Donald Trump and the Republican party are now rushing to pass a House budget that will extend Trump’s first term 2017 tax cuts and make deep cuts to social safety net programs to pay for reductions in taxes that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. The Center for American Progress described the proposed budget as the “largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.” Trump and the GOP say their budget cuts will only root out “waste fraud and abuse.”
The House Republican budget bill calls for $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and a $300 billion reduction in the SNAP food assistance program over the next decade. If the Trump austerity budget is signed into law, it would lead to as many as 13 million people losing their health insurance and some 9 million, including 4 million children, being cut off from food assistance. The Trump tax cuts will add $4 trillion to the nation’s federal deficit, causing the Moody’s ratings service to downgrade the U.S. credit rating. Recent polls find that there’s overwhelming public opposition to the proposed Medicaid cuts.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Analilia Mejia, co-executive director of Popular Democracy in Action, who is organizing protests and lobbying campaigns to defeat the draconian Trump–GOP budget. Here, she talks about the human cost of these deep budget cuts being enacted to further enrich the nation’s most affluent families.
ANALILIA MEJIA: Right now, members of Congress are debating a budget that can have catastrophic impact on our communities. We’re talking about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that are poised to go to the wealthiest amongst us in exchange for austerity budget and safety net cuts that can have tremendous impact. So, right now, what’s being proposed is a cut of close to $880 billion from Medicaid.
Now, Medicaid is a program in which 80 million Americans depend on. Close to 41 percent of U.S. births are covered by Medicaid. Most of you, most of your listeners will likely know someone that receives Medicaid benefits. It’s the elderly. It’s the disabled. It’s children whose parents have passed away. All of these impacted individuals will either face reduction in services or coverage, or altogether lose eligibility.
There’s also a proposal of a 30 percent reduction in SNAP, which will impact 80 million Americans that depend on these benefits. We’re talking about cuts that could be upwards of 50 percent less benefits for SNAP recipients. So imagine half of a plate of food will disappear for 9 million people across the United States. And all of it so that we can make permanent a set of tax cuts that are really going toward a very small group amongst us.
When you think about it, this imbalanced approach, what we’re talking about is stripping health care, healthy food, housing, affordable housing from millions and millions of Americans. And in exchange, what we’re offering is on average for households that make $96,000 or less, they’re going to get an average of a $400 tax cut. For families within the 1 percent, those are those that make upwards of $740,000 a year. They’re going to get $61,000 in tax cuts. So the tax cut is imbalanced. The pain is imbalanced. And we need folks to step up and reject this proposal.
SCOTT HARRIS: I did want to ask you about the Democratic party’s response here. And what could be done and what should be done to ensure that these major cuts to vital health care programs aren’t cut off?
ANALILIA MEJIA: It is a math problem. And the truth is, in order to pass this budget reconciliation, the Republicans have to hold every single member of the GOP in line. And so what every listener can be doing and what every Democrat in the House should be doing is challenging these individuals with the stories of their own constituents and not letting them run away from the deep impact their decisions are going to have.
Tomorrow we have 500 impacted Americans going to D.C. to talk to their elected officials, to share their stories. And everyone that’s listening could follow suit. So if you’re able to reach out to your member of Congress and let them know about the impact that these cuts can have on you, maybe members of your family — the impact that health care, housing and food programs are going to have on our communities and our hospitals, our families and more.
And it doesn’t matter if your representative is a Republican or Democrat, all of them should hear us as loudly as possible in this moment that we cannot trade trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the top 5 percent and leave most of Americans behind.
For more information, visit Popular Democracy in Action at populardemocracyinaction.org.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Analilia Mejia (19:09) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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