Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
Forgive us for saying so, but some of the best evidence that Donald Trump and the Republicans don't have a secret plot to remain in control of the government is the fact that he keeps thrashing around like a beached whale, trying desperately to pull something out of his hat to try to save the GOP before Election Day. The last several days have witnessed two more attempts to try to buy votes with federal money.
First up is Alaska, which Trump visited early last week. Before, during, and after his appearance there, he flogged an oft-repeated promise to get a gas pipeline built, which would ostensibly reduce Alaskans' energy bills by some sizable percentage. The funding for this pipeline would come partly from the federal government and partly from the governments of South Korea and Taiwan.
Assuming you could believe in everything Trump is saying, then this would be a little on the skeezy side as far as electioneering goes, but would also be within the realm of normal pork-barrel stuff. In other words, this is a promise that some non-Trump president or politician might also have made on the campaign trail. And, in fact, non-Trump presidents have made this exact promise, going all the way back to... Jimmy Carter. In other words, Trump is proposing that he will succeed where seven other presidents have failed, and where he himself has thus far not succeeded in nearly 6 years in office spread across his two terms.
In other words, it's reasonable to wonder exactly how much this will move the needle with Alaskans, since they've heard it all before. The basic problem is that a pipeline like this is very, very expensive, and nobody has found a way to make it economically viable, even with significant federal investment. It is true that if South Korea and/or Taiwan are willing to pony up, that could be a deal-changer. But the money they have allegedly committed is part of the investments they vaguely promised to make in order to avoid high tariffs. And the two nations just put out a statement (in Chinese, so use Google translate if you click through) in which they say, in effect, that progress has been made, but nothing is imminent, and more planning and investigating is needed. We have a sneaking suspicion that their planning and investigating will continue until, oh, January 20, 2029, or so, when they will discover the proposal isn't so viable after all. And even if we are wrong, well, the project is vaporware now, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So, it's certainly not going to solve the immediate problems (i.e., high gas/diesel prices), and it's probably not going to get many Alaskans' hopes up.
Yesterday, meanwhile, Trump was in Kansas campaigning for Sen. Roger Marshall (R), who is in way more trouble than a Republican in Kansas should be in. And when the President wasn't issuing forth with antisemitic slurs (Trump, like Joe Biden before him, has not updated his internal dictionary to reflect the fact that you can't call people "Shylocks" anymore), he was announcing that the government will give $8 billion in grants to farmers to offset diesel costs this harvest season.
The USDA promptly released a "fact sheet" about the initiative, which is long on braggadocio about how much Trump loves farmers, and short on actual facts. It says the money is "authorized under the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Charter Act," but it is not clear to us if this money was already authorized by Congress, and thus isn't actually new funds, or if the administration came up with the cash from some as-yet-unknown source. If it's the former, then this is basically just sleight of hand. If it's the latter, then it's basically another bribe.
What is clear is that any farmer who wants money will have to jump through a bunch of paperwork hoops, and the first set of guidelines won't even be available until November (with others coming later). So, we're talking cash that is going to be spread over a pretty large geographic area, that applicants may or may not get, and even if they do get it, it's months (or more) into the future. Will that save Marshall? Maybe, especially since every vote counts in a race that is as close as this one looks to be. But if we were him, we wouldn't be sleeping all that much better right now. (Z)