Blogcast w/Chris Graham: Pay freeze

Trump screws over federal employees

But, but, but, I thought the economy was purring right along, Mr. President? What about that A+ grade you gave yourself on the economy?

Now President Trump is citing a federal law that allows him in cases of “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare” to cancel 2 percent across-the-board pay raises for federal government employees set to take effect next year.

So, we’re in a national emergency now. Not sure which question best applies here.

What? When? Where? How?

Only thing that comes to mind is the massive tax cuts for the wealthy that are already adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal budget deficit, and are only going to get worse.

Oh, for the sake of the math here, the pay freeze saves $25 billion next year, chump change in the grand scheme of the federal budget, but that isn’t what this is about, as we all know.

Federal government employees are overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelmingly Democrats, by and large live in Northern Virginia and in Maryland, Democratic states.

So, basically, eff ’em, is what Trump is saying here.

The little man with little ideas seems to think this act puts him over even more with his base, which it may very well. In their eyes, those gubmint employees have it coming to ’em. Drain the swamp, lock her up, and all that.

And as far as those tax cuts being the culprit here, well, your typical Trump supporter brings home less than $60,000 in family income a year, but they all think they’re a Lotto ticket or long, lost rich uncle bequeathing them their estate away from their own membership at Mar-A-Lago.

When they get rich, in other words, they want to be able to hide their money from the revenuers.

That’s where we are in America these days. Poor people vote for the rich to get tax breaks because the rich have convinced them that they’re about to be rich, too.

I need to get going with that new career in televangelism going. There are more suckers than P.T. Barnum could have ever wet-dreamed.

Chris Graham is a cynical sumbitch.