"Trump’s budget is the opening shot in a
stage-managed tussle between the two big
business parties over social cuts that will end
with the most massive attack on core social
programs in US history."
Trump’s scorched-earth budget: $1.7 trillion in cuts to vital social programs
By Kate Randall
24 May 2017
24 May 2017
On Tuesday,
the White House unveiled a $4.1 trillion fiscal 2018 budget that proposes to
take the ax to social programs that protect the health and welfare of millions
of American workers.
The budget
amounts to a scorched-earth attack on all aspects of social life. It would claw
back social gains made by workers over the past century and slash funds to
programs that raised millions out of poverty, particularly since the 1960s.
The proposal
is not simply the brainchild of the fascistic-minded billionaire who occupies
the White House or the criminal oligarchy he represents. It is the culmination
of decades of attacks on social conditions and programs by both big-business
parties.
While the
Democrats have aimed their fire at the president from the right, pursuing their
campaign, along with the “liberal” media, to escalate the US military
confrontation with Russia, the Trump administration is forging full steam ahead
to advance its ultra-reactionary domestic agenda.
After
feigning outrage at the budget’s proposed cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy,
the Democrats will eventually fall into line and work with the president to
come up with a dirty compromise. The end result will be a budget that makes the
most sweeping attacks on core social programs in US history.
The budget,
titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” is a 52-page declaration of
war against the working class. The document spells out $3.6 trillion in
spending cuts over 10 years.
It takes as
its jumping-off point an attack on Medicaid that would eviscerate the health
insurance program for the poor. It then moves on to gut food stamps, welfare
and Social Security disability benefits.
An assault
on immigrant rights and a parallel buildup of forces to police the border is
next on the agenda. The military would receive a 10 percent boost in funding,
including many projects already planned by the Obama administration.
Federal
workers’ jobs and benefits are targeted. The proposed budget also includes
hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to scientific research, environmental
protection and the arts. No area of social life is to be left unscathed.
Social programs
Medicaid: The centerpiece of the budget is
an $800 billion cut over the next decade to Medicaid, the health insurance
program for the poor and disabled, jointly administered by the federal
government and the states, which presently covers more than 74 million
Americans.
Taking its
cue from the House Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed May 4,
the Trump budget would put an end to Medicaid as a guaranteed benefit based on
need, replacing it with per capita funding or block grants to the states.
As part of
its effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the AHCA would also end the
expansion of Medicaid benefits to those with incomes up to 133 percent of the
federal poverty line, resulting in 10 million beneficiaries being booted off
the rolls.
The budget
proposal notes: “States will have more flexibility to control costs and design
individual, State-based solutions to provide better care to Medicaid
beneficiaries.” These are code words for the states to institute work
requirements, introduce or raise premiums and co-pays, cut benefits or throw
enrollees off the program altogether.
Food stamps: The Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), known as food stamps, would be slashed by $193
billion over a decade, a 25 percent reduction. The budget calls for “a series
of reforms to SNAP that close eligibility loopholes, target benefits to the
neediest households, and require able-bodied adults to work.” The program
currently serves 44 million people.
Social Security: The president who
vowed not to touch Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is also proposing an
attack on Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income program, which provides
cash benefits to the poor and disabled.
The proposal
bemoans the fact that people with disabilities currently have low rates of
labor force participation. The budget aims to save $72 billion over 10 years,
undoubtedly resulting in large numbers people with disabilities being struck
from the rolls with no social safety net.
Welfare: Welfare benefits, known as
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) since the Clinton
administration’s “reform” of welfare in the 1990s, will be slashed by a
staggering $272 billion over a decade, again by reducing federal funds and
shifting responsibility to the states, which will institute work requirements
and other restrictions to reduce benefits and remove people from the rolls.
Federal workers: The budget would
cut $63 billion by increasing federal employees’ payments to their defined
benefit Federal Employee Retirement System, as well as eliminating
cost-of-living adjustments for existing and future retirees. There are also
plans to privatize the air traffic control system, saving $70 billion.
Immigrant rights: The budget
proposes to implement a “merit based” immigration system, reducing the number
of immigrants with lower levels of education. The proposal notes that in 2012,
“76 percent of households headed by an immigrant without a high school
education used at least one major welfare program, compared to 26 percent for
households headed by an immigrant with at least a bachelor’s degree.”
In an effort
to keep out less educated immigrants portrayed as a drag on social spending
dollars, the budget includes $44.1 billion for the Department of Homeland
Security and $17.7 billion for the Department of Justice for “law enforcement,
public safety and immigration enforcement programs and activities.”
The
president’s plan calls for hiring 500 new Border Patrol Agents and 1,000 new
Immigration and Customs Enforcement law enforcement personnel in 2018. The
budget proposes an additional $1.5 billion above 2017 levels for “expanded
detention, transportation and removal of illegal immigrants.”
The budget
also calls for investing $2.6 billion to plan, design and construct a physical
wall along the Mexican-US border to keep out immigrants fleeing poverty and
violence in Latin America, a cost that the president claimed during his
campaign would be paid by Mexico.
Science and the environment: Massive cuts in
spending on scientific research, medical research and disease prevention are in
the 2018 budget request, including but not limited to:
• National Cancer Institute: $1 billion
cut
• National Heart, Lung and Blood Institution: $575 million cut
• National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases: $838 million cut
• National Institutes of Health: budget cut from $31.8 billion to $26 billion
• National Science Foundation: $776 million cut.
• National Heart, Lung and Blood Institution: $575 million cut
• National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases: $838 million cut
• National Institutes of Health: budget cut from $31.8 billion to $26 billion
• National Science Foundation: $776 million cut.
Spending on the Arts: The Trump budget
proposes to eliminate federal funding for the following:
• The Corporation for Public
Broadcasting
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services
• National Endowment for the Arts (begin shutting down in 2018)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (begin shutting down in 2018).
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services
• National Endowment for the Arts (begin shutting down in 2018)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (begin shutting down in 2018).
Military: The budget includes $639 billion
of discretionary budget authority for the Department of Defense, a $52 billion
increase above the 2017 continuing resolution level. The proposal stresses that
this spending is to be “fully offset by targeted reductions elsewhere”—i.e.,
through the draconian social spending cuts detailed above.
Tax cuts: The budget outlines a number of
tax breaks, which will overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. These include
repealing the 3.8 percent Obamacare surcharge on capital gains and dividends
and abolishing the estate tax (the “death tax,” according to Republican
jargon).
The
president’s proposal also points to the “anticipated economic gains that will
result from the President’s fiscal, economic, and regulatory policies,”
including tax cuts, which it claims will reduce the deficit by $5.6 trillion
over a decade compared to the current fiscal path.
The budget
assumes that economic growth will reach 3 percent by 2021 to help balance the
budget by 2021. This rosy prediction is belied by numerous sources, including
the Congressional Budget Office, which projects 1.9 percent annual growth, and
the Federal Reserve, which projects a 1.8 percent growth rate.
Taken
together, the spending cuts proposed in Trump’s “American Greatness” budget
proposal constitute the wish list of a ruling oligarchy, which is dispensing
with the idea that a civilized society has a responsibility to provide its
citizens with basic social necessities.
"Trump’s budget is the opening shot in a
stage-managed tussle between the two big
business parties over social cuts that will end
with the most massive attack on core social
programs in US history."
AMERICA: One paycheck and two illegals away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA’S OPEN
BORDERS
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH:
“In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.”
23 May 2017
The Trump administration will unveil a fiscal year 2018 budget today that includes $1.7 trillion in cuts to major social programs. The plan marks a new stage in a bipartisan social counterrevolution aimed at eviscerating what remains of programs to fight poverty and hunger and provide health care for millions of workers.
The unveiling of the budget underscores the reactionary
character of the Democrats’ response to a gangster
government headed by a fascistic-minded billionaire and
composed of Wall Street bankers, far-right ideologues and
generals. The Democratic Party has chosen to base its opposition to Trump not on his assault on working and poor people, his attacks on democratic rights, or his reckless militarism, but on his supposed “softness” toward Russia.
character of the Democrats’ response to a gangster
government headed by a fascistic-minded billionaire and
composed of Wall Street bankers, far-right ideologues and
generals. The Democratic Party has chosen to base its opposition to Trump not on his assault on working and poor people, his attacks on democratic rights, or his reckless militarism, but on his supposed “softness” toward Russia.
In the political warfare in Washington, the Democrats are aligned with those sections of the intelligence apparatus and the “deep state” that are determined to compel Trump to abandon any notion of easing relations, and instead continue the Obama administration’s policy of escalating confrontation with Russia. As the Democrats and the so-called “liberal” media pursue their anti-Russia campaign, the Trump administration continues to advance its brutal domestic agenda.
Trump’s budget is the opening shot in a stage-managed tussle between the two big business parties over social cuts that will end with the most massive attack on core social programs in US history.
The budget includes a cut of $800 billion over a decade in Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people jointly administered by the federal government and the states. More than 74 million Americans, or one in five, are currently enrolled in Medicaid, including pregnant women, children and seniors with disabilities.
Like the American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed earlier this month by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Trump’s budget plan would put an end to Medicaid as a guaranteed benefit based on need, replacing it with per capita funding or block grants to the states.
The AHCA would also end the expansion of Medicaid benefits under Obamacare and allow states to impose work requirements for beneficiaries. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the Republican plan would result in 10 million people being stripped of Medicaid benefits.
Trump’s budget would also cut $193 billion over a decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, a 25 percent reduction to be achieved in part by limiting eligibility and imposing work requirements.
Welfare benefits, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, would be cut by $21 billion. Spending on the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which benefit mainly low- and middle-income families, would be reduced by $40 billion.
The budget reportedly includes changes in funding for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income program, which provides cash benefits to the poor and disabled.
While gutting social programs, Trump proposes to sharply reduce taxes for the wealthy. In addition to slashing income tax rates for the rich, he is proposing to dramatically cut estate, capital gains and business tax rates. At the same time, he is demanding a huge increase in military spending.
While Democrats will make rhetorical criticisms of the Trump budget, the fact is that the administration is escalating a decades-long assault on the working class overseen by both big business parties.
The outcome can be seen in the reality of social life in America:
Poverty
More than 13 percent—some 43.1 million
Americans—were living in poverty in 2015. Of
these, 19.4 million were living in extreme
poverty, which means their family’s cash
income was less than half of the poverty line,
or about $10,000 a year for a family of four.
The poverty rate for children under 18 was
19.7 percent.
Americans—were living in poverty in 2015. Of
these, 19.4 million were living in extreme
poverty, which means their family’s cash
income was less than half of the poverty line,
or about $10,000 a year for a family of four.
The poverty rate for children under 18 was
19.7 percent.
These are the official poverty rates, based on absurdly low income baselines. In reality, at least half of the population is living in or on the edge of poverty. These are precisely the people targeted by Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, welfare and food stamps.
Hunger
Almost one in eight US households, 15.8 million, were food insecure in 2015, meaning they had difficulty providing enough food for all their members. Five percent of households had very low food security, meaning the food intake of household members was cut. Three million households were unable to provide adequate, nutritious food for their children.
Lack of health care
In 2016 under Obamacare, 28.6 million people of all ages, or about 9 percent of the US population, remained uninsured. Many of those insured under plans purchased from private insurers on the Obamacare exchanges were unable to use their insurance because of prohibitively high deductibles and co-pays. Many who gained insurance under Obamacare did so as a result of the expansion of Medicaid. Trump plans to reverse this, throwing millions of people back into the ranks of the uninsured.
A bipartisan assault
In the wake of Trump’s budget proposal, the Democrats have responded with their standard empty rhetoric. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer—one of Congress’ biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign money—decried Trump’s “hard-right policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the middle-class.” Just three weeks ago, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were hailing the passage of a bipartisan fiscal 2017 budget that cut food stamps by $2.4 billion, slashed funding for education and the environment, and added billions more for the military and border control.
Obamacare paved the way for the present assault on Medicaid and the coming attacks on Medicare and Social Security by further subordinating health care to the profit demands of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and imposing higher costs for reduced benefits on millions of workers.
Nothing less than a mass movement of the working class will prevent the destruction of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, public education and every other social gain won by the working class. But this movement must be completely independent of the Democratic Party, the historic graveyard of social protest in America. That includes left-talking demagogues like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
It is not a matter of appealing to or seeking to pressure the Democrats or any other section of the political establishment. They are all in the pocket of Wall Street.
The working class needs its own program to secure its basic social rights—a decent-paying job, education, health care, a secure retirement. These rights are not compatible with a capitalist system that is lurching inexorably toward world war and dictatorship.
Workers and youth must intervene in this crisis with a socialist and revolutionary program geared to the needs of the vast majority, not the interests of an obscenely rich and corrupt financial oligarchy.
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”
Much more here:
……post on your face book
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to
America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the
United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing
that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every
community across this country.” JUDICIALWATCH
THE LEGACY OF BARACK OBAMA:
Final Death of the American White Middle Class
Under the Obama administration, more Americans have found themselves consigned to economic ghettos, living in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent subsist below the poverty level.
Millions more now live in “high poverty”
districts of 20-40 percent poverty, according to
recently released report by the Brookings
Institution.
THE OBAMA BOOK DEAL: Sixty-five million dollars—or even $267.5 million—is a small price to pay for the contribution the former president made to enriching the already fabulously rich, defending the American ruling elite’s geopolitical interests around the world and continuing the assault on the wages, benefits and living standards of the working class.
HOMELESS ELDERLY in AMERICA UNDER MEX OCCUPATION
A Nation dies young, poor, addicted and homeless…. It’s the American dream as the rich get super rich!
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the number of elderly persons who are homeless in the US will have doubled by 2050.
America’s Super-rich Live 15 Years Longer!
………….. America’s Bludgeoned Middle-Class Dies Young, Addicted and Poor!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/04/americas-super-rich-live-15-years.html
TRUMPERNOMICS: IMPLEMENTING OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS
“CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WILL CONTINUE TO RULE AMERICA!” Twitter Trumper
OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERnomics: The Massive Transfer of Wealth to the Super Rich Ratcheted up!
*
The American oligarchy, steeped in criminality and parasitism, can produce only a government of war, social reaction and repression. In its blind avarice, it is creating the conditions for unprecedented social upheavals. It is hurtling toward its own revolutionary demise at the hands of the working class.
*
BUT WE KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE!
“The massive transfer of wealth will not go to investment, but to acquiring bigger
diamonds; more luxurious mansions, yachts and private jets; new private
islands; more security guards and better-protected gated communities to
segregate the financial nobility from the masses whom they despise
and fear.”
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike,
has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.
This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen
McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
CUT MEDICAID AND SOCIAL SECURITY TO FINANCE TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERnomics: America’s Road to REVOLUTION
….. but will they finish off the American middle-class first???
“The Tax Policy Center finds that for the top 0.1 percent of income earners—those making more than $3.75 million annually—repealing this investment tax would amount to an average tax cut of $165,090.”
White House Budget Cuts Entitlements $1.7 Trillion, Slashes EPA 30%
SETH WENIG/AP
The White House will release its “taxpayer-first budget” on Tuesday, which includes $1.7 trillion in cuts for entitlement spending and a 30 percent reduction in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget.
The Trump budget proposal will balance over the next ten years by cutting both mandatory and discretionary funding for agencies such as the EPA and State Department. The budget proposal assumes that the economy will grow at three percent compared to the 1.6 percent growth that America experienced in 2016. White House staffers explained that the proposal is a “post-policy” budget, meaning that the budget assumes that Trump signed the health care overhaul known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and tax reform into law.
The budget proposal will make substantial cuts into four entitlement programs, SNAP (food stamps), CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), and SSDI (Disability Insurance). The Trump budget assumes that the AHCA becomes law, which would roll back Medicaid expansion. White House staffers told Axios that the budget would cut entitlement costs through an “emphasis on work requirements for able-bodied people.”
The Washington Post’s Damian Paletta stated, “The White House also will call for giving states more flexibility to impose work requirements for people in different kinds of anti-poverty programs, people familiar with the budget plan said, potentially leading to a flood of changes in states led by conservative governors.”
Josh Archambault, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, explained that giving states the flexibility to impose work requirements could to lead to significant changes to programs such as Medicaid or public housing assistance.
“One of the encouraging things about putting this in the budget is that states will see if it works,” Archambault said. “States will try it.”
Michael Tanner, a welfare expert at the Cato Institute, admitted that despite the United States spending roughly $700 billion a year on entitlement programs, the country does not experience significant reductions in poverty.
Tanner said, “We’re not seeing the type of gains we should be seeing for all that spending, and that would suggest its time to reform the system.”
Although the budget will include cuts to food stamps and disability insurance, President Donald Trump told his budget director Mick Mulvaney that he does not want any cuts to Medicare or Social Security.
President Donald Trump’s budget would also cut the EPA’s budget by a third and slash the agency’s operational budget by 35 percent. The budget would reduce environmental grant programs by 35 to 40 percent. The proposed budget for the EPA would limit the EPA’s budget to $5.7 billion from roughly $8 billion.
Trump’s budget cuts for the EPA coincide with the EPA’s $12 million buyout and early retirement plan to reduce the agency’s workforce under the Trump administration.
Trump made campaign promises to eliminate the EPA, and has already taken great strides to limit the agency’s workforce. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed half of the scientists on its Board of Scientific Counselors earlier this month.
White House staffers told Axios that the Trump budget proposal will be a victory for conservatives, much to the chagrin of moderates and Democrats.
“Conservatives will love it; moderates will probably hate it.”
Warren rips Trump’s proposed budget cuts to Social Security
BY MARK HENSCH - 05/23/17 09:22 PM EDT 234
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