Trump’s budget proposal: A new offensive in the social counterrevolution
Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget is an announcement that the American ruling class is deepening its offensive against the social rights and living conditions of the US and international working class.
The proposed cuts would transfer trillions of dollars from the masses of working people into the hands of the financial aristocracy and affluent upper-middle class, with devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of workers from cradle to grave. The budget plan exposes the utter fraud of Trump’s claim to represent the “forgotten men and women.”
Trump proposes to cut $900 billion from Medicaid, $500 billion from Medicare, $24 billion from Social Security and billions more from food stamps, after school programs, funds to aid homeless students, subsidies for rural schools and student loans, and aid to impoverished infants and their mothers. It also places the US military on a war footing against “great power” rivals Russia and China, including a $50 billion plan to modernize the US nuclear arsenal.
Trump’s proposed cuts to departments such as Education (8 percent), Interior (13.4 percent), Housing and Urban Development (15.2 percent), Health and Human Services (9 percent) and Environmental Protection (26.5 percent) are steps toward dismantling social programs and all government regulation of corporate activity.
President Donald J. Trump talks to members of the press [Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]
The announcement of the White House budget proposal begins the staged process in which the Democratic Party feigns indignation over the proposed cuts only to ultimately accede to many of the demands. Under conditions where the vast majority of Americans are demanding increased spending on social programs, higher taxes on the rich and a redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom, the inevitable outcome of bipartisan budget negotiations will be to shift the entire political establishment further to the right.
This was previewed by Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. When asked last Thursday about Trump’s forthcoming budget, she said:
“I say to my members all the time: ‘There is no such thing as eternal animosity. There are eternal friendships, but you never know on what cause you may come together with someone you may perceive as your foe right now. Everybody is a possible ally in whatever comes next.’”
This offer of friendship to Trump came less than 24 hours after the collapse of the Democratic Party’s impeachment effort, a process in which Pelosi and Democratic impeachment managers called Trump a “traitor” and stooge of Russia for withholding $391 million in military aid to the right-wing nationalist government in Ukraine, which provides money and arms to far-right paramilitary forces. Speaking the language of McCarthyism, the lead Democratic impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, said Trump was obstructing the US from arming Ukraine, an imperative that ensures “we can fight Russia over there so we don’t have to fight Russia here.”
The denunciations of Trump by the Democratic leadership on questions of imperialist foreign policy and the Democrats’ crusade for internet censorship contrast with their appeals to bipartisan friendship on social and domestic policy.
From the day Trump took office, the Democratic Party has facilitated Trump’s attack on living conditions and democratic rights, first by diverting and suppressing mass protests that erupted immediately following Trump’s January 2017 inauguration and in response to his travel ban and attacks on immigrants, and then, over the last three years, by voting for major elements of Trump’s agenda.
Last year, the Democrats voted overwhelmingly to support passage of Trump’s record $738 billion Pentagon budget, which allowed the government to continue to detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and provided $3.6 billion in “back-fill” funding for Trump’s border wall.
The Democrats voted as well to provide Trump with $4.6 billion to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) despite massive opposition to family separation and the detention of immigrant children, ongoing issues which the Democratic Party and corporate media have essentially blacked out from national coverage.
These are only the most egregious examples. A version of Trump’s corporate tax cut, which the proposed budget will extend, was initially proposed by the Obama White House. Obama slashed funding for food stamps, Medicare and other programs.
Some Democratic presidential candidates are using Trump’s budget proposal as an opportunity to demand further deficit reduction, verbally opposing Trump’s budget but focusing their attacks on Bernie Sanders’ proposals to increase social spending.
The Washington Post noted yesterday after Trump’s budget was leaked in the Wall Street Journal: “Former vice president Joe Biden has warned Democrats not to embrace an agenda that calls for unrealistic social policy goals, and Buttigieg declared at a town hall event in Nashua, N.H. on Sunday that it was time to get serious about the rising deficit, even though ‘it’s not fashionable in progressive circles to talk too much about the debt.’”
The Democratic-aligned corporate media has greeted Trump’s budget with far less concern than the prospect that Sanders will win the Democratic nomination. In the lead-up to yesterday’s New Hampshire primary, MSNBC television commentator Chris Matthews claimed that socialists will carry out “executions in Central Park,” while NBC News analyst Chuck Todd compared Sanders supporters to Nazi “brown shirts.”
This language shows that however serious their internal conflicts, both factions of the ruling class are allied in the existential struggle to protect the wealth of the financial aristocracy from the growing mood of social opposition from below. They do not fear Sanders, a long-time Washington insider and loyal Democratic caucus member. What they fear is the growing leftward movement among workers, youth and students reflected in the support for Sanders, which the Vermont senator may not be able to control.
All factions of the ruling class view the mass demonstrations in France, Chile, Puerto Rico, Sudan and elsewhere as ominous signs of what is to come.
Trump’s crisis-ridden government, having emerged victorious and politically strengthened by the Democrats’ impeachment debacle, is preparing for the class battles ahead by building a fascistic movement and threatening to stay in power regardless of the outcome of the 2020 elections.
Sections of the Democratic Party are using a different technique, elevating figures like Sanders and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to feed popular illusions that the Democratic Party can be reformed, that the ruling class can be pressured to enact progressive social policy and that no independent social struggle is required.
This is a hopeless utopia. Even if Sanders manages to win the nomination in the face of attacks by the Democratic Party establishment and backroom efforts to stop him by the Democratic National Committee, his entire program amounts to asking the network of generals, spies and CEOs who run America to voluntarily relinquish trillions of dollars. In explaining the futility of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Leon Trotsky wrote that the New Dealers “wind up by appealing to the monopolists not to forget decency and the principles of democracy. Just how is this better than prayers for rain?”
The Socialist Equality Party’s candidates in the 2020 elections—Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice president—call on workers and youth to break with the two parties of American capitalism and harness their immense social power in the struggle for control of the commanding heights of the world economy.
The entire budget proposed by Trump totals $4.8 trillion—far less than the $27 trillion possessed by the world’s 2,170 billionaires. Redistributing the world’s wealth requires the building of a mass revolutionary movement to confiscate the wealth of the financial aristocracy and place the world’s productive forces under the democratic control of the international working class.
Trump outlines massive cuts
in Medicaid and Medicare in 2021 budget plan
By Kevin Reed
President Trump is
planning to release a 2021 budget on Monday that includes deep cuts to
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other mandatory and discretionary
spending while also increasing funding for the military, according to a report
in the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal report, based on
information provided by a senior administration official, said that the $4.8
trillion budget “charts a path for a potential second term” by planning to
raise military spending by 0.3 percent, to $740.5 billion, and lowering
nondefense spending by 5 percent, to $590 billion, for the fiscal year that
begins October 1, 2020. The cuts to social programs would be below the level
Congress and the president agreed to in a two-year budget deal last summer.
Emboldened by his
acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial last Wednesday, Trump is making it
clear that he is going on the offensive to attack the working class by
proposing to cut essential programs and increase the military budget in
preparation for future imperialist wars. The budget also calls for $2 billion
in new funding for the southern US border wall that is a critical element of
the Trump administration’s extreme right-wing racist campaign against
immigrants.
The new White House
budget proposes to cut spending by $4.4 trillion over ten years by reducing
mandatory programs by $2 trillion. This includes $292 billion from safety-net
programs by changing the work requirements to receive Medicaid and food stamps
and $70 billion by restricting access to disability benefits.
The plan to attack
Medicare in particular is an explicit repudiation of Trump’s campaign promises
in 2016 that he would protect this program, which underwrites health care
coverage for nearly all Americans aged 65 and older, and for many disabled
people of all ages. Other reported cuts include a 21 percent reduction to State
Department and foreign aid funding, a 26 percent cut to the Environmental
Protection Agency and a 15 percent cut to the Department of Housing and Urban
Development.
Press reports
suggesting the Pentagon budget will rise only 0.3 percent, after three years of
whopping increases, are likely a political smokescreen by the White House. Much
of the increase in military spending comes in the form of an Overseas
Contingency Operations fund that is not accounted for in the regular budget.
Last year, the Trump administration proposed a similar dodge, but the increases
were ultimately made in the regular Pentagon budget, not the OCO, and dutifully
rubber-stamped by both the Republican-controlled Senate and the
Democratic-controlled House.
Besides direct Pentagon
spending, there will be war-related increases in the Department of Veterans
Affairs (13 percent), the Department of Homeland Security (3 percent) and the
National Nuclear Security Administration (19 percent).
In order to fulfill his
goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024—which was presented
as a major objective in his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President
Trump is also proposing a 12 percent increase in NASA funding next year.
There are two
interconnected and overriding considerations in the 2021 budget plan. Together
these amount to a significant acceleration of the wealth transfer from the
working class to the top one percent that has been underway for the past four
decades.
The first priority is
the maintenance of the $1.5 trillion tax cuts—enacted in 2017 and set to expire
in 2025—for corporations and the wealthy, which reduced government revenues and
drove deficits up to 4.7 percent of GDP, significantly higher than the 2.7
percent average of the past 50 years. The second consideration is the drive to
reduce and eventually eliminate the social programs like Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, on which the most vulnerable sections of
the working class and poor depend.
The federal deficit is
estimated at $1 trillion for 2020, more than double what the Trump administration
claimed in the budget and tax cut proposals in 2017. The new plan claims the
deficit will be reduced by a total of $4.6 trillion in the next decade and will
be completely eliminated by 2035. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump
promised to completely pay off the federal debt in eight years. Instead, it has
rocketed upwards to $23 trillion, the largest of any country in the world.
Meanwhile, the plan
assumes a pace of overall economic growth that is significantly higher than
that which is predicted by most economists. The Trump budget plan projects an
economic growth rate of 3.1 percent in the final quarter of fiscal 2020 and 3.0
percent in all of 2021 and the rest of the decade. The US economy has been
growing at a quarterly average rate of approximately 2.2 percent throughout the
Trump presidency. The Congressional Budget Office projects growth rates of
between 1.6 and 1.7 percent over the next ten years.
Trump claimed he would
accelerate US economic growth to four and even five percent, but this is
impossible under capitalism, dominated by financial speculation, wage cutting,
and militarism. The plan also makes the assumption that interest rates will
remain at historic lows for another ten years.
The budget plan will
have little immediate effect, since neither the Democratic-controlled House nor
the Republican-controlled Senate would agree to such massive cuts on the eve of
the elections. Instead, the document represents an assurance by Trump to
corporate America of the general trajectory of his administration, assuming he
remains in office.
As has been the case
throughout the Trump presidency, including during the disastrously unsuccessful
attempt to remove him from office, the Democrats are mouthing opposition while
preparing to collaborate with the White House on the 2021 budget. Several
provisions are designed for the purpose of providing a path for House Democrats
to negotiate with Trump, such as the offer to carve $130 billion from Medicare
prescription drug costs by forcing a drop in prices.
Typical of the
posturing by Democrats was a statement released on Friday by the House Budget
Committee majority that said it was on “high alert” for attempts by the
administration to circumvent Congress. “If the budget is as destructive and
irresponsible as the President’s previous proposals, House Democrats will do
everything in our power to stop the cuts and policies from coming to pass,”
they said.
Donald
Trump’s Economic Record Isn’t What He Says It Is
He claims
the economy is “the best it has ever been.” A closer look at the data tells a
different story.
February 5, 2020
Donald
Trump has been on a mission this week to distract from his impeachment by
touting his administration’s economic record. First, he launched a 30-second ad
after the Super Bowl promising that “the best is yet to come.” Then, in his
State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump highlighted the “American
Comeback.” The speech was full of audacious—and characteristically
inaccurate—claims: “our economy is the best it has ever been”; the “average
unemployment rate … is lower than any administration in the history of our
country”; and “wages are rising fast.”
The
reality, however, doesn’t match Trump’s
rhetoric.
In fact, it would take much longer than a
30-second
commercial to highlight the many
ways that
the U.S. economy isn’t working for all.
Still,
the moment provides an opening for Democratic presidential candidates to
challenge the president’s record.
In
2019, for instance, the gap between the richest and poorest households in the
United States reached its highest point in more than 50 years. The number of
Americans without health insurance continues to climb following years of declines since the
passage and implementation of Obamacare. And household
debt is now in excess of $14
trillion, exceeding the pre-recession high.
Even
with low unemployment, wage growth is lagging. The most recent employment
report reported wages increasing by just 2.9 percent over the last year. With
inflation at 2.1 percent, that’s not much of a pay raise. To the
extent that wage growth has picked up in recent months, a major contributor has been increases in state and local minimum wages
that Republicans and the president opposed.
Trump’s
signature legislative accomplishment, the 2017 tax cut, has produced none of its promised benefits, including the $4,000
pay raise that he and his allies promised to American workers.
In fact,
as a result of the tax cut, 91 companies in the Fortune 500 paid no federal taxes last year. The country’s six
biggest banks saved $32 billion at the same time that they laid
off more than 1,000 employees.
The
tax cut has also failed to produce the “four, five and even six percent” economic
growth that Trump promised. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the GDP growth of
2.1 percent was lower than both the growth rate before the tax cut was passed
in 2017 and the average of Obama’s second term (2.4 percent). Instead, the tax
cuts have produced annual budget deficits of $1 trillion, which Trump has signaled may lead to cuts in Social Security and Medicare,
in addition to his ongoing efforts to erode the social safety net.
Ironically,
despite the president’s pledge to help the “forgotten men and women,”
blue-collar job growth—which includes construction, manufacturing, and
mining—remains anemic, only growing
at 0.8 percent in 2019 compared to 2 percent in Obama’s final term.
What’s
more, the ongoing trade war plunged the manufacturing sector into recession
last year, which has stunted economic growth in states like Wisconsin and
Michigan. Tensions with China produced a 24 percent increase in farm bankruptcies last year, with the most coming
from Wisconsin. The Congressional Budget Office estimated recently that Trump’s trade policies will cost
American households an average of $1,277 this year.
Worse
yet, employers reported the highest number
of
layoffs in four years. For workers who are able
to
find new jobs, data shows they earn about 10
percent
less than before. That gap is even greater
for
workers who were at the same job for three
years
or more.
But
while the economic reality under Trump is troubling for most Americans overall,
it’s even more daunting for African-American workers, who have an unemployment
rate almost twice as high as white workers. Displaced African Americans earn 13
percent less in their new jobs. Those who were employed for three or more years
earned 31 percent less in their new jobs.
Despite
the headlines, too many workers are not feeling the economic boom Trump
describes. Instead of making investments to provide Americans with the
world-class education and training needed for 21st-century jobs, the president
and the Republican Congress chose stock buybacks to benefit the wealthy and a
temporary sugar high for the economy that has now worn off.
Democrats
can and should challenge Trump on the economy in 2020. Millions of workers are
looking for good jobs and a pay raise. Policies to build an economy for all
should be central to any campaign’s message. But it’s more than just good
politics. Building an economy that works for the 90 percent instead of just the
top 10 percent is sound economic policy.
“The remarkable thing is how weak wages are, how weak the
economy is, given that as a result of the tax bill we have a $1 trillion
deficit.”
Donald Trump is ‘just wrong’ about the economy, says Nobel
Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz
President Donald Trump told business and political
leaders in Davos, Switzerland last week that the economy under his tenure has
lifted up working- and middle-class Americans. In a newly released interview,
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz sharply disagreed, saying Trump’s
characterization is “just wrong.”
“The Washington Post has kept a tab of how many lies and
misrepresentations he does a day,” Stiglitz said of Trump last Friday at the
annual World Economic Forum. “I think he outdid himself.”
In Davos last Tuesday, Trump said he has presided over a
“blue-collar boom,” citing a historically low unemployment rate and surging
wage growth among workers at the bottom of the pay scale.
“The American Dream is back — bigger, better, and stronger than
ever before,” Trump said. “No one is benefitting more than America’s middle
class.”
Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University who won the Nobel
Prize in 2001, refuted the claim, saying the failure of Trump’s economic
policies is evident in the decline in average life expectancy among Americans
over each of the past three years.
“A lot of it is what they call deaths of despair,” he says.
“Suicide, drug overdose, alcoholism — it’s not a pretty picture.”
The uptick in wage growth is a result of the economic cycle, not
Trump’s policies, Stiglitz said.
“At this point in an economic recovery, it’s been 10 years since
the great recession, labor markets get tight, unemployment gets lower, and that
at last starts having wages go up,” Stiglitz says.
“The remarkable thing is how weak wages are, how weak the
economy is, given that as a result of the tax bill we have a $1 trillion
deficit.”
As the presidential race inches closer to the general election
in November, Trump’s record on economic growth — and whether it has resulted in
broad-based gains — is likely to draw increased attention.
BLOG: THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH OCCURRED
DURING THE OBAMA-BIDEN BANKSTER REGIME
“The middle class is getting killed; the middle class is getting
crushed," former Vice President Joe Biden said in a Democratic
presidential debate last month. "Where I live, folks aren't measuring the
economy by how the Dow Jones is doing, they're measuring the economy by how
they're doing," added Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate
and former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Trump has criticized Democrats for tax and regulatory policies
that he says will make the U.S. less competitive in attracting business
investment.
“To every business looking for a place where they are free to
invest, build, thrive, innovate, and succeed, there is no better place on Earth
than the United States,” he said in Davos.
Stiglitz pointed to Trump’s threats last week of tariffs on
European cars to demonstrate that turmoil in U.S. trade relationships may
continue, despite the recent completion of U.S. trade deals in North America
and China.
“He can’t help but bully somebody,” Stiglitz said.
Max Zahn is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Find hi
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