The Cruelty of the GOP’s Food Stamp Policy

Increasingly, the Republican Party has had to rely on "conservative" Christians as part of its core base. These are people who claim to support Christ's message yet seemingly ignore his exhortations to care for the less fortunate, including feeding the poor and hungry. These claims are exposed, in fact lies, if one looks at the policies of the political party these self-proclaimed Christians support: slashing the social safety net to give tax breaks to the wealthy.  Nowadays, the only things that matter to these people - other than foolishly thinking they will benefit with lower taxes themselves - is seeking to harm LGBT individuals, obsessing over abortion (while caring nothing for children once they are born) and demonizing non-white immigrants.  The disconnect from Christ's message could hardly be more complete. Now, Trump is about to make the GOP war on the poor even more extreme and evangelicals seemingly are cheering on his agenda.  Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times: 

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced proposed rules that would cut more than three million people off food assistance. This latest plan confirms what many have long suspected: The only thing unifying its policies on poverty is cruelty. Prior right-ring assaults on the poor at least claimed some semblance of a coherent theme. In contrast, this proposal, and earlier ones, are a grab-bag of mutually inconsistent ideas seemingly selected only to maximize harm.

When President Ronald Reagan attacked anti-poverty programs, he claimed to be limiting assistance to the poorest of the poor. He insisted he was protecting a “safety net” for the “truly needy.” To do this, he denied aid to millions of working families. Under the rules he pushed through Congress, almost any wages were enough to disqualify a family from cash assistance and Medicaid within a few months. Working families had their food assistance cut and their paperwork requirements increased.

Of course, his concern for the extremely poor went only so far: The savings from these cuts paid for his massive tax cut for the rich, not for helping the poorest families afford food or housing.

A decade later, another Republican, Newt Gingrich, the speaker of the House, carried out even deeper cuts to anti-poverty programs, contending he was addressing a failure of recipients of public benefits to work. . . . Most welfare recipients did in fact seek and find work — but they were promptly thrown off the assistance rolls when they did.

Here again, the supposed concern was more rhetorical than real: The savings from cutting off recipients without current employment did not go into supports for the working poor but rather more tax cuts for the rich.

But at least Mr. Gingrich had a story. The Trump administration does not.

Last winter, it claimed to be picking up the Gingrich “pro-work” baton when it proposed to end food assistance to almost a million people unable to find work in areas with high unemployment. Nothing in the plan would give job training, help people find work or even do community service in exchange for continued assistance while seeking paid employment.

This spring, the administration released a murky plan to lower the federal poverty line, perhaps sharply. If the administration follows through and lowers the income thresholds that federal and state agencies apply — a change that it probably lacks legal authority to do — millions, possibly tens of millions, of people will be purged from programs that base eligibility on income. Those include Medicaid, school meals, energy assistance and much more. A disproportionately large fraction of these people are members of low-wage working families.

The Trump administration’s initiatives, by contrast, are federal power grabs. Current rules allow childless workers to receive more than three months of food assistance while they seek jobs only when their state certifies that they live in areas with insufficient jobs. The administration would strip states of that power.

The one constant is helping to pay for huge, unaffordable upper-income tax cuts. Mr. Trump pushed through a $2 trillion tax cut in December 2017. This reversed years of declining federal deficits. Most of the benefits went to extremely affluent individuals and corporate shareholders, many of them foreign.

And the day after persuading the congressional leadership to increase the debt limit to accommodate those deficits, the Trump administration announced that, yet again, the burden should fall on those least able to afford it.

How one can claim to be a true Christian and remain a Republican nowadays is mind numbing.  The two are mutually exclusive.

The Republican Party War on Children

I make no apologies for my past statements that, in my view, I do not fathom how a decent and moral person person can continue to be a Republican.  And that view is without even factoring in the toxicity of Der Trumpenführer and/or the RNC's full support of Roy Moore.  If one is a true follower of Christ - and the GOP claims to be the party of "Christian values" - it is impossible not to support the feeding of the hungry, aiding the poor and/or sick, and sheltering the homeless, especially in the case of children, yet the Republican Party is engaged in an all out war on children, not to mention the elderly after Paul Ryan's announcement that in 2018 Congressional Republicans want to put Medicare. Medicaid and Social Security benefits on the chopping block in order to pay for huge tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and large corporations.  Interestingly, at a holiday social gathering tonight I talk briefly with a friend who has historically identified as a Christian and Republican, yet who now feels that he can no longer remain a Republican.  Ironically, this individual wanted to talk to me about my departure from the GOP a significant number of years ago and how he might make the transition from the GOP to the Democrats.   Meanwhile, a piece in New York Times looks at the GOP efforts to harm children.  Here are excerpts:

Would you be willing to take health care away from a thousand children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so that you could give millions of extra dollars to just one wealthy heir?

You might think that this question is silly, hypothetical and has an obvious answer. But it’s not at all hypothetical, and the answer apparently isn’t obvious. For it’s a literal description of the choice Republicans in Congress seem to be making as you read this.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, is basically a piece of Medicaid targeted on young Americans. It was introduced in 1997, with bipartisan support. Last year it covered 8.9 million kids. But its funding expired more than two months ago. Republicans keep saying they’ll restore the money, but they keep finding reasons not to do it; state governments, which administer the program, will soon have to start cutting children off.

The other day Senator Orrin Hatch, asked about the program (which he helped create), once again insisted that it will be funded — but without saying when or how (and there don’t seem to be any signs of movement on the issue). And he further declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.

And one piece of that immense tax cut is a big giveaway to inheritors of large estates. Under current law, a married couple’s estate pays no tax unless it’s worth more than $11 million, so that only a handful of estates — around 5,500, or less than 0.2 percent of the total number of deaths a year — owe any tax at all. The number of taxable estates is also, by the way, well under one one-thousandth of the number of children covered by CHIP.

But Republicans still consider this tax an unacceptable burden on the rich. The Senate bill would double the exemption to $22 million; the House bill would eliminate the estate tax entirely.

So now let’s talk dollars. CHIP covers a lot of children, but children’s health care is relatively cheap compared with care for older Americans. In fiscal 2016 the program cost only $15 billion, a tiny share of the federal budget. Meanwhile, under current law the estate tax is expected to bring in about $20 billion, more than enough to pay for CHIP.

By their actions, Republicans are showing that they consider it more important to give extra millions to one already wealthy heir than to provide health care to a thousand children. . . . There is no plausible argument to the effect that letting wealthy heirs claim their inheritance tax-free will make the economy boom.

What about the argument that estate taxes are a burden on small businesses and family farms? That’s a total, thoroughly debunked myth: Each year only around 80 — eight-zero — small businesses and farms pay any estate tax at all. And when you hear about family farms broken up to pay estate tax, remember: Nobody has ever come up with a modern example.

Then there’s the argument of Senator Chuck Grassley that we need to eliminate estate taxes to reward those who don’t spend their money on “booze or women or movies.” Yes, indeed, letting the likes of Donald Trump Jr. inherit wealth tax-free is a reward for their fathers’ austere lifestyles.

Think about it. Children who get adequate care are more likely to be healthier and more productive when they become adults, which means that they’ll earn more and pay more in taxes. They’re also less likely to become disabled and need government support. One recent study estimated that the government in fact earns a return of between 2 and 7 percent on the money it spends insuring children.

[I]t’s still hard to believe that a whole political party would balk at doing the decent thing for millions of kids while rushing to further enrich a few thousand wealthy heirs.

That is, however, exactly what’s happening. And it’s as bad, in its own way, as that same party’s embrace of a child molester because they expect him to vote for tax cuts.

Again, based on this example alone, how do decent moral people remain Republicans?  Are the sticking their heads in the sand?  Or, do they think all of these children are non-whites and, therefore, disposable trash.  The moral bankruptcy is complete. I left the years ago and now I refrain from calling myself a Christian given what the evangelical Christians and "family values" republicans have done to destroy the Christian brand.

Poll: Opposition to GOP Healthcare Bill is Rising

GOP Senate leader, the always despicable Mitch McConnell

As Senate Republicans meet in secret to draft their  "healthcare reform" bill - secrecy is admitted to be needed given how harmful the bill will be to millions of Americans and is aimed at leaving opponents with out time to educate the public on the toxicity of the bill - a new poll shows that public opposition to the GOP is rising.   I don't quite understand the mindset where passing something horrible and harmful to millions with little time for any public review is supposed to lessen the ultimate political fallout.  The details will get out either before or after a Senate vote, and those who voted to harm millions will not go un-wounded  once their constituents understand the extent of the betrayal.  A piece in Politico looks at the already rising opposition to Trumpcare.  Here are highlights:

As the GOP-led Senate prepares to take up the measure, only 35 percent of voters surveyed approve of the bill passed by the House last month. Nearly half of voters, 49 percent, disapprove of the bill. The other 16 percent don’t know or don’t have an opinion, the poll shows.

POLITICO/Morning Consult polling indicates the bill has become less popular since the House advanced it in early May. Immediately after the bill passed, slightly more voters approved of the bill, 38 percent. Opposition to the bill was lower, too, immediately after the House passed it: 44 percent.

The poll underscores the risks Republicans face in pursuing legislation for which opposition is creeping toward a majority of voters. The Senate’s so-far behind-closed-doors drafting process also complicates Republicans’ efforts to sell the proposal to their own voters — and there’s some evidence of slippage among the GOP base on the party’s Obamacare repeal bid.

Among Republican voters, 30 percent disapprove of the GOP health care bill. That is up from 15 percent of Republicans disapproving in early May.

Moreover, independent voters disapprove of the bill by a 2-to-1 margin: 26 percent approve, versus 53 percent who disapprove.

Other measures similarly show few voters are cheering for the legislation’s passage. Only 27 percent think it will make the U.S. health care system better, compared to 41 percent who think it will make the system worse. Just 17 percent think it will decrease costs for them and their families, while 46 percent think costs will increase.

And while voters haven’t heard much about the Senate’s progress, they want the GOP to work with Democrats on the final bill. Nearly two-thirds of voters, 65 percent, say they want Republicans to “compromise with Democrats to reach bipartisan reforms.” Only 18 percent want the GOP to “work only with other Republicans in Congress to achieve reforms.”

Even among GOP voters, a 54-percent majority wants the party to work across the aisle on the final product.

And Republicans are on perilous political ground, according to the poll's generic ballot test. Forty-three percent of voters say they would support the Democratic candidate for Congress in their district, compared to only 37 percent for the Republican candidate. Among voters who say their most important issue is health care, the Democratic candidate leads by 38 points, 61 percent to 23 percent.

Are giving huge tax breaks to the very wealthy that important to the GOP that depriving millions of coverage - including children and the elderly - outweighs all else?  The GOP is morally bankrupt and so are the evangelical Christians who vote Republican.

Trump Offers Little New in Economic Policy that Most Aids the Wealthy

Other than wanting to throw out trade treaties that could have a negative boomerang effect on America, Donald Trump offered little new in his much vaunted economic policy speech in Detroit yesterday.  The take away?  That Trump like so many Republicans before him is relying on his low intellect supporters to be induced by hate, racism, and xenophobia to back policies that harm them economically.  Trickle down economics have never worked and after 36 years of broken promises one would think even the Neanderthals of the GOP base would be able to figure this out, but sadly such is not the case.  Both the New York Times and the Washington Post slam Trump's proposals.  Here are highlights from the Post editorial:

Mr. Trump’s economic policy speech to the Detroit Economic Club managed to embrace the worst of traditional Republican doctrine while repudiating the best of it.

Harking back to a nonexistent period “when we were governed by an America First policy,” Mr. Trump blamed the economic collapse of Detroit, and many other untoward economic trends, on trade, specifically free-trade agreements — such as the North American Free Trade Agreement — which the postwar GOP has generally supported, along with many Democrats. Not only would Mr. Trump scrap the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim nations, he would “renegotiate” NAFTA and “walk away” if Mexico and Canada don’t do what he wants. You may or may not like NAFTA and similar deals; they create winners and losers across the $17 trillion U.S. economy. Even critics must agree that, by now, they are firmly woven into the American economic fabric — and that unraveling them would be profoundly disruptive, perhaps creating “jobs and higher wages” for some, as Mr. Trump promises, but destroying them for many, many others.

On taxes, though, Mr. Trump reverted to GOP orthodoxy, offering cuts for upper-income Americans as a growth elixir. He promised to abolish the estate tax and to reduce the current seven income tax brackets to three, with a top rate of 33 percent. The former idea would benefit a relative handful of super-wealthy families; the latter would blow a gargantuan hole in federal finances unless Mr. Trump also ended deductions and other loopholes, most of which benefit upper-income households disproportionately. Yet he promised to close only one: the “carried interest” deduction whereby Wall Street investors can have certain earnings taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than as ordinary income. It’s a good idea but would save the Treasury only about$1.8 billion per year.

Mr. Trump called for a new tax break, a deduction for child-care expenses. Though ostensibly for the benefit of hard-pressed families, the proposal will do nothing for the nearly half of American households who don’t owe federal income taxes at all.

There was, in short, little in the way of tangible benefit for the downscale Americans for whom Mr. Trump claims to speak. Possibly to draw attention away from that fact, Mr. Trump framed his proposals as a salve for such injustices as “rebuilding other countries instead of our own” and “resettl[ing] millions of refugees at taxpayer expense” while our infrastructure “fell into disrepair.” Brimming with statistics, larded with footnotes, Monday’s speech was meant to instill “message discipline” in the Trump campaign. But even that message’s most carefully scripted version is held together by smoke, mirrors and scapegoating.