What Trump has been trumpeting as a “Big, Beautiful, Bill” is really a load of B.S. While it is beneficial for his billionaire buddies, it is not good for America, especially the lower middle class and poor Americans. It is also bad for the future of the nation, saddling coming generations with a mountain of debt. Trump has a glib tongue and is a master of deception, and he has conned his base and the Republican Party into believing the bill will be good for them, when the opposite is true.
The current U.S. national debt is $36.2 trillion, the highest level ever. Our GDP (gross domestic product) is about $29 trillion. Thus, our debt to GDP ratio is about 123 percent. Our nation has a higher debt level than the amount of goods it produces in a year. This places us in a very precarious financial situation. Though about 70 percent of the national debt is held by domestic institutions and citizens, 30 percent is owned by foreign entities, the largest being Japan and China. If China decided to dump all of its holdings of American debt suddenly, this could cause problems for the American financial system, though the difficulty would likely be only temporary.
However, a reasonable debt to GDP ratio is probably in the realm of 70 percent or less instead of 123 percent. We should be trying to lower the national debt, but Trump’s big beautiful bill will raise the debt by another $4 trillion according to the Congressional budget office. The easiest way to lower debt would be to increase taxes on our wealthiest citizens. Certainly, billionaires and multi-millionaires could afford to pay considerably more in taxes without a change in their lifestyle. But these are Trump’s biggest supporters and contributed money to his campaign, he does not want to have them pay more in taxes though our country needs the funds. In fact, Trump cut personnel in the Internal Revenue Service so that audits of individual tax returns of the wealthy segment of the population would be decreased. The IRS needs more personnel, not less.
Even though the increase in our national debt was a terrible move by Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, even worse is the cutting of Medicaid and the SNAP programs. This shows an unprecedented level of disregard and cruelty to a segment of our citizens. Trump did not care that most of those affected by slashing these programs were from his base, though that should not have made any difference. Those who will suffer most are impoverished and lower middle-class citizens. SNAP provides school lunches for children who can’t afford them and families who may now go hungry.
Medicaid is the health care program for impoverished and lower middle-class families who have no health insurance. Citizens in rural counties and inner cities will be most affected. Because of the Medicaid cuts, many rural hospitals may be forced to close as there will be no funding for the care of many of their patients. This will leave these counties as health deserts, with no medical care available for many citizens over vast distances. Raising taxes on the wealthy could have also kept SNAP and Medicaid intact, but neither Trump nor Congressional Republicans cared. It is unconscionable that America appears to care more about taxes on the wealthy than food and health care for the poor.
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Posted at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Beautiful Bill, Big, Medicaid, national debt, SNAP, taxes, Trump
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020