TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE MEANS: WASHINGTON CAN’T DO ITS JOB!

…Wilbur Ross, the unaware Commerce Secretary

Per Secretary Ross: 800,000 federal workers wages is only 1/3^rd % of our GDP!

When Trump became president, he began filling his Cabinet with fellow billionaires.  None of which would understand the struggles of the average American.  He has therefore surrounded himself with individuals that had no concept of any average American that lived from paycheck to paycheck.  In other words, all those average American workers that lived from day to day with some level of financial insecurity.

The result from this situation is that the president, his family members and his administration officials, they have all made insensitive and totally dismissive comments about those 800,000 federal workers that their lost their wages in the shutdown.

Trump ran for president as a populist who said he understood the plight of the common man.  Never mind that he was raised wealthy, went to top schools, built his business with several hundred million dollars from his father, and spent his life in New York City while hobnobbing with celebrities.  In fact, in New York, he actually did live in a “Golden Tower”.

The worst example of this issue came last week form the Trump Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross when he said, “I don’t really quite understand why federal workers are visiting food banks for meals.” He suggested they instead should take out loans.  He then continued, minimizing the scope of the problem by noting that the employees ”will receive back pay eventually”.  “Put it in perspective, you’re talking about 800,000 workers, and while I feel sorry for the individuals that have hardship cases, 800,000 workers if they never got their pay, which is not the case, they will eventually get it, but if they never got it, you’re talking about 1/3^rd % of our GDP,” he said. “So, it’s not like it’s a gigantic number overall.”

Of course, Ross totally overlooked the thousands of federal contractors that will NOT eventually get any back pay as will the federal workers.  There are an estimated 1.2 million people who work for the government on contracts who are not ever going to be paid for their lost time. Many of those are the people who work as janitors, security guards, laundry and cafeteria workers for whom a lost paycheck can be the difference between surviving and living in poverty.

So, based on the Wilbur Ross point-of-view, if you took the same attitude toward the 70,000 people who died last year of opioid overdoses,  “It is sad, but it’s just a small percentage of the population.”

And this disgusting attitude doesn’t stop with Wilbur Ross.

Last week, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, was hammered by the press for saying that going without pay is a “sacrifice” that federal employees are making for a greater good.

“This is so much bigger than any one person,” she said. “It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country, and their children and their grandchildren, and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice right now.”

On top of that, the president himself tweeted on Jan 13 that the “damage done to our Country from a badly broken Border ... is far greater than a government shutdown."  Yeah right!

But perhaps the most tone-deaf comment came from White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett, who believes that having all this time off with the promise of back-pay is like a free vacation without having to use vacation days.  “Then they’re in some sense, they’re better off,” he said.

Democrats pounced on Ross' comments as an example of the White House’s ambivalence toward these American workers.

“Those comments are appalling and reveal the administration’s callous indifference towards the federal workers it is treating as pawns,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters.  “At least some federal agencies seem to understand the desperation these unpaid Americans are feeling. But what the agencies suggested people do about it is just as insensitive.”

The US Office of Personnel Management oversees the government’s civilian workforce.  They actually suggested shortly after the shutdown began that workers barter chores such as maintenance projects and painting their apartments in exchange for leniency on their rent payments.  And the shuttered Coast Guard provided a tip sheet suggesting that workers take side jobs such as babysitting or working as a “mystery shopper” to supplant their income.  I wonder if these were other suggestions that came from Trump’s Cabinet members?

But it was also according to other Republican House members such as Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who happens to be the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.  He is also one of the major Republicans supporting the building of a border wall.  He says that losing your paycheck is the risk you take when working for the government.  (Never mind that for years it was understood that you may not make as much money by working for the US Government, but it was considered a long-time secure job with a pension.)

“It’s actually part of what you expect when you sign up for any public service position,” Meadows said this the day before the government shut down.

Because of the Republicans, there have been 5 shutdowns since 1995.  But prior to this last and longest government shutdown in history (35 days), most former shutdowns have only lasted for 1 to 3 days.

At the same time, many of the workers also know that they will probably be required to work during the shutdown, so they can't even look for any additional side jobs.

The main issue is that Trump has surrounded himself with Cabinet members that have their own pool of money to tide them over if they had to go weeks without pay.  They don’t seem to have any clue that most American workers depend on their weekly or biweekly wages to pay for housing, cars, child care and other expenses.  This is apparently not a consideration for those billionaires that Trump has chosen to run the administration.

So, according to Trump and his allies, anyone taking a job in public service should be prepared mentally and financially to lose their pay on the assumption that while Trump is in Washington, Washington can’t do its job.

Let’s face it!  It is a Constitutional Crisis every day that Trump is in the White House.

Copyright G. Ater 2019