Sen. Ted Budd Defends the "New and Awful Reality" and Its Effect on the State's Flagship Institutions

 

Irony is dead

Democrats see an opening to use Trump’s spending cuts as attack lines about coward Republicans in Congress, "especially those from competitive districts" -- damned for living on their knees and swallowing every bleb of Trump's ego, even the actions that actually harm their constituents.

Instead of standing up to Trump, they play utter hypocrites and ask for "carve outs" for their districts only. Two reporters from the NYTimes uncovered a bunch of attempted evasions/bypasses/exceptions to the Trump wrecking ball and program cuts -- promulgated by Republican members from red states. For example, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama got defensive right quick after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research (one of Trump's ExecOrders that has since been paused by a federal judge). Alabama's received more than $518 million in NIH grants for projects currently active there, a great number of them headquartered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The senator made weak excuses to the local press and claimed that she would press Trump officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts -- whatever the hell that means -- so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions.” Elitist.

Cut someone else's money, not ours! What's fair for everyone else is not fair for me. Nor convenient at this present time.

So these cowed men and women in House and Senate stay mouselike in paralyzed fear of being noticed and devoured. Some of them, like Sen. Britt, if you take her at her word, are doing what they can to mitigate the damage to their own constituents. For example, Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kansas) has made himself the lead sponsor of a House bill that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Mann's bill, cosponsored by several other Republicans from farm states, would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from American farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from USAID to the Agriculture Department.

They're justifiably nervous about the blunderbuss Trump is taking to all the walls of shelter and the roof too over many a marginal rural family trying to hold it together. And hence those R reps are possible sitting ducks politically, if folks get good and tired of the one-size-fits-all programming of Trump 2.0. House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ main political action group, sent out a message this week titled, “Vulnerable House Republicans Hang Farmers Out To Dry,” which noted how the funding freeze was hitting farmers around the country. The message singled out several Republican lawmakers by name, including Representatives David Valadao of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, like Sen. Briff of Alabama, represents a state with two of the largest recipients of NIH grants -- Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. Budd looked totally caught off-guard and unprepared when the Times reporters asked what he was planning to do about the cuts. Budd said he agreed with the Trump administration’s move to limit the amount of taxpayer money used for overhead costs, but, uh, obviously the universities -- which are swell institutions doing valuable research -- "those guys are gonna need time to adjust to their new financial reality." Too bad, so sad. “I think the White House wants to protect them,” Budd added forlornly, flying in the face to all evidence to the contrary. Trump doesn't actually care about much but his own loot.