March 02, 2017
Most of us know that politicians don’t say what they really believe about the world. Unfortunately, the folks who write for the Washington Post haven’t learned this basic fact. This explains why in an article on Donald Trump’s plan to cut large parts of the domestic budget:
“To the president and his supporters who see a bloated bureaucracy with lots of duplication and rules that choke jobs, the budget cuts are a necessary first step to make government run more efficiently.”
Of course, this is what the president and his supporters say. It may have nothing to do with what they “see.” For example, it is well known that reducing enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service will amount to a net loss for the government, as the savings on salaries will be more than offset by a loss of revenue.
Given this fact, we can believe, apparently like the Post, that Trump’s people are dumber than rocks, or we can believe that they want to make it easier for their friends to cheat on their taxes. Both are possible, but apparently the Post wants readers to rule out the latter possibility.
This logic applies to the cuts more generally. For example, the reason Republicans may want to cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency is so that their friends have the option of dumping waste in their neighbors’ drinking water rather than having to pay the cost of cleaning it up. They may support reductions in financial regulation so that their friends can make more profits ripping off unsuspecting customers.
It would be best if the paper did not try to tell us people’s motives when they have no basis for their assessment.
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