WASHINGTON—As two million federal workers go payless for the third—or in some cases, fourth– straight week, radical right pro-business GOP President Donald Trump hosted two dinners for corporate moguls on the same weekend as No Kings Day.
The admission price? Big money. First came an October 17 $1-million-a-plate fundraising dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate to benefit his superPAC campaign finance committee, MAGA Inc. The second, on October 19, was a gala thanking donors to his planned $200 million glitzy glass 1,000-person ballroom next to the White House East Wing. Demolition of a big part of the White House East Wing, which houses the First Lady’s staff, began the next day.
That demolition, like lavish parties while the public suffers from presidential policies, is widely considered another assault on the people of the United States. The White House has never been considered the personal property of the president who inhabits it at any given time.
The structure, built centuries ago by enslaved construction workers, has always been considered the property of the people who extend to the person they elect as president the privilege of taking care of a public trust. Cementing over the Rose Garden, installing gaudy gold sculptures everywhere on the property, and tearing down much of the White House itself, all of which Trump has done, are outside the parameters of what a decent president would do.
Meanwhile, the government shutdown, engineered by the obstinacy of Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., stretched a one-week recess into a one-month-and-counting absence. The two GOPers refuse to bargain with Senate Democrats, whose votes they need, for money to reopen the full government.
As a result, people are hurting: Two million federal workers, one-third of them, “essential,” still toiling, and the other two-thirds wondering if and when they’ll be fired without cause. All go without paychecks.
Not to mention the pain the shutdown’s causing the rest of the country: Some 22 million people could face a doubling of health insurance premiums as a tax credit that helps them pay expires on December 31. Another 14 million will be cut off from Medicaid over the next decade, thanks to GOP congressional obstinacy and Trump’s refusal to break the deadlock. Insurance premiums will then go up for everyone else in the country.
It’s all enough to remind you of the Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Or French Queen Marie Antoinette sneering about starving Parisians begging for bread, “Let them eat cake.”
And it’s enough to make AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and the federation’s Department of People Who Work For A Living really pissed off.
“It’s time for President Trump and Speaker Johnson to get back to work: Fund the government, fix the health care crisis, and put working people first,” Shuler declares.
“Thanks to these illegal firings, there is no one to investigate housing discrimination, students with disabilities will be left in the lurch with only a skeleton crew left to oversee special education across the country, and essential workers who keep us safe from diseases like Ebola were kicked out of their jobs,” the federation analysis adds.
“It’s clear to us what’s going on here,” the analysis, released October 20, said. ”The Trump administration is squeezing working people until we abandon our demands to address the mounting health care crisis.”
Trump isn’t listening. As the federation released its analysis, and as seven million people hit the streets nationwide in No Kings Day protests against his despotic reign, he feted the corporate titans who shoveled money into the MAGA committee and into the ballroom project—which Trump, of course, will remember when handing out grants and contracts. MAGA has raised $177 million since Trump retook the Oval Office on January 20, campaign finance reports show.
Among the D.C. diners at the ballroom fete: Honchos from Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and influential Wall Street investor Steve Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, The Hill reported. In his 37-minute speech to the ballroom-financing moguls, Trump identified another big giver, “sugar baron Pepe.”
That’s José Francisco “Pepe” Fanjul, a right-wing anti-Castro Cuban and son of a refugee from the island nation. Fanjul and his brother own the nation’s largest sugar company. It’s benefited from government tax breaks and farm subsidies for years. The Mar-a-Lago guest list was not disclosed.
And Trump didn’t mention the shutdown, which he and Johnson engineered. The federation did. Even two supposedly influential congressional Republicans, Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, did, too. Both said it doesn’t look good for the House to stay on recess and for the Senate to repeatedly gridlock while people suffer.
“America’s workers aren’t fooled by this shutdown spin that doesn’t hold up to basic math,” the federation explained. “Firing furloughed workers doesn’t fund WIC [Women, Infants, and Children feeding program],” it said. “Canceling $28 billion in job-creating infrastructure and energy projects doesn’t kick-start a ‘blue-collar boom,’” the federation analysis adds.
North America’s Building Trades Unions, in an open letter to Trump, said months ago that they need his help to keep the infrastructure projects going. Trump turned a deaf ear.
The projects his regime is canceling are (a) “green,” and Trump doesn’t believe in global warming, (b) union-built, and Trump wants to smash unions, and (c) enacted by Congress and his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
“President Trump says there is no money to stop our health care costs from doubling, no money for WIC, no money for our troops. But, somehow, he found $40 billion to bail out a foreign government,” Argentina, the federation noted. That includes $20 billion to buy Argentine beef. Trump says that beef will help ease a meat shortage in the U.S.
“The math doesn’t add up. And neither do the excuses.”
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