Starving the poor to feed the rich

Republicans are cutting health care to struggling families and children to give tax cuts to billionaires.

Well, you have to hand it to those Republicans. They are ideologically consistent in believing the poor are underserving and the rich are special. Last night, they passed a budget resolution that sets up cuts of more than $1.1 trillion to Medicaid and SNAP, the food assistance program commonly known as food stamps. They will squander the savings in revenue by giving $1.1 trillion in tax cuts that will go overwhelmingly to the richest people in the country. You know, because Elon Musk needs more money.

Again, the Republicans in Washington remind me of the ones in North Carolina. Here, they decimated public schools, transferring money from poor school districts to private schools and charters. The biggest insult was offering vouchers to the richest families in the state, effectively subsidizing the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Almost every Republican legislator supported the measure, even though their districts and constituents will lose the most.

I’m always baffled by the Republicans representing poorer districts who go along with these schemes. They harm their own constituents to help people who are more financially and socially secure. In the case of Medicaid, almost one in four North Carolinians are enrolled in the program and almost 70% of them live in Republican Congressional districts. According to Carolina Forward, “Medicaid covers 60% of all nursing home stays in North Carolina.”

Republicans justify the cuts as a means to balance the budget. They have justified Elon Musk pillaging government by claiming that they want to reduce the debt and deficit. If that was true, they would not be offering tax cuts to billionaires, which will almost certainly add to both the debt and deficit.

Republicans have found what experts have always known. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and the military make up the vast majority of the country’s budget. Discretionary spending only makes up about 14% of the budget, according to Axios. Despite Republican claims, there’s just not that much waste.

Maybe there’s a method to Republicans’ madness. If they cut Medicaid deeply enough, more people will die. Many of those people are also collecting Social Security and Medicare. Their deaths will reduce the amount of money government spends on their health care while also ending Social Security payments. Reducing Medicaid will likely reduce lifespans of poor people, further eliminating government obligations. I don’t know if those deaths will be enough to cover the cost of the tax cuts for the richest Americans, but they will certainly help.

If a backlash to Trumpism is coming, it will be spurred by the Republican cuts. Reducing access to medical care will almost certainly cost lives and reduce the quality of life for millions of Americans. Passing on those “savings,” as Republicans call them, to the wealthiest Americans will cause outrage, because it’s outrageous.