As usual, there’s a pony of truth beneath Trump’s pile of manure. We’d pay to watch Donald slap the Eddie Haskell and Sherman McCoy of the drug business: Twerpy Martin Shkreli, the hedge-fund manager who took over drug companies so he could raise the price of a long off-patent HIV drug 50-fold without improving it through R&D, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International VRX, -1.51% CEO Mike Pearson, who thinks America needs a $45,000 cure for toenail fungus. The line captures the two quintessential Trump traits: complete bunk, and an unerring instinct for gutting people who deserve it.
Let’s explain first why the $300 billion claim is bunk — arguably the zenith of how Trump, posing as Mr. Straight Talk, is the biggest politician-dissembler of all. Then let’s talk about why the facts don’t matter here.
The federal budget is $4.1 trillion. To save $300 billion, you buy government for 93 cents on the dollar. Most people can talk down a car dealer that much. But the pie that Trump would be attacking isn’t nearly that big. First, you deduct:
• $944 billion of Social Security benefits, going nowhere but Grandma’s bank.
• $283 billion in interest on the debt. Treasury already pays 2%-ish rates, and Greece discovered that renegotiating national debt’s a bad look.
• $634 billion in defense spending looks like a fat target, but only $107 billion is Pentagon procurement. Unless you cut soldiers’ salaries or health care, the other $527 billion, $250 billion of it salary and benefits, is politically non-negotiable.
• Non-defense discretionary spending is about $555 billion, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Most of that is salaries, too. You can fire federal workers, but you can’t negotiate much unless you can replace them cheaper en masse.
Add up everything that has nothing to do with negotiating, or is off the table, or both, and Trump’s promise roughly equals vowing to buy a $25,000 Honda Accord for 16 and change. |
