Bess writes in The Levin Report:
Of the untold number of stupid things that have come out of Donald Trump’s mouth, making a strong case for the stupidest was his claim, as he announced his candidacy for president, that he would build a wall on the southern border of the country and make the “criminals” and “rapists” in Mexico pay for it. So dumb was this declaration that even Trump eventually realized he would have to tweak it, probably around the time that Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, said there was no way in hell he would fund the project. From there, Mr. Art of the Deal changed his story to taxpayers will put up the money initially, but Mexico will pay us back;which later became Mexico will pay for the wall through import tariffs; which quickly changed to Mexico will pay for the wall indirectly through NAFTA,” which morphed, earlier this month, into the wall will pay for itself. And now, the president has landed on a new idea: make the military pay for it.
Trump has privately been making the case that the Pentagon should use some of the $700 billion it received as part of last week’s spending bill to fund his vanity project, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. After mentioning it to several advisers last week, Trump reportedly floated the idea by House Speaker Paul Ryan in a meeting on Wednesday at the White House, to which Ryan “offered little reaction.” During another meeting, this one with senior aides, Trump apparently whined about how much money the Department of Defense was getting, noting that surely the Pentagon could afford to part with a few (or, say, 67) billion dollars. According to reporters Josh Dawsey and Mike DeBonis, President Temper Tantrum has had a hard time watching TV lately—heretofore his only solace in this cruel world—due to criticism of the spending deal he signed last week, and the fear that his base could sour on him without any wall progress. (The fact that he allegedly had an affair with a porn star, whom he subsequently paid off to stay quiet, is obviously a plus for them.) Currently, just $641 million is earmarked for new fencing, and it can only be used on “operationally effective designs that were already deployed last May,” meaning that unless something changes, the prototypes Trump recently visited in California will be just for show.
Of course, as everyone but the president seems to understand, it’s highly unlikely that the Pentagon would divert funds from the military to finance the wall, which experts say won’t actually stop the flow of illegal immigration at all, and which would require Congressional votes that Trump obviously doesn’t have. Not only will Democrats take a hard pass military spending paying for his fence, but Pentagon officials, per White House advisers, “may also blanch at the possibility.” In a statement to the Post,Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made his feelings pretty clear. “First Mexico was supposed to pay for it, then U.S. taxpayers, and now our men and women in uniform? This would be a blatant misuse of military funds and tied up in court for years. Secretary [James] Mattis ought not bother and instead use the money to help our troops, rather than advance the president’s political fantasies,” he said.
That virtually no one is going for the idea hasn’t stopped Trump from floating it in his preferred venue of choice. Over the weekend he suggested on Twitter that the military should scrounge up the money for national security reasons:
The national security argument might hold a bit more water if the Trump administration hadn’t targeted traditional border security measures for for cuts or delays in funding that experts say “[pose] a serious threat to border security.” (Those experts also say that the The Wall will largely useless “unless it’s 35,000 feet high.”) Meanwhile, at the White House, good soldier Sarah Sanders on Tuesday told reporters that the administration “still has plans to look for potential ways” for Mexico to pay for the wall.Anyway, stay tuned for next week when Trump privately presses for the Department of Veterans Affairs to quit being so stingy and pony up the dough. How much money do they really need to treat PTSD?
Team Trump has a special treat in store for the bank industry
It’s the appointment of Jelena McWilliams at the F.D.I.C., which will result in a trifecta of deregulation-happy officials atop the nation’s banking regulators, per The Wall Street Journal:
When that happens, the F.D.I.C., the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will be able to move ahead on a number of the Trump administration’s policy priorities, such as adjusting capital and liquidity requirements, easing restrictions on short-term consumer loans and relaxing the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law’s proprietary trading ban, the Volcker rule.
Ms. McWilliam’s arrival likely will coincide with the completion of a bill in Congress aimed at easing crisis-era banking regulations, another catalyst for changes to the financial rule book.
Isaac Boltansky, the policy research director at Compass Point Research & Trading LLC, told W.S.J.that, “With Congress likely to pass the only financial deregulatory bill for the near future, it will be the alphabet soup of new regulators who decide the tone and tenor of the new deregulatory agenda.” #MAGA!
Wilbur Ross does the G.O.P. a solid
Overriding the advice of career officials who warned that adding a question to the 2020 census about citizenship will lead to fewer responses from people worried about deportation, Ross decided on Monday to just go for it, writing in a memo he had “determined that reinstatement of a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census questionnaire is necessary to provide complete and accurate census block level data” (the last time the citizenship question was on the census was in 1950). That’s an interesting argument, given that the very reason census officials didn’t want to reinstate the question is a fear that it will lead to lower response rates. Which may be all part of the plan:
Critics of the change and experts in the Census Bureau itself have said that, amid a fiery immigration debate, the inclusion of a citizenship question could prompt immigrants who are in the country illegally not to respond. That would result in a severe undercount of the population—and, in turn, faulty data for government agencies and outside groups that rely on the census. The effects would also bleed into the redistricting of the House and state legislatures in the next decade.
Others argued that an undercount in regions with high immigrant populations would lead not only to unreliable data but also to unfair redistricting, to the benefit of Republicans.
In response to the decision by Ross, the human equivalent of a smoking jacket and cigar, the states of California and New York have sued the Trump administration.
Trump takes full responsibility for stock-market sell-off
Just kidding, of course. The president, who took the time out of his busy day on Monday to pat himself on the back for yesterday’s rally, was suddenly too busy to tweet about today’s drop.
Elsewhere!
At least 50 people on Wall Street think “Billions” characters are based on them (Business Insider)
Ross says market is realizing the tariffs are bargaining chips for better trade deals (CNBC)
Zuckerberg Expected to Testify Before Congress on Cambridge Analytica Scandal (Wired)
The Billionaire Whisperer Who United Bezos, Buffett, and Dimon (Bloomberg)
The White-Collar Wives Club (N.Y.T.)
Trump claimed the tax bill would lead to a huge boost in business spending—but there’s no sign of it yet (Business Insider)
Deutsche Bank Examines Potential Successors to C.E.O. John Cryan (W.S.J.)
Manafort Asks Virginia Judge to Dismiss Tax, Bank-Fraud Case (Bloomberg)
Mulvaney nears victory in struggle with Mnuchin on tax rules (Politico)
Ring-bearing owl causes chaos at British wedding (UPI)
*********************************Go on over to Bess @ Vanity Fair for the complete Levin Report at this link:
Ironically, Trump likely could have had “His Wall” funded if he had been willing to support a bipartisan “Dreamer Compromise” just a few weeks ago.