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Haley: Trump believes ‘climate is changing’


JILL COLVIN and JACK GILLUM,
Associated Press 16 hours ago

President Trump’s climate agreement announcement
WASHINGTON (AP) — Does he or doesn’t he? Believe in climate change, that is.
You’d think that would be an easy enough question the day after President Donald Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the landmark global accord aimed at combatting global warming.
But don’t bother asking at the White House.
“I have not had an opportunity to have that discussion” with the president, responded press secretary Sean Spicer on Friday.
“You should ask him that,” offered White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt dodged the question, too.
The president also ignored it during an unrelated bill-signing.
But his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, answered the question in a new way this weekend.
“President Trump believes the climate is changing,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”And he believes pollutants are part of that equation. So that is the fact.”
If so, it’s quite a reversal for Trump, who spent years publicly bashing the idea of global warming as a “hoax” and “total con job” in books, interviews and tweets. He openly challenged the scientific consensus that the climate is changing and man-made carbon emissions are largely to blame.
“Global warming is an expensive hoax!” he tweeted in 2014.
But Trump has been largely silent on the issue since his election last fall. On Thursday, he made scarce mention of it in his lengthy remarks announcing America’s exit from the Paris accord. Instead, he framed his decision as based on economics.
Here’s what he’s said before:
___
TRUMP’S TWEETS:
The president’s twitter feed once was filled with references to “so-called” global warming being a “total con job” based on “faulty science and manipulated data.”
An Associated Press search of his twitter archives revealed at least 90 instances in which he has referred to “global warming” and “climate change” since 2011. In nearly every instance, he expressed skepticism or mockery.
“This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bulls— has got to stop,” he wrote in January 2014, spelling out the vulgarity.
Often the president has pointed to cold weather as evidence the climate scientists are wrong.
“It’s 46 (really cold) and snowing in New York on Memorial Day — tell the so-called “scientists” that we want global warming right now!” he wrote in May 2013 — one of several instances in which he said that warming would be welcome.
“Where the hell is global warming when you need it?” he asked in January 2015.
The same message was echoed in the president’s books.
In “Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America,” Trump made a reference to “the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions.”
“If you don’t buy that — and I don’t — then what we have is really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves,” he wrote.
___
CANDIDATE AND SKEPTIC:
“I’m not a believer in man-made global warming,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in September 2015, after launching his bid for the White House. He bemoaned the fact that the U.S. was investing money and doing things “to solve a problem that I don’t think in any major fashion exists.”
“I am not a believer,” he added, “Unless somebody can prove something to me … I am not a believer and we have much bigger problems.”
By March 2016, the president appeared to allow that the climate was changing — but continued to doubt humans were to blame.
“I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer,” he told The Washington Post. “There is certainly a change in weather,” he said.
Then-campaign manager, Conway explained Trump’s view this way: “He believes that global warming is naturally occurring. That there are shifts naturally occurring.”
___
EVOLVING PRESIDENT:
In an interview with The New York Times in November, after the election, Trump was asked repeatedly whether he intended to leave the Paris accord and appeared to have a new open-mindedness.
“I’m looking at it very closely,” Trump told the newspaper. “I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.”
He went on to say that he thought “there is some connectivity” between human activity and the changing climate, but that, “It depends on how much.”
Asked about the comment several days later, Trump’s now-chief of staff Reince Priebus told Fox News that Trump “has his default position, which is that most of it is a bunch of bunk.”
“But he’ll have an open mind and listen to people,” he said.
Stay tuned.

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Trump May Not Be So Good For Busisness After All


Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance   June 1,  2017
Coal miners and alienated workers just trumped corporate America.
By canceling America’s participation in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, President Trump snubbed many of the nation’s biggest businesses. Corporate giants including Exxon (XOM), General Electric (GE), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) urged Trump to stick with the agreement, which nearly every other country in the world has signed on to. Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said he’ll quit as an informal White House adviser on account of Trump’s decision to withdraw. The only major businesses supporting Trump’s move are energy firms dependent on coal and oil.
“The Paris accord is very unfair to the United States,” Trump declared at the White House on June 1. He claimed the agreement imposes “draconian financial and economic burdens” on the United State, while linking it to the loss of nearly 3 million jobs–a claim economists strongly dispute. Trump did say he was open to re-entering the Paris agreement under different terms, leaving some wiggle room amid the criticism he is sure to get for the decision.
Withdrawing from the deal probably won’t be as catastrophic for business or the climate as overheated news coverage might suggest. The Paris deal relies on voluntary reductions in carbon emissions, according to standards each nation sets for itself. Countries can change their standards or simply not abide by them. Enforcement is weak, at best. And market incentives to adopt cleaner energy are becoming stronger, in some cases obviating the need for government incentives or mandates.
A headache for American businesses
But abstaining from a global agreement embraced by every other developed economy is a headache for American businesses all the same. Multinational companies want to sell their goods and services everywhere, which is easier when their home country is following the same agenda, more or less, as other countries they want to sell to. The Paris agreement will likely spur spending on new climate-friendly technologies, and US firms want a cut of that as well. They could lose out to foreign firms whose home governments do more to cultivate such technologies.
By appeasing America firsters and legacy industries such as coal, Trump has obviously fulfilled a campaign promise, while demonstrating solidarity with workers stuck in fading 20th century industries. But that will do nothing to increase demand for dirty coal or create jobs in industries the free market is closing the books on anyway. Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal and is nearly as cheap, thanks in large part to America’s fracking revolution. Pollution-free solar power is becoming cost-competitive without any need for government incentives. States such as California and many municipalities have their own reasons to encourage the use of renewables and cleaner-burning fuels, regardless of what Trump wants. That’s why Exxon and many other oil companies favor the Paris agreement—it helps them gain a foothold in the energy market that is slowly but surely replacing carbon.
Trump probably could have found different ways to help the beleaguered coal industry—powerful federal incentives to draw companies to coal country, say—while keeping American firms under the Paris umbrella. But he disregarded the pleas from corporate America, with no apparent concern for whether that could impede economic growth or cost American jobs. At some point business leaders must rightfully ask whether Trump represents their interests or not.
Trump rode to Washington on a pro-business platform, but his actions in office haven’t been so business-friendly. He has left health insurers and other companies in the medical industry deeply uncertain about the business climate they face, since he has vowed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without an obvious replacement. Insurers are bailing out of ACA markets where they can’t make money, a problem that existed before Trump took office but has since gotten worse.
Trump has threatened the auto industry with tariffs and other punishments (and consumers with higher car prices) if they don’t create more American jobs. He has lambasted pharmaceutical firms for their high prices. His threat to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement would roil thousands of business that rely on those trading relationships. He may still seek tariffs on Chinese imports, as he has frequently threatened, which would upend supply lines for many other US companies.
Offsetting all of this, from a CEO’s perspective, is the promise of tax cuts and deregulation, two of Trump’s top priorities. Tax cuts could directly boost corporate profits and stock prices along with them. Deregulation could lower the cost of doing business, which is almost as good as a boost in net income.
But Trump obviously faces difficult challenges getting major legislation through Congress, and he’s adding to the burden with controversies such as the Russia investigation, weakening his political hand and overburdening Congress. It’s now unlikely Congress will pass any kind of tax reform in 2017, and the longer it drifts toward next year’s fall election season, the less likely it becomes. Trump has undone some minor regulations with executive orders, but major pruning would require Congressional action, and that is nowhere to be seen.
Take tax cuts and deregulation away, and Trump looks more like a self-preserving political boss playing favorites than a businessman-president. He favors downtrodden industries on their way out over ascendant industries such as technology and renewable energy, because that’s where his “base” resides. He talks up the need for stronger growth while explaining away political decisions that could impede growth. And he accepts symbolic wins that save a few endangered jobs without talking at all about how to create and secure the jobs of the future. Eventually, we’ll need them, because you can’t prop up the jobs of the past forever.
Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com

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Isolationism


This posting indicates the results of a current trend in the White House regarding European relationships. This mindset can leave this country more vulnerable than ever as information sharing could diminish.MA.
Isolationism refers to America’s longstanding reluctance to become involved in European alliances and wars. Isolationists held the view that America’s perspective on the world was different from that of European societies and that America could advance the cause of freedom and democracy by means other than war.
American isolationism did not mean disengagement from the world stage. Isolationists were not averse to the idea that the United States should be a world player and even further its territorial, ideological and economic interests, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
The colonial period

The isolationist perspective dates to colonial days. The colonies were populated by many people who had fled from Europe, where there was religious persecution, economic privation and war. Their new homeland was looked upon as a place to make things better than the old ways. The sheer distance and rigors of the voyage from Europe tended to accentuate the remoteness of the New World from the Old. The roots of isolationism were well established years before independence, notwithstanding the alliance with France during the War for Independence.
Thomas Paine crystallized isolationist notions in his work Common Sense, which presents numerous arguments for shunning alliances. Paine’s tract exerted so much political influence that the Continental Congress strove against striking an alliance with France and acquiesced only when it appeared probable that the war for independence could not be won without one.
George Washington in his Farewell Address placed the accent on isolationism in a manner that would be long remembered:
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
Washington was promulgating a perspective that was already venerable and accepted by many. The United States terminated its alliance with France, after which America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, admonished in his inaugural address, “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
The 19th century
The United States remained politically isolated all through the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, an unusual feat in western history. Historians have attributed the fact to a geographical position at once separate and far removed from Europe.
During the 1800s, the United States spanned North America and commenced to piece together an empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific — without departing from the traditional perspective. It fought the War of 1812
the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War without joining alliances or fighting in Europe.
The isolationist point of view was still viable in 1823 when President James Monroe gave voice to what would later be termed the Monroe Doctrine, “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do.”
Nevertheless, pressures were mounting abroad that would undercut and demolish that policy near the mid-20th century. The advent of German and Japanese expansionism would threaten and later nearly snuff out the contented aloofness enjoyed by the United States. The United States’ occupation of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War thrust U.S. interests into the far western Pacific Ocean — Imperial Japan’s sphere of interest. Such improved transportation and communication as steamships, undersea cable, and radio linked the two continents. The growth of shipping and foreign trade slowly enhanced America’s world role.
There also were basic changes at home. The historic ascendancy of urban-based business, industry, and finance, and the sidelining of rural and small-town America — the bastion of isolationism — contributed to its eventual demise.
World War I
Germany’s unfettered submarine warfare against American ships during World War I provoked the U.S. into abandoning the neutrality it had upheld for so many years. The country’s resultant participation in World War I against the Central Powers marked its first major departure from isolationist policy. When the war ended, however, the United States was quick to leave behind its European commitment. Regardless of President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts, the Senate repudiated the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war, and the United States failed to become a member of the League of Nations.
Indeed, isolationism would persist for a few more decades. During the 1920s, American foreign affairs took a back seat. In addition, America tended to insulate itself in terms of trade. Tariffs were imposed on foreign goods to shield U.S. manufacturers.
America turned its back on Europe by restricting the number of immigrants permitted into the country. Until World War I, millions of people, mostly from Europe, had come to America to seek their fortune and perhaps flee poverty and persecution. Britons and Irishmen, Germans and Jews constituted the biggest groups. In 1921 the relatively liberal policy ended and quotas were introduced. By 1929 only 150,000 immigrants per year were allowed in.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the preponderance of Americans remained opposed to enmeshment in Europe’s alliances and wars. Isolationism was solid in hinterland and small-town America in the Midwest and Great Plains states, and among Republicans. It claimed numerous sympathizers among Irish- and German-Americans. William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, and George W. Norris of Nebraska were among western agrarian progressives who argued fervently against involvement. Assuming an us-versus-them stance, they castigated various eastern, urban elites for their engagement in European affairs.
World War II
The year 1940 signaled a final turning point for isolationism. German military successes in Europe and the Battle of Britain prompted nationwide American rethinking about its posture toward the war. If Germany and Italy established hegemony in Europe and Africa, and Japan swept East Asia, many believed that the Western Hemisphere might be next. Even if America managed to repel invasions, its way of life might wither if it were forced to become a garrison state. By the autumn of 1940, many Americans believed it was necessary to help defeat the Axis — even if it meant open hostilities.

Many others still backed the noninterventionist America First Committee in 1940 and 1941, but isolationists failed to derail the Roosevelt administration’s plans to aid targets of Axis aggression with means short of war. Most Americans opposed any actual declaration of war on the Axis countries, but everything abruptly changed when Japan naval forces sneak-attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States four days later. America galvanized itself for full-blown war against the Axis powers.
The demise of isolationism
The isolationist point of view did not completely disappear from American discourse, but never again did it figure prominently in American policies and affairs. Countervailing tendencies that would outlast the war were at work. During the war, the Roosevelt administration and other leaders inspired Americans to favor the establishment of the United Nations (1945), and following the war, the threat embodied by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin dampened any comeback of isolationism.
The postwar world environment, in which the United States played a leading role, would change with the triumph of urban industry and finance, expanded education and information systems, advanced military technology, and leadership by internationalists. A few leaders would rise to speak of a return to America’s traditional policies of nonintervention, but in reality, traditional American isolationism was obsolete.
– – – Books You May Like Include: —-
FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal by James F. Simon.
The author of acclaimed books on the bitter clashes between presidents and chief justices—Jefferson and Marshall, Lincoln and Taney.

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Trump isn’t so good for business after all


Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance 
June 1, 2017

Coal miners and alienated workers just trumped corporate America.

By canceling America’s participation in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, President Trump snubbed many of the nation’s biggest businesses. Corporate giants including Exxon (XOM), General Electric (GE), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL) urged Trump to stick with the agreement, which nearly every other country in the world has signed on to. Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said he’ll quit as an informal White House adviser on account of Trump’s decision to withdraw. The only major businesses supporting Trump’s move are energy firms dependent on coal and oil.

“The Paris accord is very unfair to the United States,” Trump declared at the White House on June 1. He claimed the agreement imposes “draconian financial and economic burdens” on the United State, while linking it to the loss of nearly 3 million jobs–a claim  economists strongly dispute. Trump did say he was open to re-entering the Paris agreement under different terms, leaving some wiggle room amid the criticism he is sure to get for the decision.

Withdrawing from the deal probably won’t be as catastrophic for business or the climate as overheated news coverage might suggest. The Paris deal relies on voluntary reductions in carbon emissions, according to standards each nation sets for itself. Countries can change their standards or simply not abide by them. Enforcement is weak, at best. And market incentives to adopt cleaner energy are becoming stronger, in some cases obviating the need for government incentives or mandates.

<img class=”StretchedBox W(100%) H(100%) ie-7_H(a)” src=”https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/sk6Sshyo5f5Jyv44HFpVjA–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9NzQ0O2g9NTE4/http://media.zenfs.com/en/homerun/feed_manager_auto_publish_494/9f374f5156055cfe71982bd7c9c1d6a1″ itemprop=”url”/>

A headache for American businesses

But abstaining from a global agreement embraced by every other developed economy is a headache for American businesses all the same. Multinational companies want to sell their goods and services everywhere, which is easier when their home country is following the same agenda, more or less, as other countries they want to sell to. The Paris agreement will likely spur spending on new climate-friendly technologies, and US firms want a cut of that as well. They could lose out to foreign firms whose home governments do more to cultivate such technologies.

By appeasing America firsters and legacy industries such as coal, Trump has obviously fulfilled a campaign promise, while demonstrating solidarity with workers stuck in fading 20th century industries. But that will do nothing to increase demand for dirty coal or create jobs in industries the free market is closing the books on anyway. Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal and is nearly as cheap, thanks in large part to America’s fracking revolution. Pollution-free solar power is becoming cost-competitive without any need for government incentives. States such as California and many municipalities have their own reasons to encourage the use of renewables and cleaner-burning fuels, regardless of what Trump wants. That’s why Exxon and many other oil companies favor the Paris agreement—it helps them gain a foothold in the energy market that is slowly but surely replacing carbon.

Trump probably could have found different ways to help the beleaguered coal industry—powerful federal incentives to draw companies to coal country, say—while keeping American firms under the Paris umbrella. But he disregarded the pleas from corporate America, with no apparent concern for whether that could impede economic growth or cost American jobs. At some point business leaders must rightfully ask whether Trump represents their interests or not.

Trump rode to Washington on a pro-business platform, but his actions in office haven’t been so business-friendly. He has left health insurers and other companies in the medical industry deeply uncertain about the business climate they face, since he has vowed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without an obvious replacement. Insurers are bailing out of ACA markets where they can’t make money, a problem that existed before Trump took office but has since gotten worse.

Trump has threatened the auto industry with tariffs and other punishments (and consumers with higher car prices) if they don’t create more American jobs. He has lambasted pharmaceutical firms for their high prices. His threat to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement would roil thousands of business that rely on those trading relationships. He may still seek tariffs on Chinese imports, as he has frequently threatened, which would upend supply lines for many other US companies.

Offsetting all of this, from a CEO’s perspective, is the promise of tax cuts and deregulation, two of Trump’s top priorities. Tax cuts could directly boost corporate profits and stock prices along with them. Deregulation could lower the cost of doing business, which is almost as good as a boost in net income.

But Trump obviously faces difficult challenges getting major legislation through Congress, and he’s adding to the burden with controversies such as the Russia investigation, weakening his political hand and overburdening Congress. It’s now unlikely Congress will pass any kind of tax reform in 2017, and the longer it drifts toward next year’s fall election season, the less likely it becomes. Trump has undone some minor regulations with executive orders, but major pruning would require Congressional action, and that is nowhere to be seen.

Take tax cuts and deregulation away, and Trump looks more like a self-preserving political boss playing favorites than a businessman-president. He favors downtrodden industries on their way out over ascendant industries such as technology and renewable energy, because that’s where his “base” resides. He talks up the need for stronger growth while explaining away political decisions that could impede growth. And he accepts symbolic wins that save a few endangered jobs without talking at all about how to create and secure the jobs of the future. Eventually, we’ll need them, because you can’t prop up the jobs of the past forever.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com

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A Tax on Remittances Won’t Pay for a Border Wall


One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it. The article below explains a proposal as to how that will be accomplished.MA

January 24, 2017 2:04PM

By Alex Nowrasteh
President Donald Trump has not yet signed an executive order about his proposed border wall.  An executive order would only do so much as Congress would have to appropriate funds to actually construct the wall.  A wall built to the dimensions and specifications promised by Trump would cost about $25 billion to $31.2 billion and run 1000 miles along the border with Mexico.
Since the Mexican government won’t pay for the wall and holding up all remittances in order to get the Mexican government to pay for it runs into constitutional problems, some like Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies have proposed a nation-wide refundable fee (a tax with another name) on wire remittances to fund the wall.  Taxing remittances of illegal immigrants will not raise enough funds for a huge new border wall.
A remittances tax would have to be very high to raise enough revenue to pay for a wall, even assuming there is no fall off in revenue at higher rates.  The state of Oklahoma has a wire transmitter fee equal to about one percent of the funds transmitted.  In 2016, the tax raised $12,696,879.25 or $133.65 per illegal immigrant in the state.  Back of the envelope, a nationwide version of the wire transmitter fee would only raise about $1.6 billion annually.  If the nationwide wire transmitter fee tax was 5 times as high as in Oklahoma then it would raise enough money to pay for the wall in three to four years assuming there is no fall off in revenue at such a high rate or other disruptions don’t occur.
Oklahoma labels this tax a fee because it’s a fully refunded tax credit.  A full 96 percent of those who pay the fees don’t claim the credit.  David North of the Center for Immigration Studies argues that illegal immigrants pay virtually the entire tax because most of the credits aren’t claimed.  That’s probably right but North overstates his case.  The IRS estimates that about one in five folks eligible for the EITC do not claim it although there are many improper payments made too.  Furthermore, between 55 percent and 75 percent of illegal immigrants file tax returns, have money withheld from their paychecks, or both.  That being said, most of the people paying the tax are likely illegal immigrants but many Americans also pay directly.
Another reason that a nationwide wire transfer tax won’t pay for a wall is that a high rate will simply force remittances onto non-wire systems.  The most obvious alternative is sending remittances through banks or credit unions that are exempt from Oklahoma’s Wire Transmitter Fee.  Congress could try to impose a transfer fee for those funds but that would penalize millions of Americans transferring money abroad – including those of us who paid for college abroad.  The government could set up another tax credit scheme but that would be more bureaucracy and time added on top of an already overly complex tax system.  Using Bitcoin or sending  gift cards are also viable ways to remit large amounts of cash outside of the wire system
Illegal immigrant remitters will also be able to rely on their American citizen or legal immigrant friends and family members to transfer funds through wire services.  About 16.6 million people live in households with the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.  Many of those legal immigrants or U.S.-natives would be happy to remit money for their illegal immigrants family members.
As a last resort, remitters could use the black market.  Many unlawful immigrants entered the country illegally and some of them use fraudulent documents to work in the United States.  Surely they will find a way to illegally remit funds if the tax is large enough.  Expanding the size of the black market is not the point of a tax on remittances.
Trump’s proposed border wall is expensive and the Mexican government will not pay for it.  Taxing remittances by illegal immigrants is a proposed way of funding such a wall but it is unlikely to raise enough funds and will also directly tax many Americans.  Either the tax will have to raise much more revenue than I anticipate, the border wall will have to be a lot cheaper,  or both for a tax on remittances to raise enough money for this project.  If this wall ever gets built then American taxpayers will foot the bill – as usual.

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What A Conservative Sees From Inside Trump’s Washington


Republicans wish all that bad news was fake. But no, it’s real: The administration is destroying itself.
by Megan McArdle

1079
‎May‎ ‎22‎, ‎2017‎ ‎10‎:‎52‎ ‎AM‎ ‎CDT
The conservative voters who elected Donald Trump seem to feel especially betrayed when those who document his failures and violations are fellow conservatives. Like me.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome,” they say: another libertarian sucked in by DC cocktail circuit, enjoying her cozy establishment perch.
Right-leaning writers are hearing a lot of such accusations these days, even those who never go to cocktail parties, and whose opposition to Trump has cost them readers and opportunities. And yet it’s easy to see where these accusations come from: Washington does tend to blunt the sharper ideological edges of conservatives and libertarians who spend much time here. That doesn’t necessarily happen because their values crumble toward the establishment consensus. It happens because their perspective changes. Certain things about Washington are visible only up close.
I’m not saying that Inside the Beltway is smart and the rest of the country is dumb; distance offers perspective. But that perspective comes at the expense of detail, and often those details change the picture considerably. Outsiders know things that insiders don’t, such as what’s happening in the world beyond 495. But the insiders know some things too, and those things also matter.
Consider the endless debates over last week’s series of leaks. Washington conservatives read the news stories too. But for connected conservatives in DC, the media isn’t the only source of information about this administration. I’d venture to say that most of them have by now heard at least one or two amazing stories attesting to the emerging conventional wisdom: that the president either can’t, or refuses to, follow any kind of policy discussion for more than a few minutes; that the president will not be told no, or corrected about anything, forcing his staff to take their concerns to the media if they want to get his attention; that the infighting within the West Wing is unprecedentedly vicious, and that those sort of failures always stem from the top; and that his own hand-picked staffers “have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpitate with contempt for him.” They hear these things from conservatives, including people who were Trump supporters or at least, Trump-neutral. They know these folks. They know, to their sorrow, that these people are telling the truth.
They can also compare what they’re hearing to what they heard, both on and off the record, during the last Republican administration. Even in Bush’s final days, when the financial crisis was in full swing and his approval ratings hovered around 25 percent, there was nothing like this level of dysfunction inside the White House, this frenzy of backbiting leakage.
So even though they agree with conservative outsiders that the media skews very liberal, and take all its pronouncements about Republicans with a heavy sprinkling of salt, they know that the reports of this administration’s dysfunction aren’t all media hype. They have seen the media report on their own work, and that of their friends; they know what sort of things that bias distorts, and what it doesn’t. Washington conservatives know that reporters are not making up these incredible quotes, or relying only on Democratic holdovers, or getting bits of gossip from the janitor. They know that the Trump administration is in fact leaking like a rusty sieve — from the top on down — and that this is a sign of a president who has, in just four short months, completely lost control over his own hand-picked staff. Which is why the entire city, left to right, is watching the unfolding drama with mouth agape and heads shaking.
From watching the battles of the past, Washington conservatives know that the republic can survive bad domestic policy (at least of the sort that can actually make it through the American political and judicial processes), but that foreign policy missteps are harder to recover from, and easier for a president to make on his own. They know too, of course, that consultation and planning didn’t keep Bush and Obama from making plenty of mistakes, bad ones. It’s just that they know the mistakes are likely to be even more frequent, and more grievous, if the president has not put in the work to familiarize himself with complicated matters, and will not defer to the people who have.
And here’s the final thing that they know: that if you want to do anything big in Washington, there’s a lot of smaller stuff that has to happen first. You don’t write code or build a building without a lot of stuff that probably seems expensive and unnecessary to the customers, and our product requires similarly careful planning and management.
Some of the hoops that a president’s staff must jump through are legally required; some of them are simply necessary to make sure that your bill doesn’t explode on the steps of the Capitol, or die a gruesome public death in the Supreme Court. They include: appointing policy staff; deciding on policy goals, strategy and tactics; keeping the staff from descending into the infighting that inevitably besets any large organization; providing regular oversight of evolving policies to make sure they adhere to the president’s goals; setting up channels and a process to get input from Congress and legal advisers; writing a very detailed plan that provides guidance to staff and legislators, and reassurance to the public; and having your political and communications strategy lined up long before you roll out that plan. Insiders know that this process looks cumbrous and unnecessary to outsiders; they also know that getting majorities in Congress, and legislation that will survive a court challenge, is a Herculean task that cannot be completed without many thousands of people devoting many thousands of hours to these labors.
What conservatives in Washington also know is that the Trump administration hasn’t even completed the first step. And that political capital, vital to pushing a policy forward against the inevitably fierce resistance from special interests, is a rapidly depreciating asset. Which is why they know one more thing: that unless something changes, Trump poses no threat to the establishment, other than the same risk that they’d face from any ordinary Republican president — that the unpopularity of the man in the Oval Office will dribble downticket, and cost them seats in the next election
The hated “establishment” is firmly in charge of such policy process as exists in the Trump era, with Congress basically going ahead to make its own health-care bill because the White House has proven incapable of providing meaningful input. Non-policy accomplishments, such as the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, are no more than his supporters would have gotten from any of the Republican candidates they derided as “RINOs.” On some issues, such as religious liberty, he has probably been worse for key portions of his base than any other Republican contender would have been.
The one area where Trump might actually override the establishment — immigration — has so far delivered only changes that can be easily reversed by the next president.  (Who is likely to be a Democrat, in 2020, unless Trump’s approval ratings turn around.) Any sort of lasting change will require legislation. And right now, the establishment owns the legislative process.
So what conservatives here know is that the freakout in Washington, which looks from afar like a battle between Trump and “the establishment,” is actually one side screaming in amazement as the other side turn their weapons on each other.
Clear thinking from leading voices in business, economics, politics, foreign affairs, culture, and more.
Of course, that’s not the only reason that Washington conservatives are screaming. They fear that Trump’s incompetence may torpedo the policies where they and the outsiders are in agreement: a better tax code, a fix for Obamacare’s many problems. They are desperately worried that his sinking approval ratings will hand Democrats at least one chamber of Congress, and the White House in 2020, where they will resume all the things both camps of conservatism hated about the Obama administration. And they are sincerely and deeply concerned that through bumbling or bad character, he will do considerable damage to things more important than party or ideology.
Are conservatives in Washington missing something through their myopia? Undoubtedly; that’s how they missed the rise of Trump, after all. But the folks outside of Washington are missing things too. The two sides can surely find some better way to share information than shouting past each other.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

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Sasse: Trump Firing Comey Helps Erode Public Trust


This is possibly one the few thinking members of Congress while a member of the Republican party (not Dupublican), he does not follow the party line without question which makes him more of a statesman. MA.

 

Gabrielle Levy • May 15, 2017, at 12:01 p.m.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey contributes to an “erosion” of public trust in U.S. government institutions in light of the bureau’s ongoing investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials.
“The timing is very troubling,” he said Monday on ” CBS This Morning.” “Once you get to a place where there’s an active investigation, the FBI director is not supposed to be in a political chain of command, and that’s the appearance of this situation and it’s timing.”
“I think we have a crisis of public trust right now, and we need to restore that,” he also said during the interview. “The FBI’s a really special institution and the American people need to be able to know they can believe in it. The FBI director has a 10-year term for a reason, because it’s supposed to be insulated from politics. I want to restore the rule of law but also the institutional conventions around that so there’s more trust.”
The remarks echoed those Sasse made Sunday on CBS’ ” Face The Nation,” when the outspoken Nebraska freshman said Trump’s dismissal of the FBI director should be considered separately from concerns over Comey’s performance.
“Director Comey … is a fundamentally honorable man, but people can think that he executed his job in all sorts of clunky and imperfect ways,” he said.
“That’s a different question than whether or not he should have been fired the way he was last week, and I’ve been critical of that decision,” he continued. “I think it exacerbates the erosion of trust in our institutions. So I’m disappointed in the timing of the firing, but I want to preserve room that there are lots of reasonable reasons that people across the political spectrum can argue about the way the FBI leadership conducted its business in the 2016 cycle.”

Sasse, who two years into his first term in the Senate has earned a reputation for challenging his own party’s orthodoxy, declined to speculate on why Trump decided to fire Comey.
“I’m not sure how this president makes lots of decisions, so I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I do know that we are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and we need to talk honestly about our institutions that need to be restored and need to have the ability for people in five and eight and 10 years to trust these institutions.”
Sasse said his concerns extend to what he sees as an environment in which political candidates will be forced to contend with leaks of private records that include some faked information but enough real data so as to be believable.
“We need to have a shared civic understanding of America before we get to partisan and policy differences. There are important fights to be had in policy. But we first need a civic sense of what America is,” he said. “And here’s what comes next in things like Russian interference in America and in other countries in the age of cyber war over the next decade. I’m obviously concerned about 2016, but I’m far more concerned about 2018 and 2020, because here is what comes next.”

With the media, Congress and institutions already deeply unpopular, Sasse said, the nation is vulnerable in such an environment.
“We’ve got a bunch of different institutions that have 9 percent and 12 percent and 15 percent public trust and public approval,” he said. “America can’t work that way, because we need a shared narrative about how we are as a people, what government can and can’t do, and what the beating heart of the First Amendment and free press and freedom of assembly and speech and religion means to us.”

“We’re going to need to have some institutions that we can rely on and believe are apolitical, when the public has more and more doubt,” he added. “And, right now, Washington isn’t at all focused on the long-term challenge of rebuilding a shared narrative about America and institutional trust in our [public] servants.”

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Congressional Members Receive Free Health Care?


This is an addendum to my Post of 5/4/2016-“Hard Not To Speak Up” regarding Healthcare. Additionally the Congressional Healthcare plan has options not available to the rest of American citizens. MA.

Prior to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as ACA, or Obamacare), members of Congress received the same healthcare insurance benefits as any other federal employee through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP.
During the mark-up of the ACA bill, however, lawmakers inserted a provision (Section 1312(d)(3)(D)) that requires members of Congress and designated congressional staff members to obtain their health insurance through ACA exchanges rather than continue to receive their healthcare coverage through the FEHBP.
As of 1 January 2014, Members of Congress (MOC) and Congressional staff purchase their insurance through the District of Columbia’s small business health options program (SHOP) exchange, also known as DC Health Link. Contrary to popular belief, Congressional members do not receive free health care. As it does for other federal employees who purchase their insurance through the FEHBP, the federal government provides a subsidy equivalent to 72 percent of the weighted average of all FEHBP premiums.
Therefore, MOC and staff pay approximately 28 percent of their annual healthcare premiums through pre-tax payroll deductions.
Although DC’s SHOP offers a total of 57 different ACA insurance plans at the bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, the Office of Personnel Management has ruled that MOC and staff may only receive the employer contribution if they purchase insurance at the gold tier. If we look solely at the District of Columbia’s SHOP health plans and federal employer contributions, Members of Congress receive benefits very similar to those enjoyed by any employee of a large company.
The bottom line is this: Members of Congress and their staff members are required by law to purchase their health insurance through the exchanges offered by the Affordable Care Act. However, the federal government subsidizes approximately 72 percent of the premium cost.
Like those late-night Ginzu knife commercials on late-night TV, however: “but wait, there’s more!”
MOC and their staff are also eligible to set salary aside in Flex 125 savings plans, which help the employee pay for healthcare and childcare expenses with pre-tax dollars. If they enroll in high-deductible health plans (which is unlikely, since only the gold plans offer an employer contribution), they can also enroll in health savings accounts. If Members of Congress or staff purchase dental and vision or long-term care insurance, they pay 100 percent of their premiums through pre-tax dollars.
Again, these benefits are similar to those offered by many large employers. However, there are two areas where Members of Congress (not staff or family members) can receive free or low-cost health care that the average citizen cannot access. The first is having access to the Office of the Attending Physician. For an annual fee (unspecified), MOC can receive limited care for routine examinations, consultations, and certain diagnostic tests.
The second option is also only available to current Members of Congress. In the Capital region only, they may receive free medical outpatient care at military facilities. If they are outside of the Capital region or if they need inpatient care, then MOC must pay 100 percent of the full cost of that military health care.
Finally, upon separation from political life, Members of Congress may purchase FEHBP insurance if they are otherwise eligible for retirement and if they have had five years of continuous healthcare coverage under their DC SHOP plans.
If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, members of Congress have a fallback plan. They would be able to return to the FEHBP. Twenty million other Americans won’t.

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Here’s Why Congress Exempted Itself From The New Healhcare Bill


Josh Barro
Business Insider 22 hours ago

l reaction to passage of health care – Buffalo Scripps
Last week, Vox dug into the Republican healthcare bill and found a provision that would exempt Congress and its staff from many of the bill’s effects.
This provision was bad “optics,” as they say in Washington.
But instead of taking it out — like you would usually do with a provision you aren’t wedded to and can’t defend politically — the House passed the American Health Care Act with the exemption intact after first passing a separate bill that would repeal the exemption that would be created by the AHCA if both bills became law.
There’s a reason for this mess, and it’s not about Republicans in Congress not wanting to be subject to their law.
It’s about Senate procedure.
Republicans are attempting to pass the AHCA through a process called reconciliation. This process, created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, allows the Senate to pass certain bills relating to the federal budget with just a simple majority. There is no need to get 60 votes — and, in this case, some Democratic support — as there is for other legislation.
A variety of complex rules govern what matters may and may not be considered through reconciliation.
One of those is that reconciliation must be conducted pursuant to reconciliation instructions passed by both chambers of Congress. That happened earlier this year — Congress sent reconciliation instructions to two Senate committees (finance; and health, education, labor, and pensions) that were designed to allow those committees to write bills making changes to healthcare policy.
The problem, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, is that Congress’ healthcare is governed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and that committee was not sent any reconciliation instructions.
Therefore, if a reconciliation bill makes changes to the way Congress gets its healthcare, it might become subject to a 60-vote threshold because it addresses a matter that is supposed to be the purview of a committee that doesn’t get to participate in reconciliation this year.
Why would the AHCA need to touch Congress’ healthcare in the first place? Because Obamacare included, at Republican urging, a provision requiring members of Congress and their staffs to buy insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.
That Republicans are in this position at all reflects how rushed and ad hoc their healthcare policymaking has been. They set about passing reconciliation instructions right after taking office because they hoped to repeal Obamacare very quickly. Since they didn’t know what their repeal strategy would be, they didn’t know which committees would ultimately need reconciliation instructions, and now it’s too late for them to change which ones have them.
Now their hope is to enact the AHCA and the companion bill that would undo the congressional exemption created by the AHCA. That companion passed the House on Thursday unanimously with Democratic and Republican votes.
In the Senate, that bill would need 60 votes to pass because it’s not a reconciliation matter.
Democrats clearly like the talking point that Republicans exempted Congress from the AHCA — and if the AHCA were enacted, Democrats would have the power to filibuster the companion bill and make it a matter of law. But politically, I’m not sure how it would land, as Republicans could say they are trying to apply the AHCA to Congress and it’s Democrats who are blocking that simple bill from becoming law.
Of course, in all likelihood, the Senate will pass a healthcare bill that differs extensively from the AHCA, which might make moot the whole matter of needing to change the rules about Congress’ healthcare.

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Trump Isn’t A Do-Nothing President, He’s Done A lot of Undoing


 

Apr. 21, 2017 at 6:01 AM

 

 

By Ben Casselman, Kathryn Casteel, Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Maggie Koerth-Baker

Filed under The Trump Administration

 

Welcome to TrumpBeat, FiveThirtyEight’s weekly feature on the latest policy developments in Washington and beyond. Want to get TrumpBeat in your inbox each week? Sign up for our newsletter. Comments, criticism or suggestions for future columns? Email us or drop a note in the comments.

In the whirlwind first weeks of President Trump’s administration, it often seemed as though he was trying to enact his entire agenda within his first 100 days in office. On Day 1, he moved to undo parts of the Affordable Care Act. Within his first week, he instituted a federal hiring freeze; issued orders on abortion, immigration and manufacturing; and took the first steps toward building his signature border wall. And on the one-week anniversary of his swearing in, he issued the first iteration of his ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries.

In retrospect, the travel ban looks like the high-water mark for the “shock and awe” phase of Trump’s presidency. The ban, of course, was quickly blocked by the courts, and from there his momentum stalled. In recent weeks, the narrative has reversed to the point that some pundits are suggesting Trump is already a failure — that Trump, as Josh Barro of Business Insider put it this week, is heading for a “do-nothing presidency.”

That may be wishful thinking on the part of Barro and other Trump critics, however. Yes, Trump has encountered a string of setbacks, perhaps most notably the embarrassing defeat of his effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. And yes, many key elements of his agenda — tax reform, infrastructure spending, a rethinking of U.S. trade policy — are still stuck at the starting gate, or in some cases seem to have been abandoned altogether. But Trump has found plenty of other ways to make his influence felt, often by reversing policies put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The most obvious accomplishment — the one that even Trump’s sharpest critics acknowledge — is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The vote was a key political win for a president in dire need of one. But its real significance is in the longer term. Gorsuch restored (and perhaps deepened, if he proves to have influence with Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once clerked) the court’s conservative majority. And at only 49, he could serve for decades. It’s too soon to say what effect the new justice could have on abortion or other contentious issues, but it’s safe to assume that Gorsuch’s confirmation will help ensure that Trump’s impact is felt long after he leaves office.

Outside of Gorsuch, Trump’s influence is subtler, but no less real. Take immigration: Courts may have blocked Trump’s travel ban, but they haven’t intervened to stop him from stepping up immigration enforcement and increasing deportations — including of immigrants who had been granted protected status by the Obama administration. Or look at law enforcement, where Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have said they will pull back on the investigations of law-enforcement agencies that were a major part of Obama’s police-reform efforts. Sessions also announced he would end a Justice Department commission working to improve standards for forensic evidence.

Then there is regulation. Trump (with help from the Republican-controlled Congress) has delayed, suspended or reversed dozens of Obama-era rules on banking, data privacy, firearm purchases and other issues. And he has ordered a “one in, two out” policy in which agencies must repeal two rules for every new one they create. (It isn’t clear how that policy will be implemented.) Some of the most significant rule changes are at the Environmental Protection Agency, where Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have moved to halt new fuel-economy standards and block new rules on coal-fired power plants, among other changes. Some scientists warn that these steps could put out of reach the greenhouse gas emissions cuts that the U.S. agreed to in Paris in 2015.

In some cases, Trump doesn’t need to do anything to have an impact. Republicans may have failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Trump has thrown into disarray one of the key features of the ACA: the health insurance marketplaces that collectively insure more than 12 million Americans who don’t get coverage through their employers. Some insurers were backing away from the marketplaces even before Trump took office, but uncertainty over the future of the law is threatening to spark an outright exodus. There are steps Trump could take to shore up the marketplace system, but so far he hasn’t taken them — and he has hinted that he will let the marketplaces collapse through inaction.

Taking all these things together, it appears that Trump may not yet have done much to secure his own legacy, but he is making significant progress toward undoing Obama’s. In the long term, for Trump’s presidency to be a success, he will need to begin making policies and passing legislation, steps he has so far been slow to take. But don’t mistake the lack of clear early-term victories for inaction — the consequences of Trump’s first 100 days, good or ill, will be felt for years.

Immigration: Back to square one

Some of Trump’s first actions in office were two executive orders meant to crack down on illegal immigration by implementing tougher enforcement not just at the border but also within the country. This week The Washington Post reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested 21,362 unauthorized immigrants across the country since Trump took office, a 32.6 percent increase from the previous year. (The data runs through mid-March.) At first glance these numbers might seem consistent with Trump’s promise to get “the bad ones” out of the country. But the Post also noted that of those arrested roughly a quarter, or 5,441, had no criminal record. That’s more than double the number of noncriminal arrests of undocumented immigrants during the same period in 2016. (Many of those arrested eventually will be deported, but because that process can be slow, changed enforcement patterns show up more quickly in arrest data.)

Look back a bit further, however, and the recent increase in enforcement looks less dramatic. The pace of arrests is running well behind the 29,238 made during the same period in 2014; that year, there were 7,483 noncriminal arrests through mid-March, which represented a similar share of the total as this year’s numbers.

Immigration arrests from Jan. 20 to March 13, by year
YEAR ADMINISTRATION NONCRIMINAL CRIMINAL TOTAL
2017 Trump 5.4k 15.9k 21.3k
2016 Obama 2.2 13.8 16.1
2015 Obama 2.3 15.6 18.0
2014 Obama 7.4 21.7 29.2

Source: Immigration Customs and Enforcement

In the final two years of Obama’s term, however, both arrests and deportations dropped sharply. That was no accident: In November 2014, then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a memorandum setting out new priorities for immigration enforcement. Under the new policy, the administration said it would focus on deporting noncitizens who were considered national security threats, who were convicted felons or gang members, or who were apprehended immediately at the border. In fiscal year 2016, 83.7 percent of people deported fell into one of those groups.

Trump’s orders reset these priorities. ICE agents no longer exempt any categories of unauthorized immigrants from enforcement, and the general rhetoric from the Trump administration surrounding who is considered a “criminal” has become broader. “It is fair to say that the definition of criminal has not changed, but where on the spectrum of criminality we operate has changed,” said Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Drug policy: Will opioid use be treated as a crime or a health problem?

Promising to end the opioid crisis was a frequent refrain of Trump’s campaign, and the issue was one of the few for which he laid out policy approaches. He would close the borders so drugs couldn’t get across and instate tough sentences for dealers while simultaneously improving treatment options for people with addiction. He has begun to follow through on the latter, with his health and human services secretary’s announcement of $485 million in grants that states can use for addiction treatment. (The funding came from a bipartisan bill signed by Obama.) He also tasked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who has supported treating drug addiction as a public health problem rather than only a criminal one — with leading a commission on the opioid crisis.

Targeting the supply of drugs once they are in the U.S. is a more complicated matter, however. Is a person with an addiction to prescription pain pills a criminal if he or she sells a handful of pills to a friend or a person in need of treatment? A recent analysis in Florida by the libertarian publication Reason found that local law-enforcement agencies have made a habit of convincing pain patients to sell pills and then doling out long prison sentences. Of the estimated 2,300 people serving time in Florida for trafficking opioids (overwhelmingly oxycodone or hydrocodone) under laws meant to target large-scale traffickers, 63 percent are in prison for the first time. Many worked as confidential informants in exchange for reduced sentences, helping to expand the web of people in jail for relatively minor drug offenses.

Tough approaches to minor drug crimes are hardly isolated to Florida. One Ohio city is charging people who overdose with misdemeanors. An analysis from The New York Times found that nationally, prison admissions from counties with fewer than 100,00 people have risen, even though crime has fallen in those same places, largely because of drug-related crimes.

Under Trump, Sessions has supported using criminal prosecution as a primary tool for reducing drug-related crimes, as well as tough sentencing laws. He recently hired Steven H. Cook, one of the most vocal supporters of policies from the 1980s and ’90s that filled state prisons with people serving long, mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. The Obama administration had begun moving away from these strict approaches, which disproportionately penalized-African Americans, and granted clemency to hundreds of people serving prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses. Trump’s administration appears to be bringing that old model back.

With the opioid crisis in front of us, many politicians have pushed for a public health approach to drug-related crimes. But so far under Trump, such crimes are still often being treated with jail time.

Environmental policy: Honest work

The Trump administration has faced lots of criticism for its steps to roll back open data and its proposed cuts to environmental and scientific programs. So it might seem like the scientific community would embrace a Republican-backed effort to promote transparency in decision making at the EPA. But the HONEST Act, as it is known, is getting a chilly reception from many scientists who say the bill is really a stealth effort to undermine the EPA’s ability to protect the environment.

The act, which passed the House at the end of March, sure sounds good on paper. It would require the EPA to base its decisions on scientific research that is publicly available for independent analysis. But the biggest issues are tied to that “publicly available” part. Most of the academic journals that edit, coordinate the peer-review of, and publish scientific research exist to make money. So they charge for access, making most scientific papers not exactly publicly available by many standards. The HONEST Act goes even further, requiring that raw data behind a published research paper also be publicly available in order for the EPA to use it. There are hundreds of open data repositories online, but using them is not yet the norm — and definitely wasn’t common just a few years ago. A 2016 review found that for all the research published before 2010, just over 2,200 data sets had been uploaded to the five most-respected generalist repositories. There are 2.5 million research papers published every year. Even the 77,000 data sets published by those five repositories in 2015 don’t come close to keeping pace.

There are some good reasons why scientists should be making their data publicly available — and, increasingly, they’re doing so. But making data, especially old data, public is expensive, time-consuming work that requires workers to convert data, servers to store it and funding to pay commercial publishers for rights. Then there is the cost of making sure that the data stays secure and anonymous.

Officially, the EPA says implementing the HONEST Act would require only “minimal funding.” But according to an internal EPA estimate that was leaked to the public radio program Marketplace, the bill would cost $250 million a year — a big deal for an agency that has proposed to cut or freeze funding to damn near every program it operates. Pruitt’s office appears to have gotten around that hurdle by assuming that the agency will simply not use any research that doesn’t already meet the open-data standard, which according to the leaked document could reduce the research the EPA is allowed to reference by as much as 95 percent. No wonder scientists are nervous.

Ben Casselman is a senior editor and the chief economics writer for FiveThirtyEight. @bencasselman

Kathryn Casteel writes about economics and policy issues for FiveThirtyEight. @kathryncasteel

Anna Maria Barry-Jester reports on public health, food and culture for FiveThirtyEight. @annabarryjester

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight. @maggiekb1

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