Monday, December 24, 2018

Trump Doesn't Understand How Anything Works, Part 7,489

Trump has come up with a novel way to fund his precious Wall. And by "novel", I mean "bearing no resemblance to anything connected in any way to reality": "Shutdown money". See, by closing down the government we're saving all this money that we can redirect to the Wall! It's genius, I tells ya, genius!

Or maybe not:
Even though paychecks stop going out to hundreds of thousands of workers, shutting down the federal government actually costs money -- and the longer it goes on, the more it will cost....

After the 16-day shutdown in 2013, Congress authorized an estimated $2.5 billion in back pay and other compensation for as many as 850,000 furloughed workers, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. The event also cost the government $7 million in revenue lost from entrance fees at national parks and a halt to IRS enforcement collections that averaged $1 billion a week.
And, by the way, it's also not great for the economy:
“A week or longer will mean that businesses that depend on these federal employees will start to lose sales,” said Stan Collender, a longtime congressional budget aide who’s now editor-in-chief of thebudgetguy blog in Washington....

S&P Global Ratings said the 2013 shutdown shaved at least 0.6 percent from fourth-quarter 2013 gross domestic product growth, taking some $24 billion out of the economy.
This is the kind of genius it takes to bankrupt a casino, or screw up Obama's economy. I periodically ask myself if there is anything (other than grift) that Trump understands--anything at all. I have yet to come up with a positive answer.

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