It's now official. For Trump's inauguration on Monday, his oligarch friends and associates will sit inside the Capitol Rotunda to watch the spectacle, while his MAGA supporters are left outside in the cold. That is the perfect metaphor for what is about to happen as Republicans take control of the federal budget.
When it comes to spending, the Biden administration focused on getting us through the pandemic, building infrastructure, combating climate change, and "growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out."
On the other hand, Trump's spending priorities are to (1) extend the 2017 tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, and (2) implement his plans for mass deportation. The former will cost $4.5 trillion over 10 years and the price tag for the latter is $968 billion.
In order to keep up the pretense that the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism, congressional Republicans are looking for ways to offset that massive increase in spending. Of course, one of their top priorities is to repeal any gains made during the Biden administration on things like health care and climate change.
Their biggest offset, however, is to embrace Trump's 10% consumer tax (ie, tariff) on all imported goods. Here's how that tax will effect various income groups:
Another big target for Republican offsets is a huge reduction to Medicaid. Just to be clear, here is a summary of Medicare beneficiaries:
Medicaid covers 41% of all births in the United States, nearly half of children with special health care needs, five in eight nursing home residents, 23% of non-elderly adults with any mental illness, and 40% of non-elderly adults with HIV...
Among the non-elderly covered by Medicaid, half are children under age 19; six in ten are people of color, 57% are female; and seven in ten are in a family with a full or part-time worker.
Republicans are looking at cutting up to 1/3 of Medicaid spending over the next 10 years. Since individual states run their own Medicaid programs, they will have to decide whether to raise taxes to cover the losses or cut benefits.
There are a couple of lists that Republicans are floating on these potential cuts. The latest one has a long list of possibilities that would hurt the average American, but two stood out to me.
First of all, they are proposing to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction - perhaps the most significant way that purchasing a home is made affordable for middle class buyers. This is coming just as the sale of previously occupied homes hit a 14-year low.
Secondly, Republicans want to eliminate the non-profit status for hospitals - forcing them to pay taxes and eliminating the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Over 60% of hospitals in this country are non-profit - many supported by churches. Even more importantly, this comes at a time when many hospitals (especially in rural areas) are shutting down due to persistent financial losses.
Overall, every single spending cut proposed by Republicans is designed to hurt low-to-middle income Americans.
Years ago, Jim Wallis rightly suggested that budgets are moral documents. It was another way of saying, "pay attention to what I do, not what I say." So while our oligarchs (who have been assured that they'll keep their tax cuts) are cozying up to Trump, his MAGA buddies in Congress are preparing to stick it to the rest of us.
Some of us have never believed the lie that Trump's Republican Party was about populism. How much more obvious can they be?
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