He's only got one term. IMO better to cut the presumably unneeded limbs off than wait. Government, unlike people, can always grow a new limb if necessary.
There are also bills and other measures (not to mention his own words) trying to support the idea of a third term for Trump.
You can argue that these measures are not serious or not a real threat or things like that, but it would be inaccurate to say that the prevailing R view is that there is no possibility of term-limit shenanigans.
> it's hard to see surprise cuts as anything more than willful vandalism and a gift to global competitors.
From an outsider's point of view, anything that the Trump administration is doing sounds an awful lot like the total destruction of the United States government, and consequently the country.
Let's put it this way: there have been military coups that did a far better job at preserving state institutions, even after purging the regime. The Trump administration clearly has a different goal in mind, from internal government structure to international relations and even alliances.
As Obama said, elections have consequences. Do you think there should be a permanent bureaucracy that is totally unaffected by elections? Or put it this way, hypothetically if James Bowman takes power for the next 8 years, and the other side has had 12 years to implement and entrench their institutions, are you really going to object to your side reversing it when the pendulum swings back your way?
> Do you think there should be a permanent bureaucracy that is totally unaffected by elections?
I don't think you have a good grasp on what is happening, both in form and extent. You're making it sound like the Trump administration is refreshing bureaucrats, where in reality it's completely dismantling the whole federal state while imposing a totalitarian agenda. It's destroying public health services, education services, security services, even R&D. To top things off, the Trump administration caused irreversible damage to decades-old alliances, if they aren't destroyed already, which where at the core of US's global hegemony.
You're talking about bureaucracy as if the only impact this has is some pencil pushers losing a job. It's not. It's the death by suicide of the United States as an ideal, and a global leader. The Trump admin leaves behind a huge power vacuum that will inevitably be filled by another party, and odds are it ain't pushing freedom nor peace.
To return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH- hadn't they been funding gain of function research on coronaviruses? It would be hard to claim that cleaning house there is national suicide.
if you have a growth mindset, it certainly is. they're making the united states a less attractive place for the tippy-top of stem research on a world class level. serious people have choices, they can and will choose elsewhere if things here are a mess.
Imposing the Common Core curriculum on American children did infinitely more damage to the country's STEM competitiveness than gutting the NIH's funding of unreplicable or outright harmful research.
to return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH. cutting indirects overnight to 15% with zero warning is vandalism. the united states was a world leader (this means it produced and attracted the best) in this area, hopefully it will remain so despite this vandalism.
with respect to common core, as far as i can tell, nationalization efforts were initiated under bush ii, and then driven over the past two decades by institutions, states and federal support. some states follow it, others do not. i don't see your point.
it's hard to see surprise cuts as anything more than willful vandalism and a gift to global competitors.
time to donate time and money to their opposition. one month in and they've already proven themselves a failure.