The View from Right Field

Donald Trump and the Failure of Policy in Ukraine

As Donald Trump’s presidency continues, I get more and more worried, perhaps especially about foreign policy.  He is bad domestically, but I am hopeful we can overcome the problems he is causing here.  The damage he is causing in foreign affairs seems greater.  I don’t know why he is doing what he is doing, but here are some possibilities:

1. He a zero-sum kind of guy. 
2. He thinks almost everybody has played us for suckers and has taken advantage of us. 
3. He is very thin-skinned, and he thinks people are out to get him.¹  Also, he seems to take it personally when people disagree with him (especially on a deal he wants to get done).
4. I am not sure how much history he knows, but I fear it is not enough.  History does not repeat, but knowledge of history does inform.
5. Government is different than business; making agreements between countries is different than making agreements between companies.  I don’t think President Trump understands this.  He thinks deals are deals.  They aren’t.²

Paying Taxes for Programs You Want - Illinois Version

Last Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s upcoming budget will not include funding for one of the Governor’s signature programs: providing healthcare for immigrants aged 42 to 65 who cannot prove they are here legally.  Governor Pritzker started this program in 2022, perhaps using monies left over from Covid grants from the federal government.  Now, however, the Governor will apparently cancel the program.

Except, of course, if the program is as important as Governor Pritzker has said it is, there is a simple way to get the money to continue it: Raise taxes.  If there is something government needs to do and it doesn’t have the funds to do it, there is no choice.  You have to raise taxes.

Remembering Paul Ryan’s ‘Charge Up Entitlement Hill’

The following letter appeared in the "Letters to the Editor" section of today's print edition of The Wall Street Journal:

"Gerard Baker’s column  “Capitol Hill’s Republican Sycophant Caucus” (Free Expression, March 11), on elected Republicans who won’t criticize Donald Trump seemingly regardless of what he does, reminded me of a distant memory: Paul Gigot’s 2011 Weekend Interview with then-House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan. When asked about the political risks of trying to deal with the debt and entitlements, Rep. Ryan said: “The way I look at things is if you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it. … If you don’t believe in your principles, and applying those principles, then what’s the point?”

A lot can change in 14 years. If only we had more Republicans in Congress, and the party, who still believed that."

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NOTE: This is slightly edited from I submitted, but I have no objection.

Cutting Waste, Eliminating Fraud, and Paying for Things

You can’t justify tax cuts, etc., by saying you are going rid of fraud and waste.  We need to get rid of fraud and waste, but we need to do it for its own sake; i.e., why should government waste money or allow fraud.  We are not doing it so we can cut taxes or pay for something else.

A related thought: If you think the government needs to spend more money on X or Y, say how you are going raise taxes to pay for the cost of X or Y.  And it can’t be a matter of raising taxes on somebody else; it has to be taxes on you.
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UPDATE 3/12/25 3:00 pm): Corrected a typo in the second paragraph.

A Few Random Thoughts on Donald Trump – And Others

• Perhaps the thing that most explains the difference between how Donald Trump views the world, the economy, etc., and how I view them, is that President Trump thinks of pretty much everything as a zero sum game.  In every deal, maybe even in every interaction, there is a winner and a loser; and the amount the winner gains is pretty much equal to what the other side loses.  I don’t believe that.  President Trump does.
• If you are in a fight, it’s nice to have friends.  The United States no longer has as many friends it can count on in a fight – because if they can’t count on us, we can’t count on them.  We used to have lots of those kinds of friends, and we were safer because of it.  Now we don’t, so in order to have even close to the same level of safety, we are going to have to spend more money on defense, and we still may not be as safe.
• To the extent Americans, and some of our leaders, think (and have thought) we have been getting taken advantage of because we were spending a lot of money on defense, which allowed other countries to not spend their fair share on defense, some part of the blame for that rests on those other countries and their leaders for not spending on their own defense.  Here’s looking, for example, at you, Angela Merkel.¹  Even Barack Obama, the U.S. president that Chancellor Merkel liked the most, thought allies were free-riding on America and American defense expenditures.  Germany was happy to rely on America for defense and not spend much itself.  That has not worked out well for either of us.
  Germany was also willing to rely on Vladimir Putin not being Vladimir Putin.  That has not worked out well, either.
• Tariffs are a bad idea.  But then so are other trade barriers.  If we would all get rid of trade barriers, we would all be richer.  Unfortunately, American leaders have not believed in getting rid of trade barriers, i.e., free trade, for a long time.  It is a bipartisan problem.  But President Trump is making it worse.  Wars are bad; so are trade wars.
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  ¹ There are lots of others, too.