TRUMP’S UNNECESSARY CRUELTY
To
watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethqg4ZT0VA
The
theme that unites all of Trump’s initiatives so far is their unnecessary
cruelty.
1.
His new budget comes down especially hard on the poor – imposing
unprecedented cuts in low-income housing, job training, food assistance, legal
services, help to distressed rural communities, nutrition for new mothers and
their infants, funds to keep poor families warm, even “meals on wheels.”
These
cuts come at a time when more American families are in poverty than ever
before, including 1 in 5 children. So, why is Trump doing this? To pay for the
biggest hike in military spending since the 1980s – at a time when the U.S.
already spends more on its military than the next 7 biggest military budgets
put together.
2. Trump
and his enablers in the GOP are on the way to repealing the Affordable Care
Act, and
replacing it in a way that could cause 14 million Americans to lose their
health insurance next year, and 24 million by 2026.
Why
is Trump doing this? To give $600 billion in tax cuts over the decade mostly to
wealthy Americans, when the rich have accumulated more wealth than at any time
in the nation’s history.
The
plan reduces the federal budget by only $337 billion over the next ten years –
that is a small fraction of the national debt, in exchange for the largest
redistribution from the poor and middle class to the wealthy in modern history.
3.
Trump is banning Syrian refugees and slashing the total number of
refugees this year by more than half. This comes just when the world is
experiencing the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
So,
why is he doing this? Your odds of dying by a lightning strike are higher than
by an immigrant terrorist attack. No terrorist attacker inside the U.S. has
come from Syria (nor, for that matter, from any of the 6 countries in Trump’s
current travel ban.)
4.
Trump is rounding up undocumented immigrants helter-skelter –
including people who have been productive members of our society for decades,
and young people who have been here since they were toddlers.
Why
is Trump doing this? These actions come when unemployment is down, crime is
down, and we have fewer undocumented workers in the U.S. today than we did ten
years ago.
Trump
is embarking on an orgy of cruelty for absolutely no reason. This is profoundly
immoral. It is morally incumbent on all of us to stop it.
ROBERT
B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers
"Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.