Broken promises, spending is up
To The Editor:
My friends who are Donald Trump supporters have been claiming that President Trump has kept all his promises, that’s why they still support him.
However, other than closing the border and deporting thousands of people — even if they’re here legally and even if it involves disappearing people off the streets illegally, he has delivered none of his important promises.
Here’s a partial list:
• Reduce inflation day one
• End the war Russia started against Ukraine
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• End the war in Gaza
• Save $2 trillion in federal spending
• Lower gas price to under $2 per gallon
What he has done instead has made inflation and the wars worse. The death toll in Gaza is over 50,000 and Israel plans to “empty out” the northern half of the country. If that’s not ethnic cleansing, I don’t know what is. Trump apparently plans to build a resort there.
Trump has been totally played by Putin who has helped Trump get elected twice. Now the war in Ukraine — let's be clear, unlawfully started by Russia in 2022 — is worse than ever. Putin was encouraged in this when Trump paused aid to Ukraine in March of this year. Now Putin has no intention of stopping the war — likely until Russia reabsorbs Ukraine into its sphere of influence with fake elections and puppet leaders, continuing the rebuilding of the Soviet Union.
The Trump-Musk alliance, unprecedented in that an unelected person was for months the most powerful man in the country, has cut a small slice of government spending — about $31 billion and estimated could reach $62 billion — about 0.5% of what he said he would cut. This was done partially by ending USAID which is now resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people per day due to starvation and AIDS.
To “save” this half percent of government spending besides deaths overseas of disease and starvation, Musk’s DOGE has hollowed out NOAA and FEMA. Remember Hurricane Helene? When the storm was just a tropical depression over the coast of Yucatan, the National Weather Service predicted with amazing accuracy the path the storm would take, the strength it would reach, where landfall would be and how the storm would wind up stalling over the Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky, dropping a Biblical deluge of water on this part of the mid-southern states.
They have also hollowed out, and essentially destroyed NIH by cancelling (illegally) contracts that were signed and firing government workers and withholding contracted money. They have reduced as many as 80,000 jobs from the Veterans Administration, 20,000 jobs from Health and Human Services, and 7,000 jobs — or 12% — from Social Security Administration. This after promising not to “touch” Social Security and of course promising to support veterans.
The adverse effects of these changes will take months and years to roll out. Poorer storm prediction, accuracy, preparedness and response will likely show how bad an idea that was by this fall. The cuts to Social Security are immediately impressive as retirees cannot reach a “real” person at the offices. The cuts to NIH and HHS will take years to have an impact as cancer and other health research has basically halted.
What is the point of these cuts that save a few paltry billions out of the $3-4 trillion annual budget? Low-income earners might save $90 to $110 per year. But Elon stands to save something like $5 million per year. Low-income earners will feel the brunt of the SSA, VA, and Medicaid cuts, while Elon and his type will not.
And in spite of these cuts — according to the Wall Street Journal on April 11 — spending under Trump is up by $154 billion compared to the same period under Biden, totally eclipsing the “savings” DOGE has claimed. Look it up.
Allan Zacher
Lake Junaluska
