Trump Vows "A Lot of Cutting"
After Midterms
Following the news
this week that under President Donald Trump, the federal deficit exploded to
$779 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, the president said Wednesday that he
would demand a five percent budget cut from each of his cabinet secretaries.
Stressing that the
administration would "continue with the tax cuts, because we have other
tax cuts planned," Trump suggested the deficit was the result of spending
on various programs at the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services,
and other government agencies.
The president's
comments echoed those of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who explicitly blamed the rising
deficit on social safety net spending on Tuesday.
The pro-Social
Security group Social Security Works took Trump's remarks as a direct attack on
the program as well as Medicare and Medicaid.
As radio host Thom
Hartmann warned Wednesday, "The billionaire fascists are coming for your
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And they’re openly bragging about
it."
The newest
threat to safety net programs comes less than a year after the Republican Party
pushed thru their $1.5 trillion tax plan, which offered an average $33,000 tax
break to each of the wealthiest Americans and just $40 to the poorest,
according to analysis by the Tax Policy Center.
Social Security Works
President Nancy Altman seized on the GOP's attacks on programs that millions of
people rely on as a call to arms for voters who care about
protecting healthcare and incomes for the most vulnerable Americans.
"The shocking
part of McConnell’s statement, and those made by other powerful Republicans, is
not the content, but the timing," Altman wrote at Common
Dreams on Wednesday.
"Right-wingers have opposed Social Security and Medicare ever since they were first created. But because these programs enjoy overwhelming support from the American people, including voters of all political affiliations, they do not normally talk about their plans for benefit cuts three weeks before an election. If this is how they are talking now, imagine how emboldened they will be if they ride out the blue wave and keep control of Congress!"
"Right-wingers have opposed Social Security and Medicare ever since they were first created. But because these programs enjoy overwhelming support from the American people, including voters of all political affiliations, they do not normally talk about their plans for benefit cuts three weeks before an election. If this is how they are talking now, imagine how emboldened they will be if they ride out the blue wave and keep control of Congress!"
In a video posted on
Twitter, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delved into the history of Social
Security, which despite strong support from Republican President Dwight D.
Eisenhower in the 1950s, has come under attack by a GOP increasingly beholden
to corporate interests in recent decades.
Eisenhower defended
the program in a letter in 1954, predicting the assault President George W.
Bush would wage on Social Security as well as Republicans like House Speaker
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and McConnell.
"Should any
political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and
eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again
in our political history," Eisenhower wrote.
"There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
"There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
During his 2016
campaign, the video notes, Trump promised voters he would not cut Social
Security benefits.
But, the narrator
says, "his party, with his backing, has spent the last two years doing
everything they can to reach onto our pockets, steal our money, and give it to
their pay masters on Wall Street. The problem is that that tiny, reactionary
splinter group now controls the entire Republican Party."
On Monday
Sanders, the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, also
released a report on just four major Republican
policies and actions which have caused the federal deficit to explode, and
outlined programs that the GOP's spending could have strengthened if not for
ballooning military spending and tax cuts for the rich and corporations.
"Instead of
spending nearly $1 trillion on the military and tax cuts for the wealthy and
large corporations, the federal government could have paid for any of the
following proposals—multiple times over for some—in Fiscal Year 2018 and still
balanced the budget," Sanders wrote.
If Americans vote with
the intention of protecting the social safety net, the report suggests, they
could help usher in a government that would be more likely to "Provide
high-quality early care and education for children from birth to
kindergarten" (estimated cost: $140 billion) and "Eliminate child
poverty by simply boosting the income of all families with children (and
children who do not live with their families) over the poverty line"
(estimated cost: $69 billion)—mere fractions of what Republicans have happily
spent in recent years on the Pentagon and tax cuts.