The fact of the matter is that Trump just doesn’t care. When running for office in 2024 he emphasized there would be no cuts to Medicaid and no slashing of the safety net for middle and lower-income-Americans. But when push came to shove and tax cuts for billionaires and the wealthy were on the table, the safety net was sacrificed. Even with these, the Congressional Budget Office estimates another 3-4 trillion dollars in additional national debt in his BBB- big, beautiful bill, on top of the $36 trillion already sitting there. Trump doesn’t care because he believes his blue-collar base will follow him anywhere, no matter how he screws them economically. In his head, it’s the culture wars that really count for his supporters.
With his Big Beautiful Bill, at least10 million Americans will lose their health care coverage when they are removed from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and possibly even more. In addition, food benefits for the poor and lower middle-class will be halted, hunger and malnutrition be damned. Loss of food stamps through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program will also affect millions of people, especially children. Work requirements are necessary to get back SNAP and Medicaid benefits, but many of these recipients can’t find jobs. And the jobs that are available pay paltry wages, with a decent minimum federal wage yet to be enacted. About 11 million people are in danger of losing food assistance with the BBB, about a quarter of those now receiving benefits. About $300 billion will be cut from the SNAP program.
The cuts in SNAP and health care programs are being made to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the population. Those earning $4.3 million or more annually will be saving an estimated extra $390,000 on average next year.
A number of Republicans in the Senate and the House were against the cuts to the safety net programs but voted for them anyway because of pressure by Trump. Josh Hawley, the Republican Senator from Missouri labelled the Medicaid cuts as morally wrong. Thom Tllis of North Carolina expects a backlash from voters because of the Medicaid cuts. The Democrats voted in unison against the reductions in the safety-nets because of the problems they will cause for recipients dropped. However, Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa told her constituents not to be concerned about health insurance cuts because “we all are going to die.” Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnel, the former Senate Majority Leader, told his colleagues that voters worried about losing Medicaid will get over it.
In addition to the effect on many lower- and middle-income families, the cuts to Medicaid may herald the death knell for many rural hospitals who depend on these payments from the federal government for their patients’ care. Without the money from Medicaid, many of these hospitals may be forced to close, resulting in a health care desert in areas of the nation.
Food and health care benefits for those who can’t afford them are much more important than providing additional tax cuts to those who are already super-wealthy. It’s too bad that Trump and his buddies don’t realize the impact their cuts will have, having lost any feelings of empathy.
www.robertlevinebooks.com
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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