07/21/2017 / By JD Heyes
After completely botching Obamacare repeal-and-replace measures, the GOP-controlled Congress is now continuing to go out of its way to thwart President Donald J. Trump’s agenda and that of the electoral majority who put him in office, proving once again that the Republican Establishment is no different to the Democratic Establishment.
As reported by LifeZette, in his first spending budget the president has proposed deep spending cuts to virtually all programs, departments and agencies, but Republicans who control Congress – and who used to be advocates for smaller government and less spending – are proving to be his biggest obstacle, even as the national debt explodes towards $20 trillion.
LifeZette noted:
The GOP-led Congress appears to be completely ignoring President Donald Trump’s budget request to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, three of the most reviled government programs among conservatives.
For example, the House Appropriations Committee unveiled its funding measures for the 2018 fiscal year, showing that although Trump zeroed out money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the committee put back $445 million – the same funding level as for the current fiscal year.
The corporation is a government-funded entity operating National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and public radio stations all around the country; all of these entities publish or broadcast content that is overwhelmingly Left-wing in nature, so there isn’t even a semblance of ideological balance.
Trump believes, as have other critics of the CPB in the past, that the entities should exist on their own, like similar private-sector broadcasters and publishers must, and that taxpayers should not have to fund yet another lopsided media organization.
Congressional Republicans who used to criticize such entities are no longer panning them, as they remain hyper-focused on doing all they can to deny Trump any legislative victories at all on his agenda priorities.
In this case, that means they’d rather see the country lapse further into debt and edge closer to collapse than do the right thing and help the president cut wasteful, needless spending.
Rick Manning, with the organization Americans for Limited Government, said it was “incredibly disappointing” that the GOP Congress would still fund the CPB, describing it as “welfare for the wealthy.”
“They’ll wrap their arms around Big Bird. But they’re really just appeasing their wealthy constituents back home,” he said.
Something like that. Others have different opinions about what’s going on – and frankly, they are more realistic.
Talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh told his listeners Tuesday that something else is at work: the establishment.
Comparing the GOP majority’s inability to deliver on an Obamacare repeal-and-replace measure, as the party had promised it would do for seven years, Limbaugh said that what’s really at work is the Washington establishment – Republicans included – teaming up to thwart Trump’s agenda.
“The fight is not Republican versus Democrat,” the conservative host said. “The fight is Donald Trump and his cadre and you, the Trump base, versus the Washington establishment. It has always been that and nothing more. And, frankly, I think one of the problems has been that there aren’t enough people in the Trump White House who understand that that’s the way the table’s set.”
He further noted that the goal here is preservation of the establishment, not doing the business a majority of Americans sent Republican lawmakers there to do. [RELATED: Voters souring on GOP leaders who continually FAIL to enact Trump’s agenda.]
“This is the elite membership of the establishment unifying to get rid of Donald Trump and make sure that nothing of his announced agenda happens,” Limbaugh said. “No wall, no tax reform, no immigration reform of substance, and certainly no repealing of Obamacare. Not all members of the establishment are equally powerful. There are those who run it. You don’t know who they are. They don’t seek office. They’re not officeholders. They are the chess players, the puppeteers.”
That’s a much more accurate telling of what’s going on than anything else.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: Anti-Trump, big government, GOP, GOP Congress, national debt, NPR, PBS, President Trump, tax cuts, Trump agenda, Trump resistance