Agenda

 Who says Trump doesn't have a second-term agenda? He does so! It just arrived this morning!

President Trump: Fighting for You!

Looks like the boys pulled an all-nighter getting it together. Here's what we're getting on jobs:

JOBS

• Create 10 Million New Jobs in 10 Months
• Create 1 Million New Small Businesses
• Cut Taxes to Boost Take-Home Pay and Keep Jobs in America
• Enact Fair Trade Deals that Protect American Jobs
• "Made in America" Tax Credits
• Expand Opportunity Zones
• Continue Deregulatory Agenda for Energy Independence

Does that mean he's going to get everything done in 10 months, and then head down to Palm Beach in November 2021 and we'll never see him again? 

Because if the million new small businesses are in the jobs agenda, they must be the kind of small businesses that have employees, and the average number of employees in a small business that has employees is 10, so that's your 10 million jobs right there.

Then there's another million jobs being re-imported from China, and we're already beating expectations!

END OUR RELIANCE ON CHINA

• Bring Back 1 Million Manufacturing Jobs from China
• Tax Credits for Companies that Bring Back Jobs from China
• Allow 100% Expensing Deductions for Essential Industries like Pharmaceuticals and Robotics who Bring Back their Manufacturing to the United States
• No Federal Contracts for Companies who Outsource to China
• Hold China Fully Accountable for Allowing the Virus to Spread around the World

I don't know if the "Made in America" tax credits and the "Bring Back Jobs from China" tax credits are the same. They can presumably get through Congress in the first ten months too, along with the new round of tax cuts "to boost take-home pay" (that means the payroll tax) and "keep jobs in America" when the tax credits aren't enough, though since a tax credit for an employer is effectively a tax cut maybe that's the same thing too. Senator Gillibrand introduced a bill to force the federal government to consider a company's outsourcing behavior when awarding federal contracts last March. 

Speaking of outsourcing,

The Trump Vodka produced and sold in Israel is made from ingredients that make it kosher for Passover, which made it a popular beverage around the holidays. But the Jerusalem Post reported that it turned out that not all ingredients actually were kosher for Passover.

but this is not germane to the important issues we are considering here.

These two headings, "JOBS" and "END OUR RELIANCE ON CHINA" include all the provisions in the agenda on trade policy and all the provisions on energy policy (deregulation of coal and oil to help them compete with greedy non-renewables) and all the provisions on taxes, including the ingenious idea of preserving jobs in pharma and robotics by allowing sales and management personnel to deduct all their restaurant and hotel expenses, because why on earth would a company manufacture drugs in the US if it had to pay for its executives' power lunches?

But it is hoped that the deduction will also preserve jobs at Trump hotels in Washington, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, where the power lunch continues to exist.

The Covid-19 agenda can also be completed within 10 months; in fact a major part of it will be done before the second term starts!

ERADICATE COVID-19

• Develop a Vaccine by The End Of 2020
• Return to Normal in 2021
• Make All Critical Medicines and Supplies for Healthcare Workers in The United States
• Refill Stockpiles and Prepare for Future Pandemics

I assume preparation for pandemics is part of the return to normal, since it was normal before the Trump administration began. The manufacture of drugs and PPE in the US is taken care of by the already discussed tax credits and job creations and tax breaks on executive meals, though it's a mystery how.

HEALTHCARE

• Cut Prescription Drug Prices
• Put Patients and Doctors Back in Charge of our Healthcare System
• Lower Healthcare Insurance Premiums
• End Surprise Billing
• Cover All Pre-Existing Conditions
• Protect Social Security and Medicare
• Protect Our Veterans and Provide World-Class Healthcare and Services

Not sure how protecting Social Security (not typically thought of as a healthcare issue) and Medicare comports with the JOBS agenda ending the way these programs are paid for. Or how you lower health insurance premiums alongside "covering all pre-existing conditions" and cutting drug prices. Or does covering pre-existing conditions mean something different from the Obamacare objective of covering people with pre-existing conditions without raising their premiums? A return to the pre-Obamacare regime would raise their premiums and in theory lower them for everybody else, so maybe that's all that's meant. 

Or perhaps they will lower premiums by refusing to cover any conditions that don't already exist. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Greenbaum, when you bought this policy your heart condition didn't exist, so we can't cover it. At least not without sending you a surprise bill, which would be illegal."

The aim of putting patients and doctors "back" in charge may be underestimating the ability of insurance companies to make these decisions, but what do I know.

EDUCATION

• Provide School Choice to Every Child in America
• Teach American Exceptionalism

That's it for education. Other than that, education is already perfect, and since the federal government has little ability to construct two schools for every boy—the 2016 GOP platform aimed only at at least one good school, and promised merely that

We will continue our fight for school choice until all parents can find good, safe schools for their children 

—or impose the projected exceptionalism curriculum through all 57 states and territories, it looks llike they won't have to do anything. Maybe Trump will personally provide the exceptionalism classes, remotely.

DRAIN THE SWAMP

• Pass Congressional Term Limits
• End Bureaucratic Government Bullying of U.S. Citizens and Small Businesses
• Expose Washington’s Money Trail and Delegate Powers Back to People and States
• Drain the Globalist Swamp by Taking on International Organizations That Hurt American Citizens

I'm probably against any actions envisaged in this section, because taking regulatory power over business away from federal agencies in favor of ALEC agents in Albany or Tallahassee seems like a way to increase corruption, not diminish it, but I mostly can't imagine what they are. Congressional term limits are always proposed by Republican legislators, some of whom anxious to move on to the big lobbying bucks anyway, but it's going to take a constitutional amendment to do it, and there's not a chance of that happening, fortunately. How is the White House planning to "expose the money trail"? Via Twitter?

I'd like to see Trump's money trail, obviously, but I don't know what he's talking about here. And I don't know which international organizations hurt American citizens, or how they go about doing it. The 2016 platform mainly objected to organizations that don't hurt American citizens except to the extent that "corporations are people, my friends"—

We do not support the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, as well as various declarations from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. Because of our concern for American sovereignty, domestic management of our fisheries, and our country’s long-term energy needs, we have deep reservations about the regulatory, legal, and tax regimes inherent in the Law of the Sea Treaty. 

DEFEND OUR POLICE

• Fully Fund and Hire More Police and Law Enforcement Officers
• Increase Criminal Penalties for Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers
• Prosecute Drive-By Shootings as Acts of Domestic Terrorism
• Bring Violent Extremist Groups Like ANTIFA to Justice
• End Cashless Bail and Keep Dangerous Criminals Locked Up until Trial

I'm pretty sure the "federalism" is even more confused here than it is in the education section. FBI, CBP, and ICE aren't under-funded and their agents and officers aren't very frequent assault victims. If the Trumpies want to address the concept of some kind of brutal war between "violent extremist groups like antifa" (the Justice Department hasn't been able to find any) and law enforcement officers, it's at a local level where the federal government plays no role in hiring or setting criminal penalties, though it can of course offer money and put conditions on its use. It certainly can't control the bail systems of local jurisdictions, where it is up to the judge.

Nestor Makhno of the Insurrectionary Revolutionary Army of Ukraine, reputed inventor of the drive-by shooting with machine gun from horse and carriage, pictured in 1918 (Wikipedia).

And I'm not sure what good is done by messing with the general system of calling drive-by shooters terrorists if they are terrorists, and not if they aren't, which ought to cover all the important cases.

There's also 

END ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND PROTECT AMERICAN WORKERS

INNOVATE FOR THE FUTURE

which includes the Space Force and "Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air", on which I'm afraid the horse has departed from the barn some time ago

Yale and Columbia University researchers teamed up with the World Economic Forum in 2018 to compile the data. Using 10 categories, they ranked the United States 27th. On air it ranks 10th and on water, 29th. Among wealthy democracies, the United States ranks toward the bottom, according to Zachary Wendling, principal investigator at the Environmental Performance Index.

and

AMERICA FIRST FOREIGN POLICY

But you get the picture. I've already put more thought into it than all the staffers who assembled it last night.