In a sad moment of bitter irony, President Donald Trump's budget bill, which is one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history is going to be signed by him on the fourth of July. The mind truly reels at this.
This budget bill is, quite simply, a terrible example of everything wrong with America. It will make permanent tax cuts that Trump passed in his first term, which are heavily slanted towards reducing taxes for the rich. And to help offset the loss of revenue these cuts will bring, Medicaid and food assistance for the poor are being cut by billions of dollars. It's estimated that millions of Americans will soon lose their healthcare because of these cuts. How could it get any worse? Well, the non partisan Congressional Budget Office has foreseen that, even with those spending cuts, this budget will eventually add over three trillion dollars to our national debt.
So to put it bluntly, this bill will hurt millions of poor Americans to help pay for a tax cut for the rich, continuing the obsession that the Republican Party has been pursuing since Ronald Reagan first introduced so called Supply Side Economics back in the 80's. (He also left behind big deficits). And, in an example of just how cynical this whole enterprise is, the tax cuts will take place immediately, while the Medicaid and food cuts won't really start kicking in until 2028, showing that the Republican bill writers consciously moved these unpopular cuts past the mid term elections, knowing how angry they will make voters.
So, while Trump has often seemed like a different kind of Republican, at the end of the day he still has the same awful budget priorities of Reagan and George W Bush. The fact that he's breaking a campaign promise to not cut Medicaid and reduce the deficit is, of course, hardly surprising given how much he has always lied . Remember how he promised to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it back in 2016? Or how about how he was going to jail Hillary Clinton? So I can't say that I'm disappointed by a man who's always gone back on his word, but I am upset about how quickly the rest of his party gave in.
As the bill was being debated in congress, there did seem to be a few Republican congress people from swing states who had moral objections to it, and it polled terribly with voters, who liked it less and less the more they heard about it. But, sadly, those few principled Republicans who either objected to the Medicaid cuts (like Josh Hawley) or deficit increase (like Rand Paul) eventually folded like umbrellas given just how strong Trump's support is with the base of the Republican party who continue in their cult like devotion towards him.
It should be noted that along with tax cuts and budget cuts, the bill also contains 100 billion dollars in spending for the Immigration and Custom Enforcement office, which triples their budget. (To put that in proper perspective, as the magazine Newsweek points out, ICE now has a higher budget than the entire military spending of many other countries). And, of course, it eliminates all spending on green energy and tax rebates for electric vehicles, because a brutal crackdown on undocumented immigrants and ignoring climate change as the world swelters is just par for the course from our narcissistic, psychopathic president.
The cruelty of this bill lies not only in the lie Trump repeated often on the campaign trail about not defunding Medicaid, it's also a stab in the back to the working class of this country who will be hurt the most, even as they have turned to the Republican party more and more in recent years. Sadly, Trump's stand on immigration, trans rights and other social issues have fooled tens of millions of Americans to vote against their own economic benefit. But then, the Republican party has been using social issues to do that for decades now. Trump is just pushing it further than past presidents.
