Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Well, howdy there, Internet people. It's Belle again. So today, we're going to talk about Trump's shutdown, economic impact edition.
Chapter 2: What are the economic implications of Trump's shutdown?
Now, in addition to Trump saying he'll lay off American workers if he isn't allowed to avoid helping the working class with health care, his administration is suggesting that federal workers won't be entitled to back pay for the time they were forced out during the shutdown. Let's start with the layoff problem first.
Even though we're not getting jobs reports from the federal government right now, we have access to other jobs data, and it's pretty bleak. It's actually bad enough that conspiracy theories have popped up saying Republicans shut down the government to avoid having to release more bad economic numbers. There's no evidence to support that that I've seen.
It really seems as simple as not wanting to support the working class. Investment big boy Carlyle released their numbers. This is an investment firm with about half a trillion under their management. They say the economy added just 17,000 jobs last month. If you aren't familiar with these numbers, that's really, really bad. ADP showed a loss of 32,000 jobs in the private sector.
Trump's solution to trying economic times? Layoffs from the federal government that would not only put more people out of work, but would also put those out-of-work federal employees in competition for the same dwindling amount of jobs. Beyond that, Republicans are now suggesting that furloughed federal employees might not get back pay.
Because surely simply deleting income from the economy will help keep America's financial state from sliding further into the abyss. The reality is that it's another attempt by Republicans to use the working class as a bargaining chip. Looking at Democrats and saying, look what you made me do.
We're talking about around 750,000 workers who have been furloughed, some of whom are deemed essential and have to keep working. If you question the sincerity of Republican claims that they want to help the working class, it's important to understand the dynamics of this. Republicans don't want to stop health insurance rates from doubling for the working class.
So they've decided to use firing working class Americans or removing the back pay of working class Americans as leverage so they don't have to help the working class with health care that they let lapse so they could pretend the one big beautiful bill wasn't a complete disaster for the debt.
The current health care issue was brought up back then, but Republicans ignored the concerns or said it wasn't true.
Now that the letters are going out, and even people like MTG are admitting its bad policy, they're trying to continue to cash in on the same talking points that, frankly, are bouncing in people's checkbooks.
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