Originally published at: Wave of Income Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This story first appeared at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This fall, Americans got to see what it’s like to go without a safety net for the hungry. With the U.S. government shut down for multiple weeks and President Donald Trump refusing…
This story from TPM was shared on FB. The only comment listed at the time was, guess which States were in trouble?
Those States thought they were doing the right thing and it won’t even be close. The blame, of course, will always fall to the Dems, but that’s not the case at all.
Since FDR the Federal Government has stepped in to make sure that all Americans have access to basically the same essential services, with some glaring exceptions. We all received the benefits of the CDC, Department of Education, Transportation Department and a number of other services that made America one nation. Trump and the Heritage Foundation have a fundamentally different view of America. It is every man and woman for his or her self.
Yesterday I saw an article about States (mostly blue) working together to overcome the gutting of the CDC. Now I am reading about Income Tax cuts leaving other states vulnerable to the Trump SNAP and Medicaid crisis. There are going to be have states and have not states as America returns to pre civil war America. I wonder what returning to dirt roads in red states is going to do America. I can see the starving young children with dirty faces and ill fitting clothes in places like Missouri working in industries based on mining trash heaps right now. Where is Norman Rockwell when we need him.
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I wish I could edit this.
Full service state university systems are not long for this earth. The place that has the football team will be maintained with great fanfare.
US Higher Education is already hell ever since COVID and public universities have already shed departments and faculty and branch campuses in every state I have looked at. The finances are still not working and we are entering a prolonged dip in # of HS graduates.
Next year end will be brutal.
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Public university IT guy here of over 30 years. I’ve never seen the funding as bad as it is now and I’m in a state that supports its universities. I’m retiring at the end of the next academic year, 3-4 years earlier than planned. I don’t need to endure the uncertainty anymore. There is going to be a huge brain drain in the next few years as people like me on the cusp of retirement decide it’s finally time to go.
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It’s not unexpected that every state mentioned as in real trouble from this is a red state, odds are all the states that are facing destruction of their budgets are states where Republicans shoved through tax cuts (mainly for the wealthy). And are they going to raise taxes to cover the poor and sick and hungry? Not likely…we’ll see them cut services even further. We really may start to see actual starvation in America, on top of spreading diseases and failing governmental services.
I wonder how bad it has to get in the red states before they finally boot out the Republicans ruining their states…at this point I wouldn’t move to a red state for a job offer, and maybe not a purple one either, as Republicans are doing everything they can to tear down everything that helps people to survive and thrive, all in the service of the wealthy who couldn’t care less how many souls they crush in their hoarding of money and power.
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Thing is, even if the voters boot the GQP, the Dems won’t be given enough time to undo all the mal-- and misfeasance that put them in the spot they are in.
Anything run by GQP for the last three or four years will need ten to fix the damage.
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Which needs to be explained to voters…the Great Depression didn’t end until WW2 started up almost 10 years after FDR took office, and without that economic jolt it likely would have been a few more years of slow growth to get out of it (and of course the stock market didn’t recover its value until the 50s or 60s). Voters are going to know that things are screwed up, and that Republicans did it purposefully and will do it again if they regain power. We can hope that gives them enough incentive to stick by the Democrats for at least enough time to start a recovery, and that bit of improvement is enough to stick by them for a few years. Voters are generally mad about how things are going now, laying at the feet of Republicans will help keep control for longer.
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Most of their supporters don’t know what Republicans are actually doing (or not doing.) Their press is uniformly under the control of some absentee billionaire or other. Their is no way they hear about how bad things are for them or how much better they are for people in other states.
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I think that if democrats retake the federal government, some federal aid (especially aid that benefits richer people in states) should be conditioned on levels of state spending and progressive taxation. Giving states money that they use, in effect, to reduce taxes on millionaires rather than provide services to their citizens has not worked out so well.