The GOP Ramps Up Its Assault on the Poor

For decades the Republican Party has pursued a reverse Robin Hood agenda, namely tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations and spending cuts on programs that benefit the majority and/or seek to protect the poor, especially children from poverty and hunger.  Much of the GOP base is either too stupid to figure this out or is too blinded by GOP appeals to bigotry and prejudice and votes against its own economic best interest.  The ongoing debt ceiling hostage taking by congressional Republicans is merely a continuation of this agenda and would slash programs for the most needy - including seniors in nursing homes relying on Medicaid - while making lavish tax cuts for the super wealthy permanent.  The self-styled "party of life" cares nothing for children once they are born and instead strives to make life for millions even more cruel.  Meanwhile, this agenda that is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message is supported by morally bankrupt evangelicals.  Would that the media would stop its false equivalency and hammer home just how cruel the GOP demands are in fact.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this latest assault on the nation's less fortunate.  Here are highlights:

Here’s what must not happen: Our country’s least advantaged citizens should not be forced to pay the largest price to prevent an economic catastrophe. Making the poor poorer should never happen; it certainly shouldn’t happen on a Democratic president’s watch.

That issue is at the heart of this needless and destructive battle. House Republicans decided to hold the economy hostage to slash assistance for low-income Americans while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy.

That’s a factual statement, not a partisan complaint.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) is not only refusing to put any of the Trump-era tax cuts for the best-off and corporations on the table; he also wants to make them permanent, adding $3.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade. So much for “deficit reduction” as the central purpose of this exercise.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s desire to concentrate cuts on what is blandly called “domestic discretionary spending” would force the heaviest reductions on programs that help the least well-off, such as Head Start and assistance for food, child care and housing. Republicans mercifully say they want to protect veterans’ programs, but that only forces deeper reductions elsewhere.

A revealing example: The House appropriations bill for agriculture released last week guts the 2021 pandemic-era increase to benefits for fruits and vegetables under the Women, Infants and Children program, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reported affect “nearly 1.5 million pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding participants and roughly 3.5 million children aged 1 through 4.”

Fewer fruits and vegetables for pregnant women? From a party that says it is “pro-life”? The title of Adam Serwer’s book comes to mind: “The Cruelty Is the Point.”

Then there is the GOP’s insistence on “work requirements” for recipients of various government assistance programs. These would not help anyone get jobs but would tie up working people eligible for assistance in bureaucratic red tape.

“Despite rhetoric rooted in racist stereotypes, most people who can work do work,” said CBPP President Sharon Parrott. People turn to core government programs, she told me, “because their jobs don’t pay enough to make ends meet or they are out of work, often temporarily. If we want to help people succeed in jobs and have the freedom to thrive, we should invest in high quality job training and child care, not take away basic assistance they count on.”

This speaks to the difficulty of building majorities in the House and Senate for any accord McCarthy and Biden might reach. Because his party’s right wing will oppose anything short of its maximum demands, McCarthy cannot deliver a majority for a deal without large numbers of Democratic votes. They will be hard to get for a proposal remotely as draconian as his ultras want, one reason progressives are pushing Biden to bypass the debt ceiling by invoking the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government honor its obligations.

McCarthy also has to wonder if coming to terms with Biden would prompt a challenge to his leadership from hard-liners. He no doubt hoped that Friday’s brief Republican walkout from the talks would persuade his right flank that he’s taking a hard line.

Biden’s lieutenants and his allies in Congress insist that they are not repeating the errors of President Barack Obama’s debt ceiling strategy in 2011. They say they have already pushed Republicans back from some of their more extreme demands, forced them to make public the sweep of the cuts they originally sought, and are trying to avoid binding future Congresses to budget decisions won through extortion. And they expect to save Biden’s signature programs on clean energy and student debt.

But this sorry episode, made possible by an irrational debt ceiling law that ought to have been repealed long ago, should never have happened. The fact that Americans with the lowest incomes are political pawns in this exercise is a moral stain on our country.

Sadly, today's GOP is the party of immorality.