Originally published at: Prep Work Begins To Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich - TPM – Talking Points Memo
As the Trump II administration has taken shape over the past two weeks — in the form of haphazard nominations via Truth Social posts — and as policy proposals once cloaked in the shadows of Project 2025 make their way into the sunlight, we’re starting to get a picture of which vulnerable segments of the…
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They voted for him. They fucked around and now they will find out.
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The more you have, the more you have to lose.
I disagree that the title that this is about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Rather, this is about taking from the middle class and giving to the rich.
While the poor are being singled out and scapegoated, the fact is you can’t squeeze blood from a turnup and the poor do not have anything to take from. However, in regard to the middle class, they have more and therefore they have more to take from and that is what Trump will do.
Ronald Reagan was no different. While scapegoating the poor, Reagan mostly took from the middle class and gave to super rich.
The people who will hurt most from Trump will be those with something worth stealing from and that is not the poor but rather is mostly the White working and middle class.
Or, a quote from Paul Krugman I have used many times:
“In regard to our current politics how did we get here. Wealth elites used White grievance to gain power and then used that power at the expense of the very people who gave them that power all the time scapegoating minorities. Until the rise of Donald Trump it was possible to deny all this with a straight face.”
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I’m still shaking my head at the Annals of Mandates:
With Donald Trump now appearing to fall below the 50% threshold in the popular vote, according to [the most up to date count], it will now fall to the Democrats to speak for the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him.
I appreciate what Josh is saying, but when you are making this argument, you have already lost. The Democrats can speak all they want, but in the meantime Trump will be destroying the federal government, our standing in the world, and the lives of tens of millions of Americans and immigrants. He won’t be listening to Congress and the Courts, so why would he listen to American voters who did not vote for him?
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Remind me again how the redistribution of wealth is an unAmerican socialist/communist plot.
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We need to remember that cutting food stamps as the program is currently constituted will actually raise and not decrease the deficit.
But before getting to that, Trump and his people are going to steal everything that is not nailed down. I also predict in addition to killing NATO and forcing countries like Turkey out of its western lean and into Putin’s control, Trump will hallow out our military because Putin wants a weaker America.
But the big money is in the SS trust fund that Bush Jr. tried to raid but was unsuccessful. Republicans will go after the SS trust fund which more than for the poor is really most of the savings of the White middle class.
As for Food Stamps in particular, above all else that is an agricultural subsidy more than it is an aid program for the poor. That is the very purpose of Food Stamps is to create bigger markets for farmers. But the important thing to remember about Food Stamps, and you can look this up if you doubt me as the Government actually keeps statistics on this, is that the Food Stamp program for the last 50 years has actually brought in more revenue into the U.S. Treasury through increased economic activity then the program costs.
It is like that big lie Republicans tell about tax cuts for billionaires, that giving billionaires tax cuts will cause an increase in economic activity and bring in more money then the cuts themselves. But unlike tax cuts for billionaires where it is a big lie, in regard to Food Stamps it is and has been true for decades.
Food Stamps goes to little people who spend them on little people almost all of which is grown or made in America and the result is the economic multiplier, 1 divided by (1 - the marginal propensity to consume) results in more tax revenue then is actually spent on Food Stamps themselves. Again, if you doubt me you can look this up online.
But the point is aside from inflicting needless pain on Americans, cutting Food Stamps actually increases the deficit.
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The 2017 tax cuts caused my son and his wife to pay substantially higher taxes. They are elementary special ed teachers.
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My daughter is a pediatric nurse and her husband is a special ed teacher. Their taxes jumped as well after that move in 2017.
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If you did not vote, you have no voice. That is our system at its purest form.
If you vote for a candidate that is sure to lose, which is other than a Democrat or Republican, you are wasting what voice you have. This is different than a Parliamentary Democracy where the a small Party may win seats in a Parliament that elects the nations leader.
For those people who chose not to be heard or chose to waste their voice barking at the moon, F them. They knew or should have known the stakes and what they had to lose or not lose and they chose not raise their voice or raise their voices in any meaningful way.
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Here is what is set to expire, that pre-election the GQP claimed they wanted to extend.
Besides screwing a lot of people, what else happens if the GQP allows it expire?
How much additional revenue is raised by the expiration of the TCJA’s individual tax policies?
In May 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the expiration of the TCJA’s individual tax provision would raise government revenues by $4.6 trillion from FY2025 – 2034, about 1.3% of projected GDP.
I don’t see any great urgency on their behalf…
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Let me know when there is a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” for say hedge funders who benefit from the carried interest loophole. Or the likes of a Miriam Adelson who benefited $400 million from the Trump tax cuts.
As cited in The Washington Post article Bobby Jindel is advocating for these Medicaid reforms, so be forewarned. When he left the governorship he left the state in a financial crisis. It’s also a state that has some of the worst health metrics so the Medicaid reforms that he implemented there didn’t result in better outcomes.
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They caused me to also pay significantly higher taxes which is why in 2020 Trump lost the suburbs. That is more than a tax cut, the 2017 tax act was more a tax shift away from billionaires and unto people with some money.
There is also a significant marriage penalty in Trump’s tax shift. If you are living with a person and not legally married and you both work, you get $10,000 each or $20,000 total as a deduction for state and local taxes. If you are married and file jointly you get a total of $10,000 and if you are married filling separately you get $5,000 per filer or $10,000 total.
It is why 4 times as many people received a tax increase thanks to Trump of $3,000 or more than received a tax cut of $3,000 or more.
The problem is, like all of Ronald Reagan’s tax shift from the super rich to the working and middle class, Democrats never reversed Trump’s tax shift when in power.
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One portion of the 2017 tax shift that will expire if nothing is done is the shift itself. That is the $10,000 limitation on state and local tax deduction will expire if nothing is done resulting in a significant tax decrease for many of us.
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Donald Trump received his extravagant “welfare” as the result of an accident of birth, combined with an intergenerational familial affinity for fraud and violations of the law. He ascribes the vagaries of fortune that made him coddled, wealthy, and unaccountable to the law as products of genetics. In reality, he is a loser posing as a winner for the benefit of the gullible—who will be the very people whose lives he will make far, far worse.
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GOP is all for “more paperwork” for the poor and “less paperwork” for the rich- " He also said another $160 billion in reduced costs could come from checking Medicaid eligibility more than once per year…"
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The only good news here is that Arrington is presumably talking about 10-year savings, which means his Medicaid proposals come to about $26 billion a year. That’s not huge even if they go through with it. Medicaid may be the only big pot of money around, but even it’s nowhere near big enough to pay for their stupendous, budget-busting tax cuts for the rich.
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O/T
“Simply put, the problem–as some of you have rightly posted–is cultural. America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying. And if you look at the demographics, you also won’t be able to comfort yourself that it’s just a white thing, or a working class thing, or an education thing. It’s multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That’s what winning the popular vote means. That’s what running the table amounts to.
A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades–at best–not two-to-four year election cycles. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that.
The GOP evolved into a party of rage, lies, and revenge–and it correctly diagnosed that there was and is a large appetite for that. That’s what the country wants. At least, enough of the country wants it to ensure broad appeal and widespread electoral success. The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They’ve been speaking to a country that’s gone, like dust in the wind. “
~ ChristopherRobichaud, Kennedy School of Government
MAGA is the enemy within
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Cuts to these programs…
FULL DISCLOSURE
…will not result in cuts to your taxes.
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These assholes can never have enough money.
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