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Trump threatens to defund ‘out of control’ California (Sacramento Bee link): President Donald Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from “out of control” California if the state declares itself a sanctuary state.
“If we have to, we’ll defund,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly before the Super Bowl. “We give tremendous amounts of money to California, California in many ways is out of control, as you know.”
Trump was responding to a question from O’Reilly about efforts by Democratic state legislators to make California a de-facto “sanctuary state” that would restrict state and local law enforcement, including school police and security departments, from using their resources to aid federal authorities in immigration enforcement.
“I think it’s ridiculous. Sanctuary cities, as you know, I’m very much opposed to sanctuary cities. They breed crime, there’s a lot of problems,” Trump said.
Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco are sanctuary cities and have said they will will challenge in court any attempt by Trump to withhold federal funds from them. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he doubted the 10th amendment to the Constitution, which reserves power to the states, would allow Trump to defund.
Mod: California's political leadership was hardly pleased to hear this.
California Democrats respond to president’s ‘out of control’ remark (The Mercury News link): With the national spotlight on a state immigration bill, prominent California Democrats lined up to defend their state after President Donald Trump called it “out of control” during an interview with Bill O’Reilly that aired Sunday on Fox News.
“Out of control? Trump should look in the mirror,” tweeted Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist rumored to be considering a run for governor in 2018.
“Donald Trump is singling out my state because he lost the popular vote, plain and simple,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
For weeks, Trump stayed uncharacteristically silent on California while lawmakers took aim at Trump’s agenda with nonbinding resolutions and immigration bills. That changed last Thursday, when Trump tweeted that UC Berkeley should lose its federal funding after a violent protest forced the campus to cancel a talk by an alt-right icon, Milo Yiannopoulos.
Then during Sunday’s interview with O’Reilly, Trump took a swipe at a bill being fast-tracked through the Legislature to protect people from deportation, Senate Bill 54— and suggested that Washington might respond by defunding the entire state.
Mod: Then again, if Trump won't pay us, then we won't have to pay him, right? And since we send Washington a lot more money than they send us, wouldn't we come out ahead?
California Responds To Trump Threatening To Defund Them, Says It Won’t Pay Taxes (Groopspeak.comlink): The state of California is firing back at President Trump after he threatened to defund the entire state for having sanctuary cities. Currently, California is looking for ways to suspend payments to the federal government if Trump decides to follow through on his promise to defund the state.
What’s particularly interesting about the threat is that California is one of the few states in the country that actually sends more money to Washington than it receives. If they suspend payments to the federal government, they will actually have more money for services.
“California could very well become an organized non-payer,” said Willie Brown, Jr, a former speaker of the state Assembly in an interview recorded Friday for KPIX 5’s Sunday morning news. “They could recommend non-compliance with the federal tax code.”
President Trump made the threat during an interview with Bill O’Reilly that aired just prior to the super bowl. “If we have to, we’ll defund,” he said. “We give tremendous amounts of money to California.”
There’s one other thing Trump is forgetting – the president doesn’t have the sole authority to approve such a measure even if he wanted to. As the LA Times points out, he “can’t just call up some staffer to not cut any more checks to California.” Such a law can only be passed by Congress– and only they have the sole power to appropriate money.
All of this means only one thing – Trump’s statement is merely an empty threat. Even so, with Republicans now in power, California is still bracing itself for a full-on war with the new Trump administration. He’s wanting them to help enforce federal immigration laws (albeit in the most horrible way possible) and they’re just not going to sit by and let it happen without a fight.
Mod: A key point. "What’s particularly interesting about the threat is that California is one of the few states in the country that actually sends more money to Washington than it receives. If they suspend payments to the federal government, they will actually have more money for services." So why should we have to support all of those dumbass red states? Or Trump for that matter?
The state of California has one of the ten largest economies in the world. Not only is it a giant among states, competing with the economies of some of the most affluent countries worldwide, but it is one of the few states that pays more into the federal Treasury than it receives in government funding. It would be a huge mistake to put the state of California in a position that legislators may decide to stop paying taxes altogether, but Donald Trump seems determined to do just that because, well, he’s an idiot.
“If we have to, we’ll defund,” he said. “We give tremendous amounts of money to California.”
Thanks to the state’s liberal policies, California has outpaced the rest of the nation on job growth and had a gross state product of 2.46 trillion in 2015, placing it sixth behind the United Kingdom in world economies (ranked by Gross Domestic Product) and 11th in the world ranked by cost of living.
In other words, California would be fine without the federal money it receives…if the state stopped paying taxes to the federal government. Officials are currently looking into doing exactly that if Trump follows through on his threat to take federal funding from the state.
“California could very well become an organized non-payer,” if Trump follows through on threats to punish cities and states that do not comply with requests to turn over undocumented immigrants to Trump’s goons, a former speaker of the state Assembly told KPIX 5 on Sunday. “They could recommend non-compliance with the federal tax code.”
Mod: Maybe Trump is doing all of this in hopes of advancing the Russian supported effort to get California to leave the United States? Once again proving just how much under the thumb of Vladimir Putin he really is. Or, perhaps, he is just nuts. Given all we've heard these last two weeks, you certainly can't count that out.
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