select these people because he believed that they would be competent leaders and advisors; he picked them because they have the only thing that Donald Trump respects: money. In Trump’s view of the world, there is only one marker of success or competence, regardless of whether a fortune was earned stolen or inherited — net worth, his only true measure of personal importance. Jeet Heer wrote a column for the New Republic last week outlining Trump’s ethos and that of his almost-but-not-quite Communication Director Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in record time on Monday, just two weeks before his official start date. Heer calls this ethos “the New York Douchebag,” typically defined as a loud, brash, excessively confident man, with an exceptionally fragile ego. Texans of generations past used to call this type of man a “hot dog,” a personality more often signaled by expensive cowboy boots and an instinctive reluctance to tip. Money is indistinguishable from personal and moral worth for these men, and loyalty is something owed to them but never from them. The resulting application of this caustic ethos in the West Wing has been a revolving door of advisors with no real ideological lodestar (excepting Steven Bannon and his acolytes) other than to profit personally from the position they hold. And the only way to profit is to stay in Trump’s infamously fickle good graces.
Twitter has been incessantly mocking Scaramucci with memes of Futurama’s infamous “’80s Guy,” a cryogenically frozen venture capitalist from 1980s New York City who wakes up in the future and tries to take over the first company that offers him employment, but this character has just as much in common with Trump. A National Review article on the state of Trump’s inner-circle succinctly explains: “Trump doesn’t want stability, he wants motion. He isn’t interested in details or arguments, he’s energized by accomplishments, achievements, placards on the wall. He doesn’t have a cabinet, he has employees. And the primary job of those employees is to protect their boss.” Or, as The ’80s Guy would put it, “Sharks are winners and they don’t look back ‘cause they don’t have necks. Necks are for sheep.”
Unfortunately for Trump and his Cabinet, they’ve come to remind me more of a different kind of shark. I recently listened to a science podcast that described the reproductive process of certain tiger sharks: multiple eggs are fertilized by multiple males and grow at different rates. The fitter and stronger baby sharks hatch first and devour their siblings in utero to grow even stronger. This seems an apt metaphor for the Trump White House. Trump thrives on chaos, competition and attention. He wants to watch his inner circle fight among themselves to dictate who gets to kiss the ring and who doesn’t — so long as they don’t get more attention than he does in the national press.
This was likely Scaramucci’s fatal mistake after seeming to gain significant influence in the West Wing so swiftly. After a very public feud with Scaramucci, Reince Priebus was unceremoniously replaced by former Homeland Security John F. Kelly and was left stranded by Trump’s motorcade on an airport tarmac. Kelly himself decided to fire Scaramucci after his crude comments to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza made headlines all over the country. Communications professionals seems especially difficult for the Administration to hold on to. Sean Spicer, whose tenure at the White House was marked by near constant humiliation, resigned over the decision to hire Scaramucci. Jason Miller, who served as Senior Communications Officer during the campaign, was supposed to step into the role of Communications Director, but left the administration before inauguration to spend more time with his family (everyone’s favorite euphemism). Miller was then replaced by Michael Dubke after a few weeks of Spicer trying to juggle both the role of Communications Director and White House Press Secretary. Dubke, whose hiring was considered a sign that the Trump administration was at least paying lip service to the Republican establishment, lasted only a few months, and he was supposed to be replaced by Scaramucci. With Priebus, Spicer, and Dubke all out of the administration, rumors are swirling that both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security advisor H.R. McMaster are so frustrated with the capriciousness and chaos of the administration that they too are considering resigning from their respective posts. The Republican establishment has been all but totally pushed out of the administration. On top of all this, there are Trump’s public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who Trump feels should not have recused himself from the investigation into the administration’s ties with Russia and potential 2016 Presidential Election interference. Odd as it feels to refer to a man deemed too racist to be a Federal Judge in the ’80s as an “establishment Republican” in 2017, that is where we are now.
And as the establishment wing of the administration collapses, who remains to whisper in Trump’s ear? On one side, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and their ally, National Economic Council Director and former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn. On the other side are the ideologues: Steve Bannon and his protégé Stephen Miller. Bannon, former head of the ultra-right-wing publication Breitbart News, has infamously butted heads with Kushner, whom he sees as working against his nationalist “movement” within the White House.
Which of these remaining gestating baby sharks will eat their kin first? Earlier this year, rumors spread throughout the Beltway and the media that Bannon was almost forced out. Portrayals of Bannon as the “true power” behind the Presidency on Saturday Night Live, coupled with a Time Magazine cover featuring Bannon with the headline “The Great Manipulator” reportedly infuriated Trump. Ever the reality TV personality, Trump is loath to share the spotlight, and he especially dislikes the notion that he could be a puppet of someone else’s ideology. Kushner, who was rumored to have encouraged the Time Magazine cover story, urged Trump to remove Bannon from his position in the National Security Council (a position that a political strategist with no military leadership experience should never have held in the first place), but Bannon managed to hang on to his role in the West Wing nonetheless. Shortly after this skirmish, it was revealed that Kushner had failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and is currently under investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. It’s anyone’s guess which of the two men will be first on the chopping block — but considering Trump’s lack of ideological beliefs and commitment to increasing his family member’s bank accounts, my money is on Kushner’s survival.
As entertaining as the Trump show can be to hate-watch for the spectacular chaos and bitter infighting between corrupt and dishonorable figures, what does this mean for the rest of us? While Trump has spent nearly all of America’s soft power and international respect (which will require significant time and effort to rebuild once he and his cronies have finally vacated the Office), a West Wing in chaos is largely ineffective. After a series of legislative failures, Congressional Republicans are worried that these histrionics will prevent the administration from accomplishing anything meaningful throughout the remainder of Trump’s term. For all of our sakes, we can only hope they are right. During the campaign, Trump released a list of goals for his first 100 days in office — yet, six months into his tenure, he has accomplished almost nothing on that list. Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have failed despite shady tactics, secret bills, and despite the Republican majority in both houses of Congress. The most recent bill would have caused 22 million Americans to lose their health insurance and is deeply unpopular across the nation, including with many of Trump’s own supporters. The more time and energy the West Wing spends consuming itself in infighting, back stabbing, and chaos, the better off the rest of America will be. The less of Steve Bannon’s ethno-nationalist ideology can be put into practice, the safer and more secure we all are.
Trump as the quintessential “New York Douchebag,” amassing an administration of wealthy sycophants instead of competent ideologues, is one of the better outcomes we could have hoped for in these dark days after Election Day 2016. As of last month, 384 of 564 White House positions requiring Senate confirmation had no nominee. While some high level Trump supporters believe that John Kelly could bring some semblance of order to the administration, it is highly unlikely that even a retired general could survive in the toxic environment of Trump’s West Wing. One false move, criticizing Trump or whoever his favorite advisor happens to be that day, too much media coverage, or attracting the ire of other courtiers could be his last. That is assuming Kelly will have any true authority in the White House, which is doubtful. Knowing what we know about Trump, that seems nearly impossible. Any other supposition assumes that Kelly has true authority and control in the White House, which is highly doubtful to say the least. Knowing what we know about Trump and his administration after the events of the last 6 months, allowing anyone else to brandish authority in the West Wing seems nearly impossible.
The Bachelor in the West Wing: Happily Never After this is a repost
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
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TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
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TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
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TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
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GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
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MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
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Text
AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
0 notes
Text
AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
___
MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama’s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
___
TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
___
TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
___
TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
___
Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcjIxT
0 notes
Text
AP FACT CHECK: Trump Wraps Up Trip Abroad With False Claims About NATO
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a muted week for the “real” Donald Trump, the Twitter account where the president normally says a lot of things that are unreal. That respite may have come to a close, though, as he wrapped up his foreign trip with yet another mistold tale about NATO.
In a tweet and a speech before leaving for home Saturday, he said that thanks to him, money is “starting to pour into NATO,” which it isn’t.
Besides going light on provocative tweets, Trump held no news conferences and gave no extended interviews abroad. Those venues are frequent sources of Trump’s off-the-cuff misstatements. Even a more scripted Trump, though, does not always tell it straight, and the release of his proposed budget stirred a fresh round of questionable rhetoric from his stateside aides.
A look at some of the statements under scrutiny over the past week:
TRUMP: “I will tell you, a big difference over the last year, money is actually starting to pour into NATO from countries that would not have been doing what they’re doing now had I not been elected, I can tell you that. Money is starting to pour in.” — speech to U.S. troops in Sicily on Saturday
TRUMP tweet: “Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in.”
THE FACTS: First, no money is pouring in and countries do not pay the U.S. Nor do they pay NATO directly, apart from administrative expenses, which are not the issue.
The issue is how much each NATO member country spends on its own defense.
Although the president is right that many NATO countries have agreed to spend more on their military budgets, that is not a result of the NATO summit this past week at which Trump pressed them to do so. The countries agreed in 2014 to stop cutting their military spending and to start increasing it “toward” 2 percent of their gross domestic product by 2024.
That goal was set during the Obama administration and is less than an ironclad commitment.
___
TRUMP: “But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.” — remarks to NATO on Thursday
THE FACTS: Members of the alliance are not in arrears in their military spending. They are not in debt to the United States, or failing to meet a current standard, and Washington is not trying to collect anything, despite the president’s contention that they “owe massive amounts of money.” They merely committed in 2014 to work toward the goal of 2 percent of GDP by 2024.
___
TRUMP, in a telephone call to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” — Philippine government transcript of April 29 phone call, reported by The Washington Post.
THE FACTS: Trump’s own State Department’s human rights report, updated in March, described in harsh terms the more than 6,000 killings by police and vigilantes of suspected Philippine drug dealers and users. The killings, carried out without formal evidence or trials, were to fulfill a Duterte campaign promise to eliminate illegal drug activity in the country by the end of last year.
The report said Duterte released lists of suspected drug criminals on at least two occasions and some on those lists were killed in police or vigilante operations. It says “authorities made promises of immunity from investigation and prosecution for officers involved in drug killings.”
___
TRUMP, on his Oval Office meeting May 10 with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador: “Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel,’ never mentioned it in that conversation. And they’re all saying I did. So you have another story wrong.” — remarks at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
THE FACTS: Trump is denying saying something that he wasn’t alleged to have said in the first place. His comment steers around the issue that emanated from that meeting — that he divulged classified information about an Islamic State threat in his conversation with the Russians, perhaps in a compromising way that would enable Russia to trace the source of the intelligence.
Trump is not alleged to have told the Russians specifically that the information came from the Israelis. Israel’s link was established separately, in news reports.
___
GARY COHN, Trump’s economic adviser: “Coal doesn’t even really make that much sense anymore.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to Italy on Thursday night, he added that natural gas is “such a cleaner fuel” and the U.S. could become a “manufacturing powerhouse” by spending on wind and solar energy.”
THE FACTS: That’s an accurate assessment of the improbability of reviving the coal industry — and a statement at odds with his boss’s vow to make coal king again. Trump and his team blame overregulation for the decline of coal but market forces are the larger problem. Natural gas supplies have surged with the advent of fracking, making coal increasingly uncompetitive as an energy source.
___
MICK MULVANEY, Trump budget chief, on the president’s proposed budget: “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Mulvaney is being artfully evasive about the health care program for families and the poor. By any conventional measure of federal financing, the program is on the chopping block.
First, the Trump-supported rollback of President Barack Obama’s health care law would reduce federal money that 31 states and the District of Columbia have relied on to extend coverage to low-income adults under Medicaid. The Republican health care bill passed by the House would cap the overall federal share of Medicaid spending, meaning it would no longer be an open-ended entitlement.
Second, the Trump budget could compound those restrictions by reducing the rate of growth in federal Medicaid money even more. Under the budget, Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to reductions in spending projections by Trump. That slight decrease adds up to more than $600 billion over 10 years.
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MULVANEY: “I went back and looked at some of the economic assumptions that the Obama administration made in its first couple of years. And I want to say on a couple of different occasions, their assumed growth rate was more than 4.5 percent. Come on, this is the first administration in history — OK? — it was the first decade, the first eight-year period in history not to have a 3 percent growth rate. Yet they were promising us 4.5 percent growth.” — briefing Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Obama’s expectations for growth were in line with accepted economic views at the time. That’s because accelerated growth often follows a downturn. He took office in a deep recession, and his team figured the economy would naturally rebound at a stronger pace than its average growth rate.
Obama’s first budget in 2009 estimated growth would be above 4 percent in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It would then settle into an average growth rate of 2.6 percent starting in 2015. That isn’t that far from separate estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The economy expanded instead at a sluggish pace, closer to 2 percent a year. Trump’s budget is more ambitious than Obama��s, rosy but thin on rationale for the optimism. It anticipates shifting growth above 3 percent, much higher than Obama’s long-term average.
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TRUMP, on why the U.S. under Obama should not have agreed to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015: “I think they would have failed, totally failed within six months. We gave them a lifeline and we not only gave them a lifeline, we gave them wealth and prosperity.” — Statement in Jerusalem on Monday, standing with Netanyahu.
THE FACTS: What would have happened without the deal is impossible to say, but such an imminent collapse of Iran’s economy was highly improbable.
International penalties on Iran in response to its nuclear program did drive its economy into crisis earlier this decade. But even before the nuclear deal, Iran had cut budget expenditures and fixed its balance of payments. It was still exporting oil and importing products from countries such as Japan and China.
The multinational deal froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for an end to a variety of oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad. The deal was conceivably an economic “lifeline” for the state but Iran is not wealthy as a result; ordinary Iranians have seen limited benefits to date.
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TRUMP: “I don’t know who the people are that would put us into a NAFTA, which was so one-sided. Both from the Canada standpoint and from the Mexico standpoint. So one-sided. Wilbur (U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) will tell you that, you know, like, at the court in Canada, we always lose. Well, the judges are three Canadians and two Americans. We always lose.” — Economist interview in May.
THE FACTS: Trump mischaracterizes the system for resolving trade disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the U.S. and Canada are at odds over trade, NAFTA calls for five-person panel to weigh in. Each country picks two panelists, drawn from a list that consists largely of trade lawyers, economists and retired judges. The fifth comes from one of the two countries and usually alternates between them.
The system “does treat all parties the same regardless of what Trump says,” says Fred McMahon, a fellow at the Fraser Institute think-tank in Toronto.
Trump has a stronger case when he complains about America’s losing record against Canada in NAFTA cases, though it’s not true that the Americans “always lose.” A 2007 study found that the NAFTA panels changed or overturned U.S. government decisions two-thirds of the time.
In those cases, the panels are supposed to base their decisions on U.S. law. But “there are a lot of folks in Washington who have felt that sometimes NAFTA panels overstep their bounds” and don’t defer to American laws, says Dean Pinkert, a partner at the Hughes Hubbard & Reed law firm and former member of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
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TRUMP told Coast Guard cadets of his “historic investment in our military,” adding: “I’m proud to say that under my administration, as you just heard, we will be building the first new heavy icebreakers the United States has seen in over 40 years.” — speech to Coast Guard Academy May 17.
THE FACTS: Although his rousing words earned applause from the cadets, Trump’s budget this past week excludes the Coast Guard from his planned expansion of military spending. He’s proposing to cut the Coast Guard budget by more than $420 million, or 3.8 percent, while increasing military spending overall. The Coast Guard is under the Homeland Security Department, not the Pentagon.
The icebreaker project he boasts about started under the Obama administration and Trump’s budget would advance it only incrementally, spending $19 million to continue efforts “toward awarding a contract” for design and construction in 2019. “We all know that doesn’t get us an icebreaker,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told a budget hearing, “but it gets us started.”
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Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Paul Wiseman, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jim Drinkard, Robert Burns and Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report.
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Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Dodd-Frank’s tentacles go deep, won’t be easily cut
It took seven years to put in place the regulatory strictures imposed on Wall Street after the financial crisis. They won’t be removed fast or easily. (Photo: iStock)
(Bloomberg) — It took seven years to put in place the regulatory strictures imposed on Wall Street after the financial crisis. They won’t be removed fast or easily.
President Donald Trump’s Friday directive that set in motion a scaling back of the Dodd-Frank Act was more pageantry than policy, said lawyers and former government officials who worked on the 2010 law. While the expectation for quick action sent bank stocks higher Friday, numerous road-blocks remain before lenders get relief.
Chief among the hurdles is that Trump doesn’t have any of his appointees running the agencies that oversee financial rules. Congress, too, will have to pass new legislation for many Dodd-Frank regulations to be eased. And the president’s decision to put two former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partners in charge of the effort — less than a decade after the bank’s traders helped bring the economy to the edge of collapse — galvanized opposition from Democrats.
Trump’s order is “more of a signal to the marketplace than real action,” said Richard Hunt, who runs the Consumer Bankers Association, a group that represents retail banks. “This is the second inning of a nine-inning regulatory re-balancing.”
See also: As Trump takes office, tax policy questions fly
Obama safeguards
Regardless of the timing, Trump’s action demanding that regulators produce a study on financial rules within 120 days starts the process of getting rid of safeguards the Obama administration enacted after the 2008 meltdown. Regulations the new administration plans to target include a ban on proprietary trading, a requirement that risky financial companies be subject to tough Federal Reserve oversight, and rules for taking down failed banks. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may also be on the chopping block.
A separate measure Trump signed, which may delay a controversial Labor Department rule requiring brokers who manage retirement accounts to put their customer’s interest first, is likely to have more teeth and move more quickly, lawyers said. That directive was embraced by much of the industry, which has long said the regulation will drive up their costs and make it harder to provide financial advice to their clients.
Related: DOL rule faces certain death under President-elect Trump
Trump has promised to get rid of burdensome regulations on business, though few thought he would embrace easing rules on Wall Street as much as he has. On the campaign trail, he billed himself as an economic populist and often took shots at bankers. Trump’s “Argument for America,” a two-minute advertisement that ran days before the election, featured Goldman Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein in an segment about corporate chieftains pocketing the wealth of American workers.
President Trump has promised to get rid of burdensome regulations on business. (Photo: iStock)
Dimon’s advice
Now, ex-Goldman executives populate the top echelons of the Trump administration and two of them, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin, are slated to be the point men on the Dodd-Frank rollback.
Related: 4 movie trailers with ties to Trump Treasury pick Steven Mnuchin
On Friday, Trump vented that the law had made it difficult for his business friends to get loans, and boasted to a group of executives gathered at the White House that he was getting feedback on how to fix it from an ideal adviser: JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon.
Democrats seized on the comments.
Trump made his announcement “literally standing alongside big bank and hedge fund CEOs,” said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She’s expected to be among those leading the fight to prevent an overhaul of Dodd-Frank in the Senate, where passing a law requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Republicans hold just 52 seats.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the independent who vied for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, said on CNN on Sunday that Trump was a “fraud” who’s working for Wall Street: “He appoints all these billionaires. His major financial adviser comes from Goldman Sachs. And now he is going to dismantle legislation that protects consumers,” Sanders said.
Getting Congress to repeal Dodd-Frank, or pieces of it, would be the cleanest way to eliminate its requirements, because Trump can’t wipe laws off the books on his own.
For example, the consumer agency, which has drawn complaints from banks for enforcement overreach, will continue to operate absent new legislation. Even modifying it by replacing its director with a five-member board or requiring its budget to be approved by lawmakers — reforms suggested by Republicans and the industry — would take an act of Congress.
But Trump officials argued that many of the regulatory changes they’re seeking could be done at the various agencies that wrote the rules implementing Dodd-Frank.
Help from Congress
“We are going to engage the House, we are going to engage the Senate,” Cohn said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We can do quite a bit without them, but the more help we get from Congress, the better off we’re all going to be.”
Trump nominees aren’t yet in control of the main agencies that oversee the financial industry, including the Treasury Department. Mnuchin, who’s awaiting a full Senate vote, is the head of the federal council of regulators, which Trump charged with reviewing Dodd-Frank.
Other agencies that are being staffed by acting chairmen, or are still being run by Barack Obama appointees, include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The Federal Reserve, which oversees the biggest banks, has two vacancies on its Board of Governors, including the one responsible for bank rules.
Complicated process
Another issue that could impede changing rules is the byzantine process for approving regulations — one reason that Dodd-Frank took years to implement. Rules must be written, offered for public comment, often over several months, and deliberated internally before there is a final vote to approve them.
In addition, some of the most onerous and unpopular regulations have been put together by multiple agencies. In the case of the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from making market bets with their own capital, it took years of negotiations to get the five regulators involved to agree. To revise Volcker, each agency would need to sign off on changes.
“The time frame for this, it’s going to take a while,” said Michael Barr, who helped write Dodd-Frank while a Treasury Department official in the Obama administration.
See also:
Bill to replace Dodd-Frank passes House panel
Dodd-Frank drafters rip MetLife ruling
DOL 101: The fiduciary rule’s impact on annuity carriers
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