I've Reviewed Some Cruel Budgets
I've Never Seen Anything Crueler Than This.
By Robert Reich
February 15, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
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I
wasn’t going to write about Trump’s budget,
because it’s dead on arrival in Congress.
But its unbridled cruelty is so alarming
that I can't resist saying something.
Bear in mind, this budget increases overall
federal spending and it comes on top of a
huge cut in taxes for corporations and the
wealthy. In other words, its purpose is not
at all to reduce the federal budget deficit
or federal debt.
Here goes:
1. Trump calls for huge increase in defense
spending – 13 percent more next year alone.
And as you know, our military budget is
already bigger than the next five largest
nation's military budgets put together, and
is larded with waste as it is.
2. Trump wants to slash safety nets
Americans depend on:
(a) He proposes cutting Medicare by $554
billion and Medicaid by around $250 billion
over the next decade.
(b) He wants to slashes Medicaid. (The Trump
administration has already approval Kentucky
and Indiana’s requests to impose work
requirements on adult Medicaid recipients –
even though there’s not a shred of evidence
that access to health care has kept people
from working. It’s just the opposite. Lack
of access to health care has kept people
from working.)
(c) He'd cut disability insurance.
(d) He'd cut housing assistance.
(e) He'd slash food stamps by nearly 30
percent over the decade -- and he's
proposing to give food stamp recipients
pre-selected boxes of food!
3. And you can forget about helping people
get ahead.
(a) Trump aims to cut a large swathe of the
Education Department’s budget designed to
help needy children — including after-school
activities to keep kids off the street and a
grant program for college students with
“exceptional financial need.”
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(b)
Yet he’d increase spending by more than $1
billion on private school vouchers.
(c) He’d also slash funding for National
Dislocated Worker Grants, which support
people who lose jobs because of factory
closures or natural disasters, as well as
cutting adult employee and training, which
helps high-school dropouts and veterans.
Bottom line: I've reviewed some pretty cruel
budgets (Reagan's first budget, George W.
Bush's first budget, for example). But I've
never seen anything crueler than this, less
justified by the facts, and seemingly more
intended to hurt vulnerable people. Trump
has taken social Darwinism to a new level of
absurdity.
What do you think?
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