Despite the seeming gridlock in Congress, and despite the mire of Trump-Russia drama, President Donald Trump is succeeding - one little policy muck-up at a time - in destroying ordinary American life.
Just last week, amid the swirl of Comey drama, Trump and his minions grabbed up common sense American systems and shredded them.
After a decade of regular businesses beginning to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than hired employees (so the businesses can cut labor costs by not offering benefits or pay employer payroll taxes), the outgoing Obama administration had issued a guidance document with economic tests for employee classification of workers. On Wednesday the Trump administration quietly withdrew the guidance document. It was a huge win for mega-farms, construction firms and Uber.
The Department of Labor last week also withdrew another Obama-era guidance paper on how the Department of Labor will determine whether a parent company like McDonald's or Subway is jointly responsible for its franchises' labor violations. Businesses, not workers, again were the winners.
Here's another example: Three years ago, the Department of Justice reached a $17 billion settlement with Bank of America over mortgage lending practices. The bank had to pay $100 million to various legal and community groups to help homeowners hurt by Bank of America's wrongdoing. On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo prohibiting U.S. attorneys from including such third-party payouts in any future settlements. Once again, the little guy got cut.
And then there's national security. Aside from blurting out a number of national secrets to Russian and Phillipine dignitaries since he took office, Trump's blustery insistence recently that South Korea foot the $1 billion bill for an American missile defense system intended to block missile attacks from North Korea now has gummed up further deployment of that system. U.S. officials are busily but quietly trying to make it clear that the original deal will be kept in place.
And that was just in recent weeks. Here are older Trump disasters:
- On its first day, the Trump administration raised housing payments for new home buyers by about $500 by reversing an Obama administration action to lower FHA mortgage insurance premiums for new home buyers by 25 basis points. The Obama policy could have lowered mortgage payments for 1 million households purchasing or refinancing their home this year alone. Big business wins. We lose.
- Early on, Trump also made it harder for many of us to save for retirement by attacking the Department of Labor's rule to require retirement advisers to act in their clients' best financial interest. Retirement experts say high fees from conflicted advice will result in savers losing $17 billion in fees annually. Guess who saves that money now.
- Trump rolled back overtime protections that will cut the expected wages of 4.2 million workers by $12 billion.
- Trump's work (and that of Congress) to gut environmental protections will give the oil, gas, and coal industries nearly $6 billion. Already Trump had signed a bill that overturns protections against corruption in the oil industry. By allowing the oil industry to bypass common sense anti-bribery and transparency standards when trying to gain access to foreign oil reserves, the bill delivers an estimated $2.16 billion in benefits and cost savings to multinational oil companies over the next decade.
- Trump and Congress also killed the Stream Protection Rule, which protected the safety of Americans' drinking water from being polluted by toxic coal mine waste. The action hands the coal industry $810 million over the next 10 years.
- The Trump budget would cut funding for the Global Women's Issues Office, a State Department office that fights for the rights of women all over the world. We're talking here about diplomatic programs that prevent gender-based violence and female genital mutilation, get women college scholarships or vocational training, and end forced marriages. According to Foreign Policy, the money from State Department aid programs like USAID or the Office of Global Women's Issues will instead be sent to programs focusing on national security. Really. Taking care of women doesn't increase national security? Of course it does. We all know the saying: "If Mama ain't happy, nobody's happy."
It's long past time for Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan to stop defending Donald Trump as a "novice" as he creates this much destruction to our country's economy, ethics, security and morality in less than five months. Amateur hour should have been over by the end of February at the latest.
Clearly, Ryan and many in the GOP are themselves, in fact, at the heart of much of this Trump-era American carnage.
But take heart, America. The 2018 mid-term elections are on the horizon.