'Art of the Deal' guy Trump suddenly can't make deals: NY Times
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday that he's asking "the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible," after a federal judge ordered his administration to continue funding the program during the shutdown.
But Trump already knows how to shuffle money, says the New York Times Editorial Board. He’s already been funneling it wherever he wants for months, regardless of rules.
“President Trump has played fast and loose with federal law during the current government shutdown to fund the things he considers important,” the Board said. “He has found ways to pay military service members and F.B.I. agents. He has distributed tariff revenues to women with small children and arranged billions of dollars in financial support for Argentina. He has even ordered the Interior Department to keep federal lands open for hunting.”
But what Trump has refused to fund is as equally telling, wrote the editors.
“As the shutdown enters its second month, the president still will not agree to an extension of the federal tax credits that allow millions of Americans to afford health insurance,” the wrote. And up until Friday, the Trump administration declared it would stop distributing food stamps to more than 40 million lower-income families, declining to tap the program’s emergency reserve fund.
The government shutdown is causing Americans pain on many fronts, with more than a million federal workers going unpaid and the Small Business Administration not making loans. Additionally, regulators are not conducting many routine safety inspections of food processing plants.
Trump praises himself as the force behind the Art of the Deal, but the editorial board said he and his congressional allies “could end all of this by doing what they should have done months ago: making a deal.”
“Under current Senate rules, Republicans manifestly do not have enough votes to pass a funding bill on their own, and it is absurd that they continue to insist that Democrats should simply acquiesce. The hard work of governing in a democracy is hammering out a compromise."
Instead, the editors said Trump has sought to heap pressure on Democrats to concede without compromise by suspending funding for projects in blue states, including the important Hudson River train tunnel between New Jersey and New York, and he has targeted mass transit in Chicago for cuts and rescissions.
His most recent ploy to raise the stakes by suspending the distribution of food stamps “is unconscionable,” said the editorial board, however passionately he claims in his Truth Social post that “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry.”
“Republicans say their party has become the party of the American working class. But many working families rely on the tax credits to afford health insurance. And many of those same families rely on food stamps to put enough food on the table,” wrote the editors. “Mr. Trump can serve their needs by demonstrating his skills as a negotiator. It’s time to make a deal.”
Read the New York Times editorial at this link.