There was a time when I thought that John Sununu was at least semi-serious. However, he clearly has decided that his path to money and maybe political office in the future is to cleave to the Trumpista line.
Also, here he is spouting more of this notion that the president is supreme:
Side note: he mentions balanced budgets in the clip the way many state-level types often do because most states (all?) require a balanced budget. Governors often like to talk like such an approach would work at the federal level. But, of course, states get to function the way they do because the federal government substantially backstops state-level needs (and provides a host of services to the citizens of the states that the state government, therefore, does not have to even consider). Put another way, part of the reason that states can function as they do is because the federal government engages in a lot of deficit spending. It isn’t because states are exemplars of fiscal prudence. I would note, too, that states do go into debt, they just don’t do it via deficits the way the federal government does.
And here is Sununu utterly misrepresenting the indirect issue.
He is simply wrong that cutting indirect rates will lead to more money for research. He is either going on national television and spouting from a place of ignorance (as his lack of knowledge of the ICA suggests) or he is actively lying (or both). It is a deeply unserious and damaging attempt at getting people to believe in unreality.
Let’s be clear: the issue is not, as he suggests, about stopping a bunch of professors from getting fired. It is about utterly undercutting the ability of major research universities to do research in areas of great significance, including healthcare and pharmaceuticals. The right-wing fantasy that universities are just full of gold-bricking pinheads is a dangerous, incorrect, and infuriating one.
