NEW PRIORITIES

“So, let’s see if we have this right. Cuts to Medicaid, hurting those at the bottom. Cuts to food stamps, hurting those at the bottom. Eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, whose sole mission is what the agency’s name implies — to help consumers, who are all of us, against unscrupulous corporations, such as Wells Fargo, with its recent abuses. Cuts to the Department of Education, drastic cuts to the EPA, elimination of funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the elimination of funding to the Chemical Safety Board, elimination of funding to the Corporation for National and Community Service, cuts to the Department of Energy, the elimination of funding to the National Wildlife Refuge Fund, elimination of funding to Food Aid, elimination of funding to the United Nations’ climate change programs, and cuts or the elimination of funding to dozens of other agencies that benefit millions of people across the country. All to pay for tax cuts that will benefit mainly the rich, and to begin paying for a border wall, and to increase defense spending for an agency that receives more funding already than the combined defense funding of the next eight or so largest defense-spending countries on the planet. That about right?” — Comment on Lydia DePillis piece on President’s Trump’s plans for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency