On May 22, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s budget bill with just a one vote margin. The proposed budget that now goes to the U.S. Senate, slashes $700 billion from Medicaid, $500 billion from Medicare, and nearly $300 billion from the SNAP food assistance program. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that these cuts will increase the number of people without health insurance by at least 13.7 million over the next decade.
This same budget that devastates millions of poor and working families increases funding for defense and border security – and most consequentially, extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that disproportionately benefits the nation’s wealthiest families. The CBO found that Trump’s budget will reduce resources to the poorest 10 percent of Americans by 4 percent, while increasing household wealth to the richest 10 percent of Americans by the same amount. The tax cuts, projected to add over $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, caused Moody’s Rating service to downgrade the U.S. credit rating a week before the budget was passed.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, who warns that if Trump and the Republican House budget bill is signed into law, it will literally kill many Americans by taking away health care from millions.
ALEX LAWSON: What they just passed is the destruction of Medicaid. It’s the destruction of Medicaid — $700 billion cut from Medicaid. That’s not something that the program, the system can withstand. And they can dress it up however they want. When you are talking about cuts of that magnitude, the system stops working.
What does that mean? Hospitals collapsing. Rural hospitals basically gone. They’re already in the middle of a massive crisis. Everywhere across this country in rural America, you’re seeing hospitals closing, dozens at a time across this country.
And that’s before this bill. That’s primarily because of privatized Medicare, the reimbursement rates and so-called Medicare Advantage.
But now you kick the Medicaid stool out from under these hospitals and they’re gone. But don’t think that it’s just rural hospitals. I mean, urban hospitals are just crushed as well.
And that doesn’t leave suburban hospitals unscathed. The ripple effects from this will affect literally every single person in this country. When you have these hospitals closing across the country, uncompensated care costs skyrocket. Everybody’s quality of care will go down.
So, let me be really clear. What they’ve done is they are killing people — primarily seniors, people with disabilities. The most vulnerable people in our society will die. They will die or be harmed because Medicaid is health care.
And when people have health care, you can calculate how many of them it prevents from harm or premature death. You take that health care away and people die. That’s what the Republicans have voted for. And also it was all of the Republicans, the votes against the bill, those were all tame opposition from the right. And those votes were saying, “We’re not killing enough people fast enough.” So that’s what the Republicans voted for.
Oh, by the way, that’s on top of stealing food out of people’s mouths with the destruction of Meals on Wheels and SNAP food assistance.
And that is also on top of $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. And all of this is so they can give tax handouts to the richest people in the history of the world, like Elon Musk and his billionaire buddies. That’s what the Republicans have voted for together, because that’s what the Republicans believe in.
SCOTT HARRIS: Alex, the House-passed budget now goes to the U.S. Senate for debate and a vote. I wonder if you would explain to our audience, your group in a wider coalition of groups around the country, what’s the strategy to defeat key elements of this draconian bill that punishes the poor and working families of America while rewarding the wealthiest Americans and profitable corporations?
ALEX LAWSON: So I think that one of the things that we learned, in fighting against some of the destructive policies against Social Security — and that’s happening still and we’ll keep fighting back — but was to not overthink it that much. It was to not make things too complicated, really get people to understand that things that they rely on, like hospitals in their neighborhoods are at risk.
So we’re asking people to go to their local hospital. They can get in touch with us at Social Security works.org. Go to your hospital. Stand in front of your hospital. We’ll help you invite elected officials.
If you live in a House Republican district, that’s even better. If you live in a state with a Republican senator. You know, that’s fantastic. We want to make as much news as possible about the real world costs of this bill. That’s what’s moving people.
What moves people is the real world costs, not facts and figures so much as “This hospital. Your hospital is going to close — a place that you recognize is going away. And the reason it’s going away is because it’s being stolen from you to be given to a billionaire in the form of a giant tax handout.”
And we need to do as much of this as possible, as many of these events as humanly possible showing the real world cost to people of this disaster of a Republican plan.
For more information, visit Social Security Works at socialsecurityworks.org.
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