If one thing has come to light in the first months of the Trump administration, it is the fact that not any of the billionaires behind the operation have any idea how government or smart policy works. Take for instance, President trump’s efforts to protect America’s borders by requesting increased funds to hire more border agents and immigration officers in his proposed budget. If Trump was serious about protecting borders, he would not propose hiring more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the expense of, say, protecting our maritime waters or airport security, but Trump being Trump did just that in his budget, proving once more how asinine his policies are.
Really, who needs FEMA?
Trump’s promise to erect a border wall and efforts to deport illegal immigrants is done under the guise of keeping America safe. Nevermind the inconvenient facts that illegal immigration has steadily declined over the decade or that most Americans are killed by Americans, Trump and his supporters believe “Making America Great Again” means remaining ignorant of the facts.
This was all well and good when Trump was a candidate, but now as President, his misplaced arguments can turn to misplaced policy, and this is more than evident in internal budget documents from the Office of Management and Budgets which outline drastic cuts to the Coast Guard, TSA, and Fema. Draft budget documents obtained by the media reveal the OMB is wanting a fourteen percent cut in the Coast Guard’s budget and an eleven percent cut in both the TSA and FEMA budgets.
Basically, Trump is choosing to pursue a policy of extreme negligence when it comes to protecting America’s maritime waters where drug smugglers and human traffickers ply their trade in favor of erecting a border wall and building detention centers to house all the people the administration hopes to deport. Trump and his acolytes would rather cut the budget of an agency like the TSA, an agency created in response to the devastating attacks of 9/11, to find 560 million dollars for “high-priority replacement fence projects."
Idiocracy
In 2016, the Coast Guard seized over 200 metric tons of cocaine, 52,613 pounds of marijuana, and intercepted over 6,000 undocumented immigrants.
The irony of Trump cutting the Coast Guard’s budget to raise funds to protect America from the imaginary wave of crime by illegal immigrants would be laughable if the consequences for the country were not so grave.
