Socsafenet1223
capt
socsafenet1223
CAPT 320
yikes target 118th
socialsafety320
see SNAP WIC
belated? 11/17
819, not sure i'm not neglecting
mercer wants to eliminate?
see welfare and snap WIC, school lunch
medicare
unions are part of repair the commons too
see debt hostage
see strict father/evang
===
an 12 24
Republicans are already revealing their eagerness to cut earned benefits for millions of Americans, if one House Republican is to be believed.
In a recent interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Rep. Richard McCormick (R-Ga.) said that he aims to convince his fellow lawmakers that "hard decisions" need to be made about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid if his party is to succeed in its goal of making sweeping budget cuts.
"75 percent of the budget is nondiscretionary," McCormick said, referencing the three programs that provide income and health insurance to retirees, low-income Americans and the disabled. "There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on."
READ MORE:**Lawmaker vows 'strong resistance' if Musk agency recommends Social Security or Medicare cuts**
New Republic writer Hafiz Rashid highlighted McCormick's interview to make the point that Republicans are "chomping at the bit at some of their favorite targets" in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's victory. And he noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has also mentioned the possibility of making cuts to those three programs in order to fatten the Pentagon budget, along with "the infamous conservative manifesto Project 2025."
"While McCormick pledges to talk to the Democrats about such cuts, the GOP is unlikely to get much traction with the opposing party, especially since Republicans will have a razor-thin majority in the House where a single vote or two could tank their legislative agenda.," Rashid wrote. "Even if the GOP manages to win over a couple of Democrats, any plans to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid will get pushback from powerful organizations such as the AARP. Older voters who rely on the programs also make up the base of the Republican Party, and politicians from both parties should be wary of provoking them."
Notably, McCormick didn't mention one of his party's more costly goals: Extending Trump's 2017 tax cut package that overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the rich. Politico estimated that an extension would require roughly $4.6 trillion over 10 years, which even some Republicans were worried about.
Watch the video of McCormick's comments below, or by**clicking this link.**
READ MORE:['Biggest challenge': Even Republicans are nervous about Trump's new $4.6 trillion tax cut
===
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an 6 24
it was late 2020 and the pandemic was in full swing. Ingrid Sullivan was still navigating the consequences of her divorce when she caught COVID-19 and lost her job. The mother of four needed a hand.
Sullivan applied for financial aid from the city of San Antonio and received about $5,000 over two years. She used the money to fill her gas tank and pay her car insurance. Sullivan said the funds allowed her to land a higher-paying job and move from an apartment into a house.
“I just ran with the help I had and stabilized my family, and now we are in a very stable position in life,” she said.
The city didn’t ask Sullivan for anything in return. The aid was part of San Antonio’s Two-Year Fund, a so-called guaranteed income program that gave money to low-income households with no strings attached. The pandemic relief program ran from 2020 to 2023.
Guaranteed income programs have become more popular since the pandemic as dozens of cities across the country launched pilot programs using federal COVID-19 relief funds. Whereas other welfare funds like food stamps and housing vouchers provide assistance for specific expenses, guaranteed income programs allow recipients to decide how they spend the money. Researchers have found them to be an effective way to combat poverty.
In recent years, a handful of Texas cities and counties have piloted their own guaranteed income programs for low-income households. Financed by a combination of federal, local and philanthropic funds, Austin, San Antonio and El Paso County have collectively issued about $9 million in payments to roughly 1,500 households since 2020.
But the notion is facing stiff opposition from conservatives who say these programs are a bad use of taxpayers’ money and amount to government overreach. Attorney General Ken Paxton recently sued Harris County to block its guaranteed income program, Uplift Harris. The Texas Supreme Court indefinitely paused the pilot while the case goes to trial. Financed by funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, the program would have provided almost 2,000 households in the area’s poorest neighborhoods with $500 a month for 18 months.
Proponents say the “no strings attached” aspect of guaranteed income programs makes them particularly effective. Recipients are allowed to prioritize what they want to spend the funds on, which could include costs that other welfare programs do not cover. The Urban Institute found that people who participated in Austin’s pilot program, which ran from 2022 to 2023, spent 58% of the money on rent and the rest mostly on basic needs and utilities.
Anti-poverty initiatives traditionally have specific objectives, such as increasing house ownership or providing workforce development, but guaranteed income programs enable households to decide what’s the best way for them to build wealth, said Jesús Gerena, CEO of UpTogether. UpTogether is a California-based nonprofit that plans guaranteed income funds across the country and has helped organize four in Texas so far.
“We need to stop thinking that we have to come up with an answer [for] people, but that people have the ability to [come up with answers] themselves,” Gerena said. “We've been able to demonstrate that over and over and over again.”
When evaluating the guaranteed income programs, policymakers are often concerned there is not a strong relationship between giving people funds and an increase in employment, according to Mary Bogle, a researcher at the Urban Institute who analyzed Austin’s pilot program.
Bogle instead emphasized the almost guaranteed positive effect that direct cash programs have on the children in participating families. For example, she said the federal Child Tax Credit, which acts like an annual guaranteed income payment, cut child poverty in the United States by 43% in 2021. Bogle pointed to research that shows increases in household income improve future employment opportunities for children, which helps break the cycle of welfare.
“Researchers and I often say to one another, ‘Why are we still studying this? It’s a settled case,’” she said. “It is the most evidence-based thing you can do to improve outcomes for individuals and families.”
Across the country, several states have moved to pass laws that restrict local governments from implementing guaranteed income programs. In Paxton’s suit against Harris County, the attorney general argues its guaranteed income program would give recipients money without any accountability and that there is no “reasonable expectation of a general benefit from the program.”
Paxton accused Harris County of violating a state law that says governments cannot use public money for private purposes. To qualify as a public purpose, a program must demonstrate that the funding is used to meet specific goals for the good of the public and not for the benefit of private parties, among other requirements, said Randy Erben, adjunct professor at the University Texas School of Law.
Opponents also criticize guaranteed income programs for excessively expanding government spending, a traditional conservative concern. Guaranteed income programs increase government involvement, which raises the burden on taxpayers, according to James Quintero, policy director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Quintero argued local governments should focus on providing core services like public safety and transportation infrastructure.
“Every dollar that those recipients spent was taken away from somebody else,” Quintero said. “It's not an appropriate role for government to simply be a redistributed mechanism that takes from some and gives to others for no good reason.”
Discussion in Texas over guaranteed income programs could intensify next year, as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick included the use of federal funds by local governments in his list of priorities for next year’s legislative session.
Sullivan said these kinds of programs can be effective in helping people who, like her, had a brush with poverty due to unforeseen events, not from a lack of determination.
“A lot of legislation believes you’re given a handout, but really it’s a hand up for the person that already has a plan,” Sullivan said. “I’ve always had a life plan. I didn’t plan for divorce. I’m college educated. I just was in poverty due to my circumstances.”
disclose tppf $?!]
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/10/texas-guaranteed-income-programs/.
===
AN 12 23
Iowa's Republican-led government sparked outrage late last week by declining to participate (https://hhs.iowa.gov/news-release/2023-12-22/summer-24-ebt) in a federal program that would have provided low-income residents with $40 a month in additional food assistance during the coming summer.
Created by the U.S. Congress late last year, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) for Children program (https://www.fns.usda.gov/sebt) aims to boost nutrition benefits for families with school-aged children who typically receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year. Starting in summer 2024, eligible families will receive a prepaid debit card with $40 per child for three months.
But in a press release (https://hhs.iowa.gov/news-release/2023-12-22/summer-24-ebt) issued Friday, the state's health and human services department said it had notified the Biden administration that Iowa would be opting out of Summer EBT, claiming the program doesn't sufficiently restrict the kinds of food that families can purchase.
Kim Reynolds, Iowa's Republican governor, echoed that assertion in a statement focused more on childhood obesity than food insecurity, which impacts one in 11 kids (https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/iowa) in her state.
"Federal Covid-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don't provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families," said Reynolds. "An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic."
The Iowa Hunger Coalition (IHC) noted (https://www.iowahungercoalition.org/2023/12/23/ihc-slams-gov-reynolds-decision-to-deny-iowa-kids-summer-ebt-benefits/) that because of the government's decision, 240,000 children in the state will lose out on $120 in food assistance this coming summer.
"This is an unconscionable decision," Luke Elzinga, the IHC's board chair, said in a statement. "Announcing three days before Christmas that we've deliberately chosen not to feed hungry kids? The Dickensian parallels write themselves."
Elzinga criticized the state government's suggestion that "low-income Iowans can't be trusted to make their own choices about what to feed their kids" as "incredibly insulting."
"We've somehow decided that parents know best when it comes to school curriculum but not what to feed their kids? Starvation is not a legitimate strategy to reduce childhood obesity," Elzinga said, adding that "an abundance of academic research (https://frac.org/hunger-obesity) has made clear the link between food insecurity and obesity in the United States."
Hunger is growing (https://www.commondreams.org/news/jarring-wake-up-call-hunger-surges-in-us-after-food-aid-cuts) across the U.S. as safety net expansions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic continue to unwind (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/snap-benefits-food-stamps-biden-welfare-poverty.html). Some states have moved to make crisis-era programs such as universal free school meals permanent (https://www.commondreams.org/news/minnesota-free-school-meals) while others, such as Iowa and Arkansas, have worked aggressively (https://www.commondreams.org/news/wyden-gop-medicaid-purge) to curb benefits for poor residents.
IHC said (https://www.iowahungercoalition.org/2023/12/23/ihc-slams-gov-reynolds-decision-to-deny-iowa-kids-summer-ebt-benefits/) Saturday that Iowa's food banks are currently seeing record-breaking demand and warned that the government's pledge to bolster existing state-level programs while refusing to take part in Summer EBT will exacerbate the crisis.
"Hunger is a policy choice, and this is just one more unfortunate example of that fact," said Elzinga. "Summer EBT should be a bipartisan no-brainer policy win for Iowa's kids. The Iowa Hunger Coalition will be making this an issue with the Iowa legislature in 2024. We can not and will not accept this disastrous decision by Governor Reynolds. It's deplorable that Iowa's leadership has chosen to make feeding children a political issue."
Democratic State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott told (https://www.thegazette.com/state-government/iowa-rejects-millions-in-federal-summer-food-aid-for-children/)The Gazetteon Friday that the government's rejection of Summer EBT is a "huge loss for Iowa."
"If we're talking 20-some million (dollars) coming from the federal government, I don't think the state is going to be matching that," said Trone Garriott, who works with the Des Moines Area Religious Council Food Pantry Network. "They are just going to be leaving it to the charities to make up the difference."
Economist Paul Krugman details how Republicans are still waging war on Social Security - Alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/economist-paul-krugman-republicans-are-still-waging-war-on-social-security/)
11 23
an 11 23
insisting they have to make tough cuts to government spending, some House Republicans are pushing to gut a decades-old federal program that helps feed 53% of all infants born (https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/applicant-recipient) in the United States, along with women through and up to six weeks after their pregnancies, breastfeeding women, and children up until the age of 5.
WIC, officially the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, is a program under the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The USDA notes that it is “not an entitlement program as Congress does not set aside funds to allow every eligible individual to participate in the program. WIC is a federal grant program for which Congress authorizes a specific amount of funds each year for the program.”
Despite the growth in both population and food prices, some House Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Robert+Aderholt) (R-AL), oppose increasing funding for WIC, according to Politico (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/21/food-aid-wic-funding-00128172).
“At stake: whether the government will have to begin turning away large numbers of mothers and their children from the program,” Politico reports, noting House Republicans are “pushing to pare back WIC spending this year, arguing tough cuts are needed across the government amid the nation’s mounting debt.”
Aderholt suggested putting the onus on the USDA to ask the White House for more funds, rather than appropriate funds to meet the expenses WIC knows are coming. The Alabama GOP Congressman “who chairs the House Appropriations panel on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, recently argued there’s nothing stopping USDA from requesting more funding from the Office of Management and Budget for WIC if the program runs short during the stop-gap period,” Politico reported.
READ MORE: ‘DC Gulag’: Possible Trump AG Wants to ‘Denaturalize’ and ‘Deport’ MSNBC Host (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/11/dc-gulag-possible-trump-ag-wants-to-detain-denaturalize-and-deport-msnbc-host/)
“If this becomes a problem, that’s because the administration is purposefully making it a problem for not allocating these necessary funds,” Aderholt, the chair of the House Values Action Team (https://aderholt.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-aderholt-assumes-leadership-house-values-action-team-commits) (VAT), said. But Congress, not the White House, is responsible for funding WIC (https://www.fns.usda.gov/news-item/usda-0226.23#::text=%E2%80%9CIt%27s%20up%20to%20Congress%20to,nutrition%20they%20need%20to%20thrive.%E2%80%9D), which up until now has always been bipartisan.
“Without congressional action,” Politico adds, “Minnesota WIC director Kate Franken said states will be forced to add families to wait lists for the first time in nearly 30 years.”
“If WIC funding is not adequate, and funds are cut, our families and our communities would suffer the consequences,” Franken said.
Last year, Aderholt was among many Republicans and Democrats furious over the baby formula shortage, but was also one of the 192 House Republicans who voted against legislation (https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-house-republicans-voted-against-fda-baby-formula-bill-1708036) to help the FDA address the problem, which was “triggered by a safety recall (https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/infant-formula-shortage-highlights-wics-critical-role-in-feeding-babies).”
Last week, Aderholt introduced (https://aderholt.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/chairman-aderholt-brings-labor-h-bill-house-floor) a 2024 funding bill he said cuts “almost 30% and will bring funding back to roughly 2018 Trump-era levels.”
READ MORE: Trump Lawyer Trips Over His Own Argument as Judges Appear Skeptical of Gag Order Appeal (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/11/trump-lawyer-trips-over-his-own-argument-as-judges-appear-skeptical-of-gag-order-appeal/)
The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (https://www.cbpp.org/research/budget-plans/house-appropriations-bills-for-2024-cut-a-swath-through-crucial-programs) last week noted House bills would take “away food assistance from hundreds of thousands of new parents and young children by underfunding WIC.”
“The House Agriculture bill’s WIC funding is well below the level needed to serve all eligible families who wish to participate, and would result in an estimated 600,000 new parents, toddlers, and preschoolers being turned away,” the nonprofit think tank reported. “The House bill would also cut WIC’s science-based fruit and vegetable benefit by between 58 and 71 percent (depending on the recipient’s age) for 4.7 million of the remaining participants.”
Earlier this month the President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson (https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/speaker-johnsons-short-term-funding-bill-leaves-out-needed-additional-wic-funds), noting his continuing resolution to keep the federal government open “doesn’t provide additional funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) so that postpartum participants and young children aren’t turned away from vital food assistance.”
thom an 11 23 no lnx
How the GOP became the party of tax cheats
Thom Hartmann
November 06, 2023
Last week, House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson gave his first press conference. The billionaires sure picked the right guy: his performance was flawless. Slick, slimy, and unctuous.
For example, even though every dollar the IRS spends auditing billionaires produces between $6 and $12 in added tax revenue to our government, Johnson insisted with a straight face that we need to cut over $14 billion from the IRS’ budget to “fully pay for” a package of military aid to Israel.
No reporter — as is so often the case when interviewing Republicans — was willing to point out what BS his pitch on behalf of his billionaire owners was. (Nobody wants to be banned from future press conferences or ignored during question time.)
Johnson repeated his “fiscal responsibility” mantra several times, saying that future legislation to keep the government open would similarly contain radical domestic spending cuts rather than asking the morbidly rich to pay their fair share of taxes.
Which raises the question: When and how did the GOP become the party of tax cheats?
A quick history is in order.
When Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in a president in 1953, the top income tax bracket for the morbidly rich was 92%. Eisenhower was just fine with that. He knew it discouraged wealthy people from strip-mining their businesses for every penny they could find at the expense of their employees: instead, employers paid their workers well and rolled corporate profits into R&D to develop new products. It made America the world’s leader in innovation.
In 1946, at the end of WWII, our national debt was 119% of our nation’s GDP, much like today’s 123%. Truman and Eisenhower knew how to reduce that debt: high taxes on billionaires and massive expenditures on American infrastructure like schools, hospitals, highways, and airports to stimulate the economy. In just the seven short years leading to Ike’s inauguration they’d cut our debt down to 68% of GDP.
Jack Kennedy kept those high tax brackets for morbidly rich people: on every dollar over $400,000 a year ($4 million/year in today’s money), people paid 91 cents in income taxes. And, true to form, the economy was rip-roaring along, the middle class was growing faster than anywhere else in the world, and our debt was under control at 54% of GDP.
After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson gave a tax cut for the morbidly rich in exchange for their going along with his Great Society programs including Medicare and Medicaid: he cut the top rate to 70%, although he closed so many loopholes used by the rich that it actually increased federal revenues.
Republican President Richard Nixon was fine with the 70% top bracket on the morbidly rich, too, and kept it in place throughout his presidency. By the time he left the White House in 1974, our national debt was way down to 31% of GDP and it stayed there (32%) through the four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977-1981).
And then it happened. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized — for the first time in the history of either America or any other developed country in the world — political bribery by billionaires and corporations alike.
It was a subset of Lewis Powell’s infamous Memo about how the very, very rich should rise up and seize control of American politics because they knew best how to run a country and, Powell suggested, all those pesky social programs from the New Deal and Great Society had put America on the road to communism.
Powell himself wrote the 1978 decision in First National Bank v Bellotti that legalized political bribery by giant corporations, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America.
Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981 and immediately set about remaking the GOP’s top priorities away from what was best for America and toward exclusively serving the interests of obscene wealth.
That moment in 1981 was a major turning point in modern American history for two reasons.
First, Reagan’s campaign had committed treason to win the White House, cutting a deal to give the Iranian Mullahs American weapons systems and spare parts in exchange for their holding 52 US hostages long enough to screw Jimmy Carter’s re-election chances.
In doing so, Reagan set a pattern that would become a recurring theme for the GOP: abandon American values and betray our allies if it means wealth and political power.
George W. Bush, exploiting 9/11, lied us into two unnecessary and illegal wars just to save Dick Cheney’s company and insure his own 2004 re-election. Donald Trump enthusiastically accepted help from Vladimir Putin to win the White House in 2016 and his family has since taken over $3 billion from Gulf state governments.
Second, Reagan pursued Jude Wanniski’s Two Santas political strategy with gusto. Wanniski, in 1977, had argued that when Republicans held the White House they should use tax cuts and budget-busting spending to run up the national debt as fast and high as possible, thus injecting money and stimulus to let the good times roll.
This would make people think Republicans knew how to run an economy. (Back during the Reagan presidency, I used to say, “Give me a $2 trillion credit card and I’ll show you good times, too!”)
Republicans got so good at it that today the average billionaire in America pays around 3.2% in income taxes.
When Democrats came into office, Wanniski said, Republicans in Congress should begin to squeal loudly about the national debt (that Republicans had created with their tax cuts), claiming it was a threat to the nation. This, Wanniski said, would force Democrats to “shoot Santa”: vote to gut their own social programs.
Cue MAGA Mike Johnson.
The smarmy little man was so on-message yesterday that he even claimed that people in our military had told him they thought our national debt was a bigger threat to us than Russia or China. Nothing, Johnson argued, was more important than cutting back on the IRS’ ability to audit billionaires while reducing social program spending.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, housing subsidies, Obamacare, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, the Peace Corps, the GI Bill, federal home loan programs, the National School Lunch Act, Head Start, the Family and Medical Leave Act, dozens of supports for public schools: all these programs and more that benefit average Americans were passed by Democrats over the objection of the majority of Republicans.
The sad reality is that the GOP serves only two masters: giant corporate monopolies and the morbidly rich. They’ll toss a rhetorical bone to racists, misogynists, gun freaks, homophobes, and Nazis, but that’s just to get enough votes to hold political power: their real obsession, their true North Star, is great wealth.
Some Democrats were giddy when Johnson was selected Speaker because they thought his lack of experience and his extremist views on abortion, homosexuality, and religion would alienate him from the American public.
But Johnson has proven himself up to the task, if yesterday’s first press conference is any indication. He’ll go to nearly any length to keep the IRS from collecting from his tax-cheat patrons, all while working to gut the American social safety net and giving Putin whatever he wants.
And now he’s collaborating with Republicans in the Senate to create a secret commission to slash Social Security behind closed doors.
So, get ready for the next 14 months (until the next Congress is sworn in January 2025) to be a nonstop attack on America’s poor, our middle class, and the entire spectrum of racial, gender, and religious minorities who make up the fabric of our nation. After all, somebody’s gotta pay for those massive tax cuts Reagan, Bush, and Trump gave Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk.
11 23an
ahead of President Joe Biden's goal to "win back rural voters" in 2024, according to a Thursday Politico report (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/mike-johnson-snap-crisis-00124843), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), "is a proponent of more hardline GOP efforts to overhaul the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country's largest anti-hunger program that serves 41 million low-income Americans," farmers and rural Americans.
Per Politico (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/mike-johnson-snap-crisis-00124843), Johnson has referred to SNAP, formerly called "food stamps," as "our nation's most broken and bloated welfare program."
As a result, "Many Democrats are alarmed that Johnson's rise to speaker will embolden GOP hardliners who are eager to target nutrition spending in the farm bill," the report notes.
"I can't imagine the Mike Johnson that we know would pass up the opportunity to secure as many conservative wins as possible in this farm bill," a Republican aide told Politico. "And that means serious SNAP reforms."
The news outlet notes the new speaker "is still assembling his team," and "has yet to dive into detailed planning for the next farm bill."
Politico reports, (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/mike-johnson-snap-crisis-00124843) "House Republicans are essentially guaranteed to need Democratic votes to pass the next farm bill, given the GOP's narrow majority and opposition within the House GOP over the topline spending. Even some House Republicans, like Dusty Johnson, say the task ahead is significant, given there are 'a number of hardliners who struggle to get to 'yes' on anything."
Johnson told the news outlet, "At the same time, you've got some pragmatic farm-state members who get frustrated with the political gamesmanship."
Still, "as a senior member of the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee," Politico emphasizes, Johnson's history includes supporting "proposals to roll back food aid expansions under Biden and block states from exempting some work requirements for SNAP."
READ MORE:House GOP unveils budget with trillions in cuts to medicaid, food benefits and more (https://www.alternet.org/house-gop-unveils-budget-with-trillions-in-cuts-to-medicaid-food-benefits-and-more/)
According to the report, far-right "Republicans are pressing to include similar measures in the next farm bill. Such a move would upend the fragile bipartisan coalition needed to pass the legislation — a blow to House Republicans who represent the majority of rural and farm districts, including Johnson, as well as more centrist GOP members who will be fighting for their political lives in 2024.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) told the news outlet (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/mike-johnson-snap-crisis-00124843) the speaker is "100 percent wrong on SNAP," which he believes is "one of the most impactful tools we have to fight poverty."
The Democratic lawmaker added, "Anyone who thinks the solution is more cuts is living in an alternate reality."
Politico's full report is available at this link (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/mike-johnson-snap-crisis-00124843).
prolly neglected re covid cf McConn cuts while corp liability immunity?!
aha ~ inequality
One of Washington’s wealthiest senators argues against rich paying fair share to ensure Social Security’s survival (https://www.alternet.org/economy/ron-johnson-2662274408/)
Brett Wilkins (https://www.alternet.org/author/brett_wilkins) Common Dreams (https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams)
https://www.alternet.org/economy/ron-johnson-2662274408/
6 23? big cut soc safe net
https://www.alternet.org/economy/house-gop-2661360729/
debt hostage
an 5 23
right-wing Republican members of the United States House of Representatives have drummed up an extensive list of excuses about why they oppose the deal struck by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and President Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling.
The latest example came from Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin) late Tuesday afternoon when Grothman groused that the bill is too lenient toward economically disadvantaged Americans.
"They left low-income housing untouched. I think as far as discouraging work and discouraging marriage, I think low-income housing is even a more dangerous program than, uh, than the food stamps," Grothman asserted.
READ MORE: Republican whining it’s 'almost 'impossible' for 'white guys' to get Biden appointments has bigoted past (https://www.alternet.org/republican-whining-impossible-white-guys/)
"So I'm including low-income housing in the mix of having work requirements. The amendment is drafted, just includes Section Eight housing, which is an error on my part cuz there are other low-income housings as well. But that's what we have before us," Grothman continued. "I would appreciate if you'd let that to the floor because I don't think our team fought on the low-income housing front at all."
Watch Grothman's remarks below or at this link (https://www.alternet.org/house-republican-low-income-housing).
~ naacp warning? an 623
no lnx
sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Tuesday became the object of widespread ridicule on Twitter after he posted a video warning "communists" that they should not even think of coming to visit his state.
"If you're a communist or a socialist... I would think twice if you're thinking about taking a vacation or moving to Florida," Scott said in his video.
Scott went on to state that Florida residents know communism is "not good for anybody" and then added that "we like freedom liberty, capitalism, things like that."
Many of Scott's followers were quick to pile on the senator's video.
"These people are clowns," wrote Brian Klaas, an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London. "Every aspect of modern Republican politics is geared toward performative pandering to the extremist base. The idea that a senior US politician would take the time to record a video telling 'communists' not to vacation in Florida…is just absurd."
David Simon, the creator of the acclaimed television series "The Wire," had a comical warning of his own for Scott to stay out of his hometown of Baltimore.
"I'm warning you not to set foot in Baltimore, where when we get the scent of a... submoronic demagogue, we cease all intramural violence and converge in socialist frenzy on the f---er, capture him, then sell him off in parts to pay for our crack vials and Utz crab chips," he wrote.
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, meanwhile, found it ironic that Scott railed against left-wing totalitarianism but found no time to condemn the neo-Nazis that have been marching at Disney World in recent days.
And Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun safety advocacy organization Moms Demand, pointed out how many residents of Florida benefit from the "socialism" that Scott decries.
"Florida is the second highest state in the nation with the most welfare recipients - including SNAP, TANF and Medicaid - and the second highest number of social security beneficiaries," she wrote.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Republican Operative Goons Are Trying to Pull Another ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ in Florida’s Recount - But So Far They Can’t Get Inside the Door ›
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kids
https://www.alternet.org/states-throw-thousands-off-medicaid/
https://www.alternet.org/us-families-hunger-escalates-cuts/
an common dr 5 23
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/right-wing-media-provides-safe-space-house-republicans-call-cuts-social-security
right-wing media figures and activists continue to call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even as leaders of the Republican Party deny that slashing benefits for seniors is a goal. Conservative pundits are making these demands against the backdrop of ongoing debt ceiling negotiations (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/19/debt-ceiling-limit-republican-plan-explained/) between the White House and the Republican-controlled House, perpetuating the myth (https://stephaniekelton.com/book/) that federal spending is out of control as an excuse to push austerity policies.
Conservative orthodoxy has long held (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/opinion/columnists/republicans-medicare-social-security.html) that Social Security and Medicare need to be “reformed,” a euphemism for cutting benefits or the raising eligibility age for future enrollees of either program. Nearly 90% of people over 65 were receiving Social Security checks as of the end of last year, representing about 30% of their income, according (https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf) to official figures. As of last September, more than 65 million people (https://medicareadvocacy.org/medicare-enrollment-numbers/#::text=As%20of%20September%202022%2C%2065%2C103%2C807,160%2C823%20since%20the%20last%20report.) were on Medicare. Slashing federal spending for either of those programs is politically unpopular (https://www.axios.com/2023/03/16/two-americas-index-social-security-medicare), and some conservatives have changed their messaging — if not their underlying ideology — as a result.
Former President Donald Trump, for example, recently released (https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/dueling-ads-trump-and-desantis-on-social-security-and-medicare/) an ad attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – who is expected to announce his candidacy shortly – for backing cuts to the programs. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has also promised (https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3832705-mccarthy-we-wont-touch-medicare-or-social-security/#::text=Speaker%20Kevin%20McCarthy%20%28R%2DCalif.%29%20said%20on%20Thursday,'s%20%E2%80%9CTriggered%E2%80%9D%20podcast.) not to include the programs in the massive spending reductions his party is seeking.
But old habits (https://newrepublic.com/post/170521/republicans-long-wanted-cut-medicare-social-security) die hard, and there is no shortage of recent examples of conservative media figures, activists, and politicians who have made it clear that their goal is to weaken and undermine these programs, often under the pretext of protecting them in the long term.
Townhall editor Katie Pavlich illustrated this dynamic last week on Fox News, when she referenced the national debt as a justification for cutting benefits to seniors.“The bottom line is that for either party in Washington, if they want to actually address this $32 trillion problem, someone is going to have to propose spending -- legislation that takes on reforming social security and Medicare,” Pavlich said. “Those are the things that are driving the debt." vid]
fox News anchor John Roberts showed how the Republican talking point infiltrates the network’s so-called straight news coverage.
“There’s all this talk about how to get spending under control, and I think people on both sides rationally know there is no way to get spending under control unless you start to implement reforms to things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but neither side wants to come forward unilaterally and say, ‘Here’s our plan to do it,’” Roberts said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4004132). “There needs to be cooperation, they need to reach out across the aisle and until they do that, that debt ceiling is just going to keep bumping up and bumping up and bumping up — look at where it is now, more than $31 trillion, it's stunning.”
Roberts’ argument rests on the unstated and incorrect assumption that the US budget is analogous to a household budget, a fallacy (https://www.marketplace.org/2023/02/16/why-comparing-government-and-household-spending-doesnt-quite-work/) that has been repeatedly (https://www.gendereconomy.org/stephanie-kelton-on-the-deficit-myth/) debunked.
Earlier this month, Fox News host Mark Levin called for cuts (https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/foxs-mark-levin-social-security-what-desantis-voted-and-i-would-have-voted-it-too) on his radio show, even as he denied he was doing so. “Now, this isn't about cutting them,” Levin said. “This is about changing certain variables in these programs for future generations.”
“One of the proposals that was made several years ago, and I think what DeSantis voted for, and I would have voted for it too, was to raise the retirement age to 70,to grandfather in all current beneficiaries and those who will bebeneficiaries within the next 10 years, so anybody 55 and older, because it's not gonna exist,” he continued.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk similarly advocated (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-calls-cuts-social-security-and-medicare-there-need-be-some-adjustments) for reducing benefits to seniors in the future, also positioning himself as telling a harsh but necessary truth. “Current beneficiaries, I don't think anything should be touched, but yes, there need to be some adjustments for future retirees,” Kirk said. “And if you even say that, it's like the third rail.”
The right-wing outlet The Epoch Times positively covered (https://www.theepochtimes.com/haley-promises-supporters-she-will-address-the-nations-huge-deficit_5179149.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=digitalsub) presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s calls to gut Social Security and Medicare as well, with the headline: “Haley Promises Supporters She Will Address the Nation’s Huge Deficit.”
Speaking in a barn in the legislative district where she got her political start, Nikki Haley, former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, said the nation needs to get its fiscal house in order.
…
And that work, she said, will include reforming entitlements.
“Social Security will be bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare will be bankrupt in five,” she said.
Fellow Republican presidential primary candidate Mike Pence also advocated (https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/22/mike-pence-social-security-medicare-cuts/) for reductions to Social Security and Medicare, saying “we’ve got to put them on the table in the long term.”
On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) broke from the official leadership line to consider reducing seniors’ benefits. “I believe that we have to have a discussion about raising the age of Social Security,” Gaetz said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4004226).
Right-wing site The Daily Caller was more honest than most in a story (https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/02/republicans-reform-entitlements-kevin-hern-study-committee/) from earlier this month headlined: “Despite The Establishment’s Best Efforts, Some Republicans Want To Reform Entitlements.”
National Review, which has long positioned itself as the intellectual vanguard of the conservative movement, has also been open about their desire to weaken Social Security and Medicare.
In a blog post (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/slinging-pudding-and-evading-responsibility/) pegged to Trump’s attack ad, senior writer Noah Rothman defended DeSantis on the grounds that “the longtime Republican lawmaker once evinced support for longtime Republican positions: specifically, the urgent and undeniable national imperative for reforming America’s unfunded entitlement programs before they collapse.”
In another, contributor Jack Salmon called (https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/social-security-trustees-report-throws-a-wrench-into-budget-negotiations/) for “raising the retirement age to at least 68, indexing retirement age to life expectancy, and adopting chained Consumer Price Index \CPI] as the preferred metric for measuring annual cost-of-living adjustments.” Research [shows (https://www.cbpp.org/blog/how-would-the-chained-cpi-affect-social-security-benefits) that moving to chained CPI would reduce benefits for seniors.
Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist (https://twitter.com/johnknefel/status/1550458009905758208) sympathizer and the founder of the right-wing think tank the Center for Renewing America (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern), has been at the center of the debt ceiling debate, including pushing (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/us/politics/house-republicans-deficit-budget-biden.html) for massive cuts to social welfare programs. Like McCarthy, Vought’s official line is that his organization isn’t targeting Social Security or Medicare, but diverges from the House leader in acknowledging that those programs are only off the table for the short term.
“The House Republicans are not making Social Security and Medicare a fight on this debt limit,” Vought said (https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/house-gop-reportedly-relying-christian-nationalist-and-right-wing-media-darling) on Fox News last month. He added that his organization’s budget targeted Medicaid, while also admitting that when it came to Social Security and Medicare, “We have to reform those programs over time.”
While Social Security and Medicare are universal programs that benefit seniors, and are incredibly politically durable as a result, Medicaid is a targeted anti-poverty program whose recipients conservatives are happy to demonize. There is no small irony that the faux-populist wing of the Republican Party — which includes Bannon and Vought — are doing their best to deny health care to the working class.
Vought frequently expresses his eagerness to slash Medicaid coverage by implementing work requirements. Public health experts call that a “terrible idea (https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2023/03/29/we-just-checked-and-medicaid-work-requirements-are-still-a-terrible-idea/),” but it is nonetheless one that conservatives keep proposing. “You’ve been talking about the work requirements,” Bannon said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4004229) to Vought on an April 24 edition of War Room.
Vought responded, arguing to get significant fiscal reductions in spending “you have to really begin to reform Medicaid, as I’ve proposed, and get people who are adults without children off of the Medicaid program.”
Bannon has repeatedly advocated for reducing the federal budget by cutting Medicaid. On April 18, he reiterated (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4004129) that “Medicare and Social Security are off the table,” but “you can get there” by “getting into Medicaid.” He similarly called (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-calls-massive-cuts-medicaid-and-other-federal-spending) for “massive cuts” to Medicaid earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, citing Vought’s work.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates (https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/mccarthy-medicaid-proposal-puts-millions-of-people-in-expansion-states-at-risk-of) that the House GOP plan to add work requirements to Medicaid would result in 10 million people losing their coverage.
The through-line from all of these statements are clear. Conservatives in government and right-wing media are laying the foundation to eviscerate the limited but important social programs for seniors and the working class. Their denials are paper-thin, when they’re even offered at all.
an raw 4 23
writing (https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/2023/04/25/making-arkansas-worse-again) for the Arkansas Times, Austin Bailey and Lindsey Millar trashed thestate's new "MAGA" governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, once former President Donald Trump's press secretary, and the GOP-dominated state legislature, saying that they "stomped on the poor" and disadvantaged groups without solving any real problems for their constituents.
"Supercharged by a mountain of MAGA money and an even bigger ego, Gov. Sarah Sanders called all the shots," they wrote. "The supermajority Republican legislature raced to do her bidding. Their rubber stamp on all of Sanders’ priorities (vouchers, prison expansion, tax cuts) marked a vast departure from the last administration, when Asa Hutchinson’s pro-gun, pro-life record failed to impress an increasingly insane right-wing extremist legislative branch.Where Hutchinson recoiled from drama, Sanders pursued it, eager to throw Trumpian blows of staggering cruelty if it landed her on Fox News. Her foot soldiers didn’t seem to mind Sanders’ obvious bid to get out of Arkansas and back on the national stage as soon as possible. It wouldn’t have mattered if they did. Republican lawmakers knew to expect a primary challenger to knock them out of office if they dared veer out of lockstep."
"Saying it’s the worst session ever feels trite, too flip to capture the brutality heaped on all but the wealthiest and most insulated," they continued. "Not only did lawmakers do nothing to protect Arkansans from our chart-topping gun death rates, they voted instead to protect the gun companies from us. A new law passed this session bars state entities from investing with firms that eschew the industry profiting off our homicide epidemic. Protecting children got lots of lip service, but no real action. Requiring proof of age and identity to get a social media account or view online porn, laws passed allegedly to protect kids, will be a boon for identity theft but won’t likely shield many innocent eyes. Threatening librarians with jail time if they allow young people to view or check out books about sex is not only a direct assault on free speech, but also a surefire way to maintain Arkansas’s spot as the state with the most teen pregnancies."
Through all of this, they noted, the state also rolled back child labor laws (https://www.rawstory.com/child-labor-laws-arkansas/) and refused to compromise on one of the most extreme abortion bans in the entire country — while planning to erect a "monument to the unborn (https://qz.com/arkansas-monument-unborn-children-maternal-death-rate-1850244233)" with taxpayer money.
Sanders has faced personal embarrassment throughout the session; previous reporting detailed how a job application to the state required people to describe something they admired about her (https://www.rawstory.com/sarah-sanders-asks-state-board-applicants-to-name-what-they-admire-about-her-most-while-applying-for-job/), which was quickly walked back (https://www.rawstory.com/sarah-sanders-job-application-form/) as soon as it was reported.
"Arkansas’s wealthy and its businesses are safer than ever, having easily secured tax cuts by simply pointing fingers at transgender children and woke librarians, then grabbing the cash when no one was looking," they concluded. "Most of us didn’t get much of anything beyond the insult that the schools we send our children to — schools that anchor our communities — are hotbeds of inadequacy and indoctrination that anyone with the means should flee at their first opportunity. Is this really what Arkansas voted for?"
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Sarah Sanders asks applicants to name what they admire most about her while applying for state board job › (https://www.alternet.org/sarah-sanders-asks-state-board-applicants-to-name-what-they-admire-about-her-most-while-applying-for-job-2659840397/)
Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs law gutting child labor protections for minors under 16 years old › (https://www.alternet.org/sarah-huckabee-sanders-2659557134/)
Conservative mocks Sarah Sanders’ 'deep plunge into dystopian culture wars' to rebut Biden’s 'raucous' SOTU › (https://www.alternet.org/joe-biden-speech-2659387772/)
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Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs a law that makes it easier to employ ... › (https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1162531885/arkansas-child-labor-law-under-16-years-old-sarah-huckabee-sanders)
Sarah Huckabee Sanders 1st woman elected Arkansas governor ... › (https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-donald-trump-arkansas-congress-bca3dda7f9e6132bbac04b002b8c2825)
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work requirements
https://www.alternet.org/youre-unemployable-matt-gaetz-welfare/
https://www.alternet.org/debt-ceiling-krugman/ red states hurt more
https://www.alternet.org/send/kevin-mccarthy-2659874733/
https://www.alternet.org/worst-house-speaker-in-history/
no lnx
an 4 23
barely ...Speaker Kevin McCarthy spoke at the New York Stock Exchange Monday, attempting to convince Wall Street that if the nation defaults on its debts in a few months and causes a global financial crisis, it’s all going to be President Joe Biden’s fault. That’s a tough sell since it’s been McCarthy’s GOP that has been arguing for months that a default could be managed by the Treasury Department while they flailed around unable to come up with a plan of their own.
“He’s probably trying to reassure investors and Wall Street … that Congress is capable of doing something, and we’re going to do something,” Rep. Steve Womack told The Washington Post, calling it a “test” for McCarthy. He added that the “real problem” is whether McCarthy can find 218 votes among the GOP to pass any kind of bill, much less a plan to present to the White House.
One thing McCarthy apparently wants is to make people go hungry. A centerpiece to the budget-cutting message he took to Wall Street is steep cuts to food assistance programs. That’s getting a tepid response from Republicans in the Senate (where it’s not going to pass). One GOP Senate aide scoffed “I mean, Godspeed. Get what you can. We’re going to live in reality over here.”
Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman reiterated that reality, saying it “would be difficult to pass in the Senate with 60 votes.” He’s doubtful it would even get 218 in the House GOP. “You look at the margin in the House,” he said, “It might be difficult to pass it in the House.”
McCarthy has four votes to spare, and plenty of his members have constituents among the 41 million low-income Americans who get Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program help. That includes a bunch of swing-state Republicans, including a new group of freshmen members from New York.
That’s just one aspect of the massive cuts McCarthy would have to pass to achieve the kind of spending reductions he’s talking about–cuts that he’s going to find impossible to find 218 votes for.
That’s just one reason he has no plan, as Biden was quick to point out. “Show me his budget,” Biden told reporters early Sunday morning, on his return from his trip to Ireland. Biden released his budget on March 9. McCarthy has released nothing. Not even an agreed upon outline for the cuts he’s demanding.
"I don't know what we're negotiating if I don't know what they want, what they're going to do,” Biden stressed.
That’s one reason the White House is as adamant as it is in arguing that the only option is a clean debt ceiling that is separate from budget negotiations. They can count to 218, even if McCarthy can’t. They can also point to plenty of evidence that just one side of this argument thinks that breaching the debt limit isn’t such a big deal.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, responded to the latest from McCarthy in a statement reflecting that. The House should “immediately take a default on our obligations–which would worsen the fiscal outlook–off the table.”
“House Republicans must address the debt limit; that’s their non-negotiable obligation under the Constitution,” Bates said.
House Republicans have spent more time putting together an inoperable plan for what the Treasury Department could do after a default rather than putting together any kind of budget to take to Biden to begin a real negotiating process. Taking the nation into default has actually become a thing that some Republicans think should happen. For real.
“My view is that the crisis at hand is the debt; it’s not that we might not pass the debt ceiling,” said Stephen Moore, a leading economist at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. “It’s that we can’t just stay on this path. There will be a financial train wreck.”
Meanwhile, on Wall Street, real economists’ hair is on fire. “It will be financial chaos,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, if the nation even comes close to default. “Our fiscal problems will be meaningfully worse. … Our geopolitical standing in the world will be undermined.”
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an 4 23
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is poised to propose cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which supports millions of Americans — but many of his Republican colleagues doubt he'll be successful,Politico reports.
According to The Washington Post, over the last few weeks, the "GOP has focused its attention on two anti-poverty programs: Medicaid, which enrolls the poorest families in health insurance, and food stamps" — or SNAP — "which provide grocery benefits to those in need."
The Post reports:
[The GOP's] demands largely come in the context of a brewing fight over the federal budget. Many Republicans have said that federal aid programs offer a way for policymakers toboost U.S. workforce participation [3.5%?!] while saving Washington money — a stance that infuriates Democrats, aid workers and others, who say such changes could harm vulnerable families still reeling since the coronavirus pandemic.
READ MORE: 'Cowards': GOP pushes bill targeting food aid for the poor
However, Politico reports Senate Democrats are not going for it, having "said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber, and with the help of key Senate Republicans, they have killed off a series of similar House GOP efforts over the years — including a 2018 push involving McCarthy and his current top debt limit lieutenant Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA)."
Politico notes "the early response from Senate Republicans this time around does not bode well for a different outcome in 2023.
An anonymous Republican lawmaker's aide said regarding the proposal, "I mean, Godspeed. Get what you can. We're going to live in reality over here."
Similarly, Politico adds Sen. John Boozman (R-AK), who is a lead on the Agriculture Committee the controls SNAP, said days "after the 2022 midterms that the effort 'would be difficult to pass in the Senate with 60 votes.'"
READ MORE: 'If it were Matt Gaetz': Florida Congressman floats cutting SNAP
Likewise, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) said of McCarthy's measure, "I'm sure it won't be easy" to achieve.
Politico reports:
Already, the talk of shrinking SNAP, which currently serves 41 million low-income Americans,is raising pressure on many Republicans that represent districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. Several of those members have raised internal concerns, especially about proposals from their colleagues that would add work requirements for some low-income parents who have children under 18 living at home, according to two other people involved in those conversations, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal caucus matters.
"The President has been clear that he will oppose policies that push Americans into poverty or cause them to lose health care," White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa said according to The Post. "That's why he opposes Republican proposals that would take food assistance and Medicaid away from millions of people by adding burdensome, bureaucratic requirements."
READ MORE: GOP ramps up cruel push for work requirements
Politico's full report is available at this link. The Washington Post's report is here (subscription required).
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better cps 3 23
https://www.alternet.org/ben-shapiro-free-lunches/
https://www.alternet.org/nikki-haley-slammed-medicaid-couch/
no lnx
Nikki Haley slammed for 'idiotic' claim that Medicaid and food stamp recipients are 'sitting on the couch'
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement March 10, 2023
Former Trump UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is taking heat for falsely suggesting most Americans who use Medicaid or food stamps are "siting on the couch" and not working when they could be. In reality, the majority of food stamp and Medicaid recipients are children, seniors, or those with disabilities.
"We shouldn't be paying people to sit on the couch and adding to the rolls of welfare," Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina currently running for president told Fox Corporation"s Neil Cavuto Thursday (video below), as she advocated for strong cuts in spending.
"This is going to have to be harsh," Haley insisted. "It's going to take a president that is going to call out Republicans and Democrats. I did that as governor. I’ll do it again as president."
She also insisted cuts to so-called entitlement programs must happen but targeted "kids in their 20s," saying, "those are the ones that need to go and know that things are going to be changed."
READ MORE: DeSantis Expected to Run on COVID Results by Saying 'We Were Right, They Were Wrong' – Florida Ranks Among the Worst
"It's the new ones coming in," Haley continued, explaining her plan to dramatically scale back the social safety net. "It's those in their twenties that are coming in. You're coming to them and you're saying the game has changed. We're going to do this completely differently. That's how you go and you focus on it."
"We've got to start doing things like that. But more than that, we have to look at the fact that there is a spending problem in DC and Republicans and Democrats have done this to us," she insisted. "Don't forget that when this all started, with the Republicans, they passed a $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus package 419-6 in the House and 96-0 in the Senate that expanded welfare. Now we have 90 million people on Medicaid. You've got 42 million people on food stamps. We should be taking people from welfare to work."
But Haley did not mention that the vast majority of Americans on programs like Medicaid and “food stamps” are not eligible to work. They are children (which Republicans are increasingly seeing as a source of labor), seniors, and those living with disabilities.
Haley also did not mention that 74% of Americans who are recipients of "food stamps," also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are categorized as the “working poor.”
READ MORE: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Signs Law Gutting Child Labor Protections for Minors Under 16 Years Old
Another group that is working yet struggles to eat? U.S. service members. In January the Military Times, pointing to several studies including from the Rand Corp. and the Dept. of Defense reported that about on quarter of America’s troops are food insecure.
Haley's remarks were highly-criticized.
"Just to pick one company," Helen Kennedy, a former journalist and frequent political commentator said to the former governor on Twitter, noting, "more than 14,000 people who work at @Walmart are also on food stamps because that company pays as little as possible. Walmart’s gross profit for 2022 was $143 billion. Maybe look at the big guy, not the little one."
Russell Drew, a frequent political commentator on social media blasted Haley as the "leader of the Republican Party's Grey Poupon wing."
"She has proudly succeeded Mitt Romney. She's one week away from talking about 'welfare queens in Chicago.'"
"Most non-disabled Medicaid participants of working age are, in fact, working," noted professor of politics, Dr. John Pitney, Ph.D.
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison slammed Haley: "The only thing lazy is this idiotic statement from Nikki Haley! Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. There are a lot of elders who don’t have big pensions & 401ks but receive food stamps. Medicaid expansion has provided healthcare for millions of workers."
Watch Haley's remarks below or at this link.
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/house-gop-reportedly-relying-christian-nationalist-and-right-wing-media-darling
mma 3 23
house budget overdue b/c benghazi fuckery?
right-wing media mainstay and former Trump official Russ Vought is advising a House Republican charge to drastically reduce federal aid for the working class and those in poverty, with an eye toward expanding the cuts to include universal programs — like Medicare and Social Security — in the future.
From a New York Times report (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/us/politics/house-republicans-deficit-budget-biden.html):
After decades of futile efforts to cut the enormous costs of Social Security and Medicare, Republicans have pledged not to touch the biggest entitlement programs, whose spending grows automatically and are on an unsustainable trajectory as more Americans reach retirement age. Coupled with their promise not to raise taxes, that leaves the G.O.P. to consider a slash-and-burn approach to a slew of federal programs and agencies whose budgets are controlled by Congress.
As they meet privately to develop their plan, Republicans say they are relying heavily on a budget outline developed by Russell T. Vought, the former Trump administration budget director who now leads the far-right Center for Renewing America.
Vought, a Christian nationalist (https://twitter.com/johnknefel/status/1550458009905758208), heads the right-wing Center for Renewing America (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern), a think tank closely aligned with former President Donald Trump and staffed with several officials from his administration. In addition to Vought, who served as head of the Office of Management and Budget, CRA’s staff also includes (https://americarenewing.com/about/) coup plotter (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-election.html) Jeffrey Clark, former Pentagon official Kash Patel (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-repeats-lie-trump-called-20000-troops-secure-capitol-january-6), and former Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli.
Speaking with the Times, Vought argued conservatives should attempt to dismantle targeted programs before setting their sights on larger entitlement spending. “\A] work requirement food stamp program is a lot easier to sellthan premium support,” Vought told the Times, referencing a [proposed change (https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/turning-medicare-into-a-premium-support-system-frequently-asked-questions/) that would turn Medicare into a voucher system.
In an interview on Fox News a day before the Times piece came out, Vought made it clear that the larger goal was to go after Social Security and Medicare down the line. “The House Republicans are not making Social Security and Medicare a fight on this debt limit,” Vought said.
“The budget that I put forward, that they’re looking at, uses Medicaid and other easier-to-go entitlements, mandatory programs, and discretionary spending to get to balance in 10,” Vought said, referring to his goal of balancing the budget in 10 years.
He then returned to Social Security and Medicare. “We have to reform those programs over time, but I think if you care about those programs and you're a budget cutter the most important thing is to make progress on what you can cut in the appropriations process,” Vought continued. “The bureaucracy that's aimed against your people and then to go after the social safety net that has become a benefit hammock." [fox vid]
in contrast to the conservative approach, the Biden administration has proposed (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/business/biden-budget-medicare-tax-increase.html) to increase taxes on income over $400,000 to address Medicare’s budget.
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon referenced Vought when he demanded (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-calls-massive-cuts-medicaid-and-other-federal-spending) “massive cuts” to federal programs, including Medicaid, last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Bannon regularly hosts Vought on his War Room podcast, and Vought is a common presence on Fox Business and occasionally on Fox News.. When Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and others on the far-right flank of the GOP House caucus opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) speakership bid earlier this year, they turned (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/01/12/the_post-trump_brain_trust_behind_the_mccarthy_mutiny__148718.html) to Vought for guidance. His think tank’s budget (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/center-renewing-america-has-plan-unleash-fbi-its-political-enemies) has become something of a north star for the House MAGA caucus, and he has made clear that he wants to rid the federal government of civil (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-and-christian-nationalist-russ-vought-promote-ideological-purity-tests) servants (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rep-matt-gaetz-r-fl-and-former-trump-official-russ-vought-discuss-using-new-house) he and his supporters deem insufficiently committed to their far-right agenda.
Now, as Congress and the White House prepare for what is likely to be a long and painstaking budgetary process, Vought and the House Republicans who have aligned themselves with him are looking to eviscerate what little social safety net spending still exists in the United States. From the Times:
The outline includes a 45 percent cut to foreign aid; adding work requirements for food stamp and Medicaid beneficiaries; a 43 percent cut to housing programs, including phasing out the Section 8 program that pays a portion of monthly rent costs for low-income people; cutting the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence budget by nearly half; and eliminating Obamacare expansions to Medicaid to save tens of billions of dollars.
Nearly 40 states have accepted federal funding for expansion under the Affordable Care Act, providing health care coverage for an estimated 12 million individuals living near or below the poverty line.
Despite Vought’s vicious attacks on the working class, he is often presented in mainstream and conservative media as a populist figure. Conservative Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen wrote (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/28/conservative-populism-might-finally-be-getting-intellectual-heft-it-needs/) that Vought was pushing ideas that “animate the new populist conservatism.” Bloomberg described (https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/29/trump-acolytes-craft-parallel-gop-universe-so-trumpism-lives-on/5253631001/) Vought’s think tank as one of the “organizations designed to push \Trump’s] populist agenda.” The conservative Daily Caller [described (https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/27/trump-official-wokeness-federal-budget-russell-vought-debt-ceiling/) CRA as “a right-populist group Vought helms.”
In a blog post (https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/26/how-to-lead-the-united-states-into-an-american-spring/) introducing his think tank, Vought decried, in typically pompous prose, the “decades-long plundering of the American economy by multinational corporationseager to claim the benefits of American law while disclaiming all responsibility to provide remunerative employment to American workers.”
He added that the Center for Renewing America would focus on “challenging the policy architecture that has hollowed out productive work for America’s working class and transferred the gains of the American economy to the service-sector elites.”
The reality is that Vought is selling the same basic framework of anti-poor, anti-working class policies championed by Republicans for decades. Whatever conservative orthodoxies Trumpism may have broken with, right-wing populism is an empty set of ideas. Vought has nothing to offer to address the material needs of the working class; to the contrary, he is their class enemy and antagonist.
cf alaska libtard cheaper if abused kid dies 2 23
end of pandemic boost
https://www.alternet.org/food-stamps-gop/
common dreams
jj comm dr
https://www.alternet.org/reagan-2659475294/
In 1983, just before signing legislation that cut Social Security benefits, then-President Ronald Reagan declared (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-signing-social-security-amendments-1983) that "we're entering an age when average Americans will live longer and live more productive lives."
But Reagan's assumption of ever-rising life expectancy in the U.S. turned out to be false, according to a new analysis (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/02/27/social-security-full-retirement-age-increased-by-2-years-while-life-expectancy-decreased-0-4-years/), a fact with painful consequences for those who saw their Social Security benefits pared back thanks to the 1983 law's gradual increase of the full retirement age (https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/ageincrease.html)—the age at which one is eligible for unreduced Social Security payments.
As Conor Smyth wrote (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/02/27/social-security-full-retirement-age-increased-by-2-years-while-life-expectancy-decreased-0-4-years/) Monday for the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, theSocial Security Amendments of 1983 (https://www.ssa.gov/history/1983amend.html#::text=The%20law%20made%20other%20changes,will%20be%20made%20in%20January.)hiked the full retirement age "from 65 in 2000 to 67 at the end of 2022."
"What this actually meant was not that the age at which people could retire and start drawing Social Security benefits changed—that remained at 62," Smyth explained. "Instead, by raising what's called the full retirement age (FRA) by two years, the law effectively cut benefit levels across the board, regardless of the age that any particular individual began claiming Social Security benefits. The result is that those retiring at 62 today face a 50% greater penalty for retiring before the change than they would have before 2000."
The 1983 law was an outgrowth (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v46n7/v46n7p3.pdf) of a special presidential commission headed by Alan Greenspan, a right-wing economist who would go on to serve as chair of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades.
Smyth noted that before final passage of the measure—which cleared the House and Senate with bipartisan support (https://www.ssa.gov/history/tally1983.html), including from then-Sen. Joe Biden—"a popular (https://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/IncRetAge.html#::text=The%20age%20for%20collecting%20full,benefits%20will%20remain%20age%2062) argument for raising the retirement age was that life expectancy had increased, so people should work for longer."
"The presumption was that the increase in life expectancy since Social Security's implementation would continue as the retirement age rose. But, in reality, something peculiar happened," Smyth wrote. "Over the same period during which the 1983 law forced the retirement age up from 65 to 67, life expectancy in the U.S. actuallydeclined. In 2000, U.S. life expectancy was (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/LExpMort.pdf) 76.8 years. According to data released last December, life expectancy in 2021 was (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf) 76.4 years. This was the second consecutive year of significant life expectancy decline."
"That's a drop of 0.4 years over a time span when the FRA rose by nearly two years," Smyth observed. "So not only have Americans seen their benefits cut by an increase in the FRA, they now also face a particularly morbid version of a benefit cut in the form of shorter lives."
(Image: People's Policy Project)
The new analysis comes as some congressional Republicans are openly advocating (https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-house-republican) further increases in the retirement age, with one GOP lawmaker recently declaring that people "actually want to work longer."
In a policy agenda (https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/27601/fy23_budget_final_copy.pdf) released last year, theHouse Republican Study Committee (RSC) echoed Reagan-era arguments in favor of raising the full retirement age to 70—a change that would cut Social Security benefits (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/10/26/what-does-it-mean-to-increase-the-social-security-retirement-age/) across the board at a time when many retirees are struggling (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/26/as-poverty-among-elders-rises-resources-these-can-help-struggling-seniors.html) to afford basic necessities.
The RSC agenda states that Republican legislation known as the Social Security Reform Act (https://www.ncpssm.org/documents/social-security-policy-papers/social-security-reform-act-of-2016/) would "continue the gradual increase of the normal retirement age that current law has set in motion at a rate of three months per year until it is increased by three years for those reaching age 62 in 2040, 18 years from now."
"This adjustment," the document claims, "would begin to realign the Social Security full retirement age to account for increases in life expectancy since the program's creation."
President Biden and congressional Democrats have pledged to reject (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/10/21/i-will-not-yield-biden-vows-fight-any-gop-attack-social-security-medicare) any proposed cuts to Social Security, which Republicans have threatened to pursue in exchange for a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
In addition to urging Biden and Democratic lawmakers to stand firm against Social Security cuts, advocates are calling on the president to embrace (https://www.commondreams.org/news/expand-social-security) a Social Security expansion plan such as the one recently proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/bernie-sanders) of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/Elizabeth-Warren) of Massachusetts, which would fund benefit increases by raising the payroll tax cap (https://cepr.net/ss-payroll-tax-2022/) so that wealthier Americans contribute a more equal share to the program.
"President Biden campaigned (https://joebiden.com/older-americans/#) on a promise to expand Social Security's modest benefits, while dedicating more revenue to it. Most Democratic senators (https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/sherrod-brown-leads-resolution-to-commit-to-protect-expand-social-security-benefits-in-the-face-of-republican-attacks) and members of the House (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5723/cosponsors) support that as well. Yet the mainstream media fails to take those proposals seriously," Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, wrote (https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/expanding-social-security-biden-democrats) in an op-ed for Common Dreams last week.
"If the Biden administration championed an expansion plan, unveiled at a White House event with major stakeholders in attendance," Altman added, "that could not be ignored."
an 2 23 safe net BS ~
https://www.alternet.org/paul-krugman-tears-down-arguments/
rubber glue?
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/right-wing-media-falsely-equate-gop-anti-entitlement-proposals-democratic-reform
an 2 23
food aid for poor families, student debt relief and more: GOP previews new austerity targets (https://www.alternet.org/economy/gop-austerity/)
Jake Johnson (https://www.alternet.org/author/jake-johnson) Common Dreams (https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams)
Republicans on the House Budget Committee offered a preview Wednesday of the programs they're looking to cut or overhaul as part of any agreement to lift the debt ceiling...
an 2 23
During his passionate and very focused 2023 State of the Union address (https://www.alternet.org/president-joe-biden-2023-sotu/) on Tuesday night, February 7, President Joe Biden slammed Republicans for their efforts to "sunset" Social Security and Medicare (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/republicans-angry-joe-biden-rick-scott-social-security-plan.html). Biden was referring specifically to a proposal by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) (https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/rick-scott-medicare-florida-biden/index.html), who has called for dramatic changes to the way in which those programs are funded. Instead of perpetual funding, Scott has called for Social Security and Medicare to "sunset" in five years.
The Florida senator’s exact words (https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3849304-scott-doubles-down-on-sunsetting-all-federal-programs-after-bidens-jab/) were: "In my plan, I suggested the following: All federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."
But in an article published by Slate on February 9 (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss), journalist Mark Joseph Stern emphasizes that Republicans have a tool other than Congress for attacking Social Security and Medicare: the federal courts.
READ MORE: 'Wants to steal your money': Critics warn Ron Johnson thinks Rick Scott’s Social Security plan is 'not cruel enough' (https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/rick-scott-ron-johnson)
Stern explains (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss), “Recently, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals crafted a theory that would empower courts to strike down mandatory spending on federal programs, compelling Congress to either reappropriate the money or let the programs die. This radical and anti-democratic reading of the Constitution would threaten Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment benefits, child nutrition assistance, and so much more. Democrats and Republicans would be foolish to ignore the rebellion against federal spending that’s brewing in the 5th Circuit."
The Slate reporter notes (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss) that the "conservative assault on entitlement programs" came up during "litigation against" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency created in 2010 during President Barack Obama’s first term. Judge Cory Wilson and two other Donald Trump-appointed federal judges, Stern points out, "revoked the CFPB’s ability to issue or enforce any regulations."
"You might wonder: What does this skirmish over a small financial agency have to do with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual entitlement spending?" Stern argues (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss). "The answer: everything. In her concurrence,(Judge Edith) Jonestook pains to clarify that her reasoning was notlimited to the CFPB. Jones announced that all “appropriations to the executive must be temporally bound.’
Seven 5th Circuit judges, according to the journalist (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss) "have now endorsed the notion that courts must strike down appropriations that allow ‘perpetual funding’ of government agencies or programs."
READ MORE:'Why put seniors through that?' Chuck Todd grills Rick Scott over potential Social Security cuts (https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/why-put-seniors-through-that)
"If their view becomes the law of the land," Stern warns (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss), "it will empower courts to abolish trillions of dollars in entitlement spending. Why? Because today two-thirds of annual federal spending is 'mandatory' — including some of our nation’s most beloved social safety net programs…. Elected Republicans may have backed away from slashing Social Security and Medicare, likely because it would be incredibly unpopular. But the firebrands they put on the bench are entirely unaccountable to the voters, and their campaign to write Scott’s ideas into the Constitution cannot be stopped by any election."
READ MORE: The GOP is coming for your Social Security and Medicare (https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/gop-coming-social-security-medicare/)
Read Mark Joseph Stern’s full Slate article at this link (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/social-security-medicare-cuts-republican-judges.html?via=rss).
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-defends-republican-sen-rick-scotts-plan-would-sunset-medicare-and-social
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/abcs-jonathan-karl-rewrites-republicans-long-history-targeting-social-security
biden cut ss not all, not even maj? mtg liar but
https://www.alternet.org/proof-republicans-social-security-medicare/ (https://www.alternet.org/proof-republicans-social-security-medicare/)
stand up for seniors and they did; preempted hostage?
see rick scott plan, ron johnson 5 yr sunset? raise age to 70?
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/fox-lying-about-gop-plans-cut-social-security-and-medicare
medicare death panel ? debt hostage
https://www.alternet.org/manchin-gop/
an 2 23 edit bd
The Iowa Republican party is proposingdraconian new restrictions (https://www.axios.com/local/des-moines/2023/01/19/iowa-republicans-snap-restrictions-medicaid-program) on what food can be purchased with the state’s food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
This attack on the poor at the state level is coming at the same time as the national GOP has successfullyblocked the continuation of the Child Tax Credit (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/17/congress-just-passed-858-billion-military-budget-gop-blocking-12-billion-fight-child), a program which substantially, demonstrably reduced child poverty.
The GOP’s priorities are clear. They don’t want to reduce poverty. They want to police, control and torment the poor. The party that constantly touts liberty doesn’t want liberty for all. They want liberty for the powerful to impose their will on the most vulnerable.
READ MORE: 'Everyone in the territory is disenfranchised': Washington DC should replace Iowa as first presidential nominating contest (https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/washington-dc-replace-iowa-caucus)
Republican ire
SNAP is a crucial safety net and the country’s most effective anti-hunger program. In 2021, itensured that 41 million Americans (https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap) — 12 percent of the population — could afford an adequate diet every month.
SNAP also provides valuable emergency economic stability. SNAP enrollment increases in downturns, putting money into the economy to combat recession and boost recovery.
Despite its importance, or because of it, SNAP has long been a target of Republican ire.
READ MORE: Mike Pence teases a presidential run in Iowa stump speech for Republican midterm candidates (https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/mike-pence-teases-presidential-run)
Matthew Gritter’s 2017 monographUndeserving: SNAP Reform and Conceptions of the Deserving Poor (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498566322/Undeserving-SNAP-Reform-and-Conceptions-of-the-Deserving-Poor) chronicles how politicians have moved to regulate food stamps in recent decades. They’ve tried to put limits on what foods could be purchased and to prevent people without disabilities or dependents from getting aid.
They’ve also pushed drug testing — an ideaintroduced (https://www.academia.edu/24923711/Reforming_SNAP_Punitive_Policies_Moral_Failings_and_the_Creation_of_Social_Policy) by former KKK leader and Louisiana Senator David Duke, and instituted in states like Florida and Utah.
Gritter concludes in an earlier paper that the goal of these interventions appears to be to replace “a safety net of last resort” with “a costly method to impose punitive measures on the poor.”
“Evidence suggests that reforms will reduce enrollment without changing the circumstances that led people to seek assistance,” he says.
Iowa is the latest attempt to target SNAP.
Canned tuna and salmon
The new bill,House File 3 (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=HF3), would putharsh limits (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/20/snap-cuts-iowa-republicans-sliced-bread/11090446002/) on what low-income families could purchase in Iowa when receiving federal SNAP food stamp funds for healthy food options.
It wouldrestrict purchases to those covered by the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program (https://idph.iowa.gov/Portals/1/userfiles/184/235_20%20Iowa%20WIC%20Approved%20Foods%20List%20New%20Format%20%28KK%207_1_2022%29.pdf), which uses federal funds for food assistance to pregnant people and new parents.
According to theIowa Hunger Coalition (https://www.iowahungercoalition.org/2023/01/13/the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-snap-bill/), “this bill would restrict SNAP participants’ ability to make their own food choices, take food away from Iowans, and increase hunger and food insecurity in our state.”
Families under House File 3 could no longer buy white bread, American cheese, coffee, snack foods, canned fruit and vegetables, bottled water, crackers and more.
They also couldn’t buy any meat except canned tuna and salmon. This despite the fact that meat, poultry and seafood is thetop expenditure category for SNAP recipients (https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPFoodsTypicallyPurchased-Summary.pdf), accounting for 19 percent of money spent on food.
The Iowa GOP also wants a limit of $2,750 on household assets for receiving SNAP benefits; the cap is raised to $4,250 in assets if one family member is over 59 or is disabled. Houses and one vehicle would be excluded. Children’s savings accounts would not.
These low caps mean that people could not save for emergencies, because doing so would mean they would lose SNAP benefits. Nor could they own a second vehicle — a necessity for getting to work in many rural areas.
Historic low
The assault on SNAP is ugly because we have just conducted a sweeping experiment demonstrating that no-strings assistance to the poor is wildly successful at lifting children out of poverty with virtually no downsides.
The expanded Child Tax Creditinstituted in 2021 (https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/year-end-tax-policy-priority-expand-the-child-tax-credit-for-the-19-million) provided monthly cash payments to low-income families with children. It closed a loophole that prevented the poorest families from receiving assistance, and increased payments for everyone.
The result? Child poverty dropped to a historic low of 5.2 percent.
Lawmakers allowed the expanded CTC to expire.
Inevitably, child poverty rateswent back up (https://www.epi.org/blog/child-tax-credit-expansions-were-instrumental-in-reducing-poverty-to-historic-lows-in-2021/).
Lawmakers refused to renew the expanded CTC in part because, mirroring attitudes towards SNAP, they believed that the people receiving the money were not deserving.
West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin saidhe was worried parents would use benefits to buy drugs (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/manchin-privately-raised-concerns-parents-would-use-child-tax-credit-n1286321). He also wanted to institute work requirements for recipients.
But increasing restrictions prevents the neediest people from receiving benefits. It also mayprevent people from working.
A study of those in line to receive CTC funds found that recipientsbelieved (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/the-child-tax-credit-encourages-parents-to-work-study-finds.html) the additional money would allow them to pay for childcare and increase their work hours.
Sure enough, in studies of the program conducted after it expired, there wasno evidence (https://source.wustl.edu/2022/02/expanded-child-tax-credits-did-not-reduce-employment-study-finds/) that CTC payments reduced workforce participation.
Undeserving
We know that SNAP is effective at reducing hunger. We know that simply giving people money, without conditions, is an incredibly effective means of pulling children out of poverty.
But conservatives don’t care. That’s because they’re not actually concerned with helping the poor.
They are concerned with policing them.
Conservatives want a poverty policy that is focused onpreventing people from accessing benefits. The goal is to punish the undeserving. And all poor people are assumed to be undeserving.
The success of the CTC shows that poverty and hunger are not intractable problems. They are deliberate policy choices.
The wealthy and powerful impose misery on the poor because they believe desperate people are more tractable and less able to organize.
Or perhaps they attack the poor simply because they don’t like the poor and believe they should suffer.
In any case, the expiration of the CTC, and the Iowa GOP’s assault on the SNAP program, shows that neither the pandemic nor the 2022 midterms have changed Republican commitments. GOP politicians like to cosplay as champions of the working class.
But the truth is they hold people of modest means in contempt and relish the chance to take food out of their mouths.
READ MORE: 'This is on you': NRA-backed Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst blasted following mass shooting at Iowa church (https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/chuck-grassley-joni-ernst-blasted)
https://www.alternet.org/union-workers-defense-social-security/
A House GOP proposal to repeal all federal income taxes—including levies on corporations and the rich—and replace them with a whopping 30% national sales tax is drawing increasingly vocal backlash from economists, tax policy experts, and Democratic lawmakers who say the plan is yet another Republican ploy to reward the wealthy at everyone else's expense
Unveiled earlier this month (https://buddycarter.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=10824) by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), the Fair Tax Act is hardly a novel piece of legislation. As Steve Wamhoff of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted in a recent blog post (https://itep.org/fair-tax-plan-would-abolish-irs-shift-federal-taxes-from-wealthy/), the bill has its origins in a proposal "initially pitched by an organization created by the Church of Scientology during its dispute with the IRS over whether it constituted a church and was thus tax-exempt."
"The Church of Scientology's only goal in the matter was to eliminate the agency causing it trouble, and lost interest once the IRS threw in the towel and allowed it to present itself as a church," Wamhoff explained. "But by then several politicians had bought into the idea and introduced it as legislation, which has been reintroduced in each Congress since as the Fair Tax."
Carter's legislation, which currently has nearly two dozen House GOP co-sponsors (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25/cosponsors?r=18&s=1), would abolish the IRS—a major gift to wealthy tax cheats—and eliminate the payroll taxes that finance Medicare and Social Security. The bill would also nix the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and other taxes, establishing in their place a sales tax of 30% for calendar year 2023.
"The GOP's so-called 'Fair Tax' proposal is one of the most regressive proposals in a generation, imposing a 30% federal sales tax on everything Americans buy from gas to food," said (https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1617316939491147776) former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "There's nothing 'fair' about it. It would punish the poor and middle class while helping the rich."
In an attempt to offset the inherent regressivity of the sales tax, Carter's bill would send most U.S. households a monthly "prebate" to help families cover the costs of basic necessities—effectively replacing the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and other existing tax benefits that the measure would eliminate.
But Wamhoff argued the prebates would not be "nearly enough to offset the financial hit most Americans would face from the new national sales tax."
"Back in 2004, ITEP estimated that if the Fair Tax was enacted and the national sales tax rate was set at 45%, the poorest 80% of Americans would face net tax hikes from the proposal while most of those among the richest 20% would enjoy net tax cuts," Wamhoff wrote. "ITEP plans to re-estimate (https://itep.org/the-effects-of-replacing-most-federal-taxes-with-a-national-sales-tax/) the proposal because a great deal has changed since 2004."
In a detailed
(https://youtu.be/N7FCxbSPvaw) of the "Fair Tax" plan, Matt Bruenig of thePeople's Policy Project
(https://youtu.be/N7FCxbSPvaw?t=1587) that the poorest 20% of the U.S. public would pay roughly 70% of their income in taxes as a result of the bill's levy on consumption. [vid]
Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden have wasted no time seizing on the tax proposal as further evidence of the Republican Party's commitment to delivering huge windfalls to the rich.
"The GOP wants to scrap the income tax and replace it with a 30% sales tax," tweeted (https://twitter.com/RepJayapal/status/1618300289919946758) Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "In WA State, where we have no income tax and rely on sales and excise taxes, the poorest families spend 17% of their income on taxes. The wealthiest spend 3%. This effort is a tax cut for the rich, period."
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) quipped (https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1618343824534966272) on Wednesday that "it really must be Opposite Day if Republicans are claiming that a national 30% sales tax is 'fair.'"
"In what world is it fair to slam working families with huge tax increases, while giving tax breaks to the mega-rich?" Merkley asked.
On Thursday afternoon, Biden is expected to attack the GOP tax proposal as well as the Republican push to cut Social Security and Medicare in a speech at a steamfitters union hall in Springfield, Virginia.
"The president will outline the biggest threat to our economic progress: House Republicans' MAGA economic plan," an unnamed White House official told (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-attack-house-republicans-economic-speech-2023-01-26/)Reuters ahead of the address.
With Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House, the Fair Tax Act has no chance of becoming law, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) only agreed to allow hearings on the legislation as part of the speakership deal he struck with far-right GOP holdouts.
But progressives argued the proposal offers a telling glimpse into the Republican Party's extreme economic priorities at a time of skyrocketing inequality (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/21/fueling-inequality-earnings-top-01-us-have-soared-465-1979-analysis), large-scale corporate tax avoidance (https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporations-trump-tax-law), and economic hardship (https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/the-nation-has-made-progress-against-poverty-but-policy-advances) for poor and middle-class households.
"MAGA extremists are testing the waters to see how far they can go in their backwards economic agenda written by and for wealthy special interests—starting with a staggering 30% tax hike on the middle class with a national sales tax that would immediately make necessities unaffordable while letting greedy corporations off scot-free from any tax responsibility," Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.US, said in a statement Thursday.
“That's only the beginning," Zelnick continued. “A growing chorus in the Republican House caucus is scheming to sabotage the economy and the U.S. government's full faith and credit unless they get deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits that keep millions of Americans out of poverty and in better health."
"When MAGA extremists openly threaten to push the economy off the cliff unless they can further enrich billionaires and big corporations at the expense of everyone else," she added, "believe them."
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A columnist at The Palm Beach Post highlighted what he believes is the “real problem facing Floridians,” (https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/01/20/fixing-social-security-would-send-older-floridians-to-work-or-poverty/69815994007/) arguing the most pressing issue in the state is "not trans swimmers, unvarnished Black history or diversity training at your job," but the right's ongoing effort to gut Social Security.
According to Frank Cerabino’s column, Florida relies on social security payments to its residents more than any other state. He reported that more than 1 million residents look to the program to keep "from living below the poverty line."
But even with that knowledge, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has his sights set on eventually cutting Social Security payments as he claims the program is "going bankrupt."
READ MORE:Advocates say 'hell no' as Manchin pitches social security deal with GOP (https://www.alternet.org/joe-manchin-2659291095/)
Cerabino counters Scott's assertion with a statement from the Social Security Administration.
“After the projected trust fund reserve depletion in 2034, continuing income would be sufficient to pay 78 percent of program cost, declining to 74 percent for 2095,” the administration confirmed.
Scott's ideas around the program approaching bankruptcy are outlined in his "Rescue America" plan, which Cerabino asserted could "gut" Medicare and Social Security in five years (https://rescueamerica.com/12-point-plan/).
As of now, Floridians can receive Social Security payments if they're at least 62 years old, and "as late as 70." But Scott's fellow GOP lawmakers are considering raising the "retirement age" — or "the point that the monthly payments are paid at 100 percent of the primary insurance amount" — from 67 to 70.
READ MORE:Senator Raphael Warnock's re-election is a victory for Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/raphael-warnock-victory-social-security/)
Matt Bruenig with The People’s Policy Project explained that "there are really 96 retirement ages in Social Security, one for each month between the ages of 62 to 70." Further, "the earlier you take your benefit, the less you get; the more you wait, the higher the monthly payment," Cerabino reported.
"A proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 is just a proposal to cut monthly benefits by around 23 percent at all 96 retirement ages," Bruenig said.
The AARP Policy Institute studied the number (https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/01/20/fixing-social-security-would-send-older-floridians-to-work-or-poverty/69815994007/) of people who use Social Security at age 62 versus the number of “later claimers,” and found that “early takers have less education and are more likely to live in rural areas and less likely to have IRAs or other defined-contribution plans.” They also are prone to live with a “work-limiting health condition.”
As a result, Cerabino reports that cutting their Social Security willresult in poverty (https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/01/20/fixing-social-security-would-send-older-floridians-to-work-or-poverty/69815994007/)for many.
READ MORE:House Republican claims people 'want to work longer' to justify attack on Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/Bank/rick-allen/)
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said (https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/columns/2023/01/20/fixing-social-security-would-send-older-floridians-to-work-or-poverty/69815994007/), “Without Social Security benefits, 37.8 percent of older adults would have incomes below the official poverty line, all else being equal. With Social Security benefits, only 9 percent do.”
Research done by the center highlighted that over 1.3 million Floridians, or 6 percent of Florida's population, aged 65 and older can live above the poverty line with the help of Social Security.
Cerabino concludes his analysis by once again drawing attention to the issues Florida lawmakers are focusing on, such as "peril from asylum seekers in Texas, drag queen story times or felon voters." Perhaps, the sunshine state's lawmakers and those voting for them should instead turn their attention to the stealth "retirement" of Social Security.
READ MORE: Paul Krugman: House Republicans will risk a 'financial crisis' to 'slash Social Security and Medicare' (https://www.alternet.org/debt-ceiling-2659212146/)
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:{:{republican Rep. Rick Allen of Georgia suggested last week that he would support raising the Social Security retirement age—a policy change that would slash benefits (https://www.cbpp.org/blog/raising-social-securitys-retirement-age-cuts-benefits-for-all-retirees) across the board—because people have approached him and said they "actually want to work longer."}:
}:
Confronted by an advocate in the Capitol Building and asked how the GOP plans to cut Social Security, the congressman responded (https://americanindependent.com/house-representatives-georgia-rick-allen-social-security-budget/), "We're not going to cut Social Security."
But seconds later, Allen contradicted himself by expressing support for raising the retirement age, saying the move would "solve every one of these problems"—not specifying what the "problems" are from his perspective.
Watch[vid]
allen is a member of the Republican Study Committee, a House GOP panel that released a policy agenda (https://roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/documents/27601/fy23_budget_final_copy.pdf) last year calling for gradually raising the "full retirement age (https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-01885)" from 67 to 70, partially privatizing the New Deal program, and mean-testing benefits.
As Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, has explained (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/10/26/what-does-it-mean-to-increase-the-social-security-retirement-age/), raising the Social Security retirement age is "just a straightforward benefit reduction being expressed in an opaque way."
"Social Security does not have one retirement age. It has 96 retirement ages, one for each month between age 62 and 70," Bruenig wrote in October. "What people call the 'full retirement age' (FRA) is just a placeholder in a formula that determines the benefit level at all 96 retirement ages."
"When someone proposes increasing the retirement age to 68," he continued, "all they are really proposing is to cut monthly Social Security benefits by around 7% at all 96 retirement ages. A proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 is just a proposal to cut monthly benefits by around 23% at all 96 retirement ages."
House Republicans have repeatedly signaled in recent months that they will exploit every point of leverage they have—including a fast-approaching showdown over the debt ceiling (https://www.commondreams.org/news/yellen-debt-limit-republicans-economy)—to pursue long-sought cuts to Social Security under the guise of "saving" the program from a non-existent financial crisis (https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2022/06/02/2022-trustees-report-shows-protecting-and-expanding-social-security-fully).
During a House Republican conference meeting last week, a slide presentation (https://twitter.com/AnnieGrayerCNN/status/1612834961454936064) indicated that the GOP intends to use its narrow majority in the lower chamber to push for "reforms" to "mandatory spending programs"—a category that includes Social Security and Medicare.
"Republicans want you to work until you die," the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works tweeted (https://twitter.com/SSWorks/status/1614779854905294848) Sunday. "Shameful."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill last week that "America's seniors cannot afford benefit cuts, including raising the eligibility ages for future Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries."
"Of course, the public is not demanding that Social Security and Medicare be cut. Quite the opposite: both programs remain overwhelmingly popular. A large majority (https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.filesforprogress.org%2Fdatasets%2F2022%2F7%2Fdfp_june22_ss_crosstabs.pdf&data=05%7C01%7CGottliebw%40NCPSSM.org%7C1332071e53404feba13d08daf28a30cd%7C23387965930541e0a7105455ce34a965%7C0%7C0%7C638088972586406646%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=B76LrgyDtOQFuwRaNn80G7%2FiTHTK1TDX%2BtENGFzXdMI%3D&reserved=0) of voters (83 percent) across party lines say they want to see Social Security expanded, not slashed, with the wealthy contributing their fair share (https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/595260-make-this-the-last-year-that-millionaires-stop-paying-into/) in payroll taxes," Richtman continued. "Nevertheless, McCarthy has empowered a handful of ultra-MAGA members to dictate policy for the new House majority."
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Over the years, one of the GOP’s favorite economic talking points has been that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” The argument is that when the wealthy are given tax cuts, they create new jobs and stimulate growth — and the growth makes up for a decrease in tax revenue. That argument was used when Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 during Donald Trump’s presidency.
But Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell, in her recent column, argues that some (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/12/gop-tax-cuts-rules-package/)House Republicans have unintentionally “admitted” that “tax cuts don’t pay for themselves.”
“The House rules package recently passed by the newly GOP-controlled House included some notable, occasionally troubling things,” Rampell explains. “For example, one set of measures would kneecap congressional ethics probes. Another provision would make it harder to swiftly raise the debt ceiling. But also tucked into the rules package, and attracting somewhat less attention, was a change to how lawmakers treat changes to tax law.”
READ MORE: GOP planning 'catastrophic default' if Democrats refuse to cut Social Security and Medicare (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/gop-plans-catastrophic-default-democrats)
Rampell continues, “Specifically, they’ve rigged the system so that tax cuts will be much easier to pass, and tax rate increases harder to pass. On the other hand, investments in the poor and various other kinds of spending increases — on so-called mandatory programs, such as Medicare or food stamps— would be more challenging to get through.”
House Republicans, according to Rampell, have found “ways to stack the deck against raising taxes.”
“Under the new rules package,” Rampell observes, “the budgetary requirements are more one-sided — in favor of tax cuts. Going forward, tax cuts do not need to be offset with any sort of savings elsewhere in the budget. They can add trillions to the debt. No problem.But this is not true of spending programs. Spending program increases still have to be paid for.”
Rampell continues, “Not only that, but the savings to offset expansions of mandatory programs have to come from cuts to other spending programs. They cannot be offset by tax revenue increases. In practical terms: An expansion of food stamps can’t be paid for by raising taxes on the rich — only by cutting, say, Medicaid or disability benefits. So basically, any attempt to provide more support for poor or middle-income people is likely to come from other programs that help those same group. A separate portion of the House’s rules package says that any increase in tax rates would require a three-fifths vote rather than a simple majority, as in years past.”
READ MORE:Paul Krugman: House Republicans will risk a 'financial crisis' to 'slash Social Security and Medicare' (file:///C:/Users/breas/OneDrive/Documents/Windows%20Files%20%28PC%29/AlterNet%20Folder%202023%20%28PC%29/Paul%20Krugman:%20House%20Republicans%20will%20risk%20a%20'financial%20crisis'%20to%20'slash%20Social%20Security%20and%20Medicare')
On Friday, January 13, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3812366-yellen-says-us-is-projected-to-hit-debt-ceiling-on-jan-19/) warned, in a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, that she expects the U.S. to reach its $31.4 borrowing limit on Thursday, January 19. Yellen noted that there is a “limited amount of time” and urged Congress to “act in a timely matter.”
Rampell argues, “If you read between the lines, you’ll learn that even Republicans don’t believe their own longstanding promise that tax cuts will pay for themselves. After all, if the GOP genuinely believed this, they wouldn’t need to make it easier to pass tax cuts that don’t pay for themselves. Because such tax cuts would not exist.”
READ MORE:Republicans would rather tank the global economy than stop corporations from destroying the planet (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/republicans-blow-up-economy-plane)
https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/fox-lying-about-gop-plans-cut-social-security-and-medicare
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Former President Barack Obama was the keynote speaker at an event in Milwaukee on Saturday that was organized by the Democratic Party to boost turnout for its candidates in the November midterm elections.
During his speech, Obama excoriated Republican United States Senator Ron Johnson over his recent proposal to put Social Security and Medicare up for congressional review every year (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/sep/26/joe-biden/biden-mostly-track-ron-johnson-wants-annual-approv/). Johnson has also promoted privatizing the programs (https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/81922), upon which millions of Americans' financial stability depends.
Johnson is a two-term incumbent locked in a tight race against Wisconsin's Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes (https://www.rawstory.com/barack-obama-birtherism/), whom Obama has endorsed.
READ MORE: 'Leftist propaganda': Ron Johnson blames higher education for debate laughter at FBI 'set up' claim (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/leftist-propaganda-ron-johnson-debate/)
"Some of you here are on Social Security. Some of your parents are on Social Security. Some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? Because they worked for it," a fired-up Obama said. "They worked hard jobs for it. They have chapped hands for it. They had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security."
The 44th commander in chief then delivered an impassioned rebuke of Johnson and his right-wing agenda.
"If Ron Johnson (https://www.fox6now.com/tag/people/ron-johnson) does not understand that – if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who have worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect – he’s not the person who’s thinking about you and knows you and sees you. And he should not be your senator from Wisconsin (https://www.fox6now.com/tag/us/wi)," Obama orated. "I mean, the message he's sending is pretty clear. If you're related to him, if you donate to his campaign, you get a deal. And if not, you're outta luck and you're on your own."
Watch below or at this link (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/should-not-be-your-senator).
ron j 5 yr --> annual renewal vote
When Democrats enjoyed a major blue wave in the 2006 midterms, one of their top issues was the Iraq War. But Democrats, especially Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, also pounded then-President George W. Bush relentlessly over his proposal to privatize Social Security — which, Pelosi warned, would be disastrous for older Americans.
Sixteen years later, some Republicans are still proposing that Social Security and Medicare be privatized. Some Republican U.S. Senate candidates, including Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, have, at times, made that proposal but flip flopped when Democrats attacked them for it.
In an op-ed published by The Hill (https://thehill.com/reliable-voters/3693005-social-security-medicare-are-on-the-line-this-november-and-women-older-than-50-know-it/) on October 19, Beth Almeida and Maggie Jo Buchanan of the Center for American Progress Action Fund warn that for “Boomer and Gen-X” women over 50, there is a lot at stake in the 2022 midterms — and Social Security and Medicare are at the top of the list.
READ MORE: Privatizing Social Security is 'a loser' for Republicans — but they keep proposing it anyway (https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/privatizing-social-security-is-a-loser-for-republicans-but-they-keep-proposing-it-anyway-report/)
“Despite women’s electoral heft, Republican Senate candidates like Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have called for cuts to two key programs on which 50+ women disproportionately rely on and strongly support: Social Security and Medicare,” Almeida and Buchanan explain. “But the truth is that they are hardly alone in today’s MAGA Republican Party. In fact, roughly 75 percent of Republicans in the U.S. House have signed on to a budget plan that would cut these programs. And a new report out this week (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/entitlement-spending-cap-plans-linked-by-gop-to-debt-limit-deal) reveals that all four Republicans running for the top slot on the House Budget Committee are vowing to hold America’s credit rating hostage and plunge our economy into recession in order to force severe cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.”
Almeida and Buchanan note that “kitchen-table economic issues loom large for 50+ women,” adding that “Baby Boomer and Gen X women” have “participated…. in the labor force at rates that exceed any prior generation and are the fastest-growing age-gender category in the labor market today.”
“Social Security provides lifetime, inflation-adjusted income, which is especially important for women, who live longer, on average, than men,” Almeida and Buchanan note. “Yet…. leading congressional Republicans have recently renewed their focus on cutting retirement benefits if they take back control of the House of Representatives, without regard for women’s health and security in retirement. Health coverage — particularly Medicare — similarly, is a lifeline for aging women, who have greater lifetime medical costs when compared with men.”
Almeida and Buchanan point out that the same Republicans who are attacking reproductive rights for younger women are attacking Social Security and Medicare for older women.
READ MORE: GOP planning 'catastrophic default' if Democrats refuse to cut Social Security and Medicare (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/gop-plans-catastrophic-default-democrats/)
“In concert with extremists’ desire to deny the basic dignity of all women through the removal of their reproductive rights and agency, the experiences, priorities and needs of older women are often diminished and marginalized — in our politics, media and everyday life,” Almeida and Buchanan warn. “Policymakers should commit to a new path forward and ensure that the issues that matter most to older women take center stage in their policy agendas. If candidates are not responsive to their needs, women will undoubtedly remember when they cast their ballots this fall.”
READ MORE: Threatening to crash the economy on purpose': GOP to gut Social Security and Medicare if it wins House (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/gop-gut-social-security-medicare/)
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Top House Republicans (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=House+Republicans) are planning to threaten to shut down the U.S. Government by refusing to raise the debt ceiling next year in a scheme to force Democrats to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, should they win the House in November critics warn, pointing to a Bloomberg report (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/entitlement-spending-cap-plans-linked-by-gop-to-debt-limit-deal).
“Social Security and Medicare eligibility changes, spending caps, and safety-net work requirements are among the top priorities for key House Republicans who want to use next year’s debt-limit deadline to extract concessions from Democrats,” Bloomberg Law reports. “The four Republicans interested in serving as House Budget Committee chairman in the next Congress said in interviews that next year’s deadline to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is a point of leverage if their party can win control of the House in the November midterm elections.”
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), chair of the Joint Economic Committee Democrats (https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/about/), an advisory committee created by law, blasted House Republicans (https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1579832525027180544), warning they “plan to hold the U.S. economy hostage with the threat of a catastrophic default to try to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
READ MORE: [Watch: Democrat Delivers Fiery Rebuke to House Republicans Trying to Deprive Veterans of Abortion Rights (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/09/watch-democrat-delivers-fiery-rebuke-to-house-republicans-trying-to-deprive-veterans-of-abortion-rights/)
Aaron Fritschner, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Rep. Beyer tweeted (https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1579836012083412992): “House Republicans saying out loud that holding the debt limit hostage to demands for cuts to Social Security and Medicare is a ‘top priority.'”
“If Republicans regain control of Congress, they are planning to threaten a global financial meltdown if they don’t get their way on cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” writes (https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1579846050944540672) Media Matters for America’s senior fellow Matthew Gertz.
“If Republicans regain power, they are coming for your Social Security and Medicare,” he adds (https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1579839876710936576).
READ MORE: House Republicans Visited Trump After FBI Raid to Urge Him to Announce Run for President (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/08/house-republicans-visited-trump-after-fbi-raid-to-urge-him-to-announce-run-for-president/)
“The Republican plan to fight inflation is to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” writes (https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1579839603657551872) journalist and former Vox editor and co-founder Matthew Yglesias.
“Extreme MAGA Republican leaders openly threatening to cause economic catastrophe in order to achieve their dreams of slashing Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security,” is how Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s communications director, Henry Connelly, responds (https://twitter.com/HenryVConnelly/status/1579841398739996675).
Images of House Budget Committee Republicans (https://republicans-budget.house.gov/about/members/), from top, left to right: Jason Smith, Blake Moore, Tom McClintock, Glenn Grothmann, Lloyd Smucker, Michael Burgess.
an 922
When Democrats enjoyed a major blue wave in the 2006 midterms and recaptured both branches of Congress, the dominant factor was frustration over the Iraq War. But Democrats, especially Rep. Nancy Pelosi (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/21/18103325/nancy-pelosi-social-security-privatization-bush-plan) of California, also hammered then-President George W. Bush over his proposal to privatize Social Security (https://www.npr.org/2004/11/11/4164384/bush-eyes-privatizing-social-security-in-second-term). Republican Bush described that blue wave as a “thumping” for his party.
Despite that 2006 thumping, former House Speaker Paul Ryan subsequently advocated privatizing Social Security during the Barack Obama years — once again giving Democrats an issue to attack Republicans on. Journalist Natalie Allison, in an article published by Politico (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/22/republican-candidates-social-security-medicare-00058158) on September 22, emphasizes that as wildly unpopular as that proposal is, some Republicans continue to revisit it anyway.
“For two decades, campaign after campaign, Republican politicians have floated the idea of privatizing government entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare,” Allison explains. “And campaign after campaign — from Paul Ryan to George W. Bush — it’s been a loser. But for some reason, they keep trying. The latest is Don Bolduc, New Hampshire’s GOP Senate nominee, who advocated privatizing Medicare during a campaign town hall in early August.”
READ MORE: Congressional progressives warn GOP wants to 'take a chainsaw to' Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/social-security/)
Bolduc, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who once called conservative Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (https://nhjournal.com/bolduc-i-drove-communist-sympathizer-sununu-out-of-senate-race/) a “Chinese communist sympathizer,” is hoping to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire. And he has done a lot of flip flopping during his campaign. In 2021, Bolduc was a “Stop the Steal” Trumpster, making the false and thoroughly debunked claim that widespread voter fraud robbed former President Donald Trump of a second term. Now, Bolduc is walking that back (https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3650494-a-shameless-republicans-never-mind-dump-trump-moment/), saying that the 2020 election was not stolen from Trump and admitting that President Joe Biden won the election fairly. And another thing Bolduc is walking back is his proposal to privatize Medicare.
“Bolduc’s remarks about privatizing Medicare will all but certainly be used against him in advertisements by Democrats, who have long used the threat of changes to Social Security and Medicare to animate older voters,” Allison notes. “Bolduc’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan, has said she would fight to protect existing Social Security and Medicare programs. The reversal on Medicare isn’t Bolduc’s first since he clinched the Republican nomination in New Hampshire’s primary last week. Bolduc, who unapologetically declared over the last two years that he believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, announced two days after the primary that he had changed his mind — a clear attempt to appeal to the more moderate and independent voters he’ll need to vote for him in the general election in November.”
In Wisconsin, Allison observes, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson — who is seeking a third term — has suggested that Medicare and Social Security should not be automatically renewed every year. And his Democratic opponent, Mandela Barnes, has been attacking him for it via a group called Seniors for Mandela.
Meanwhile, in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, Blake Masters — the Trump-backed MAGA Republican who is running against incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly — has also flip-flopped on privatizing Social Security. In June, Masters said, “We need fresh and innovative thinking. Maybe we should privatize Social Security. Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it.” But Masters now says that he is opposed to privatizing Social Security or Medicare.
READ MORE:JD Vance changes course on Social Security and Medicare (https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/jd-vance/)
“Masters’ change of heart on Social Security hasn’t stopped Democrats from pummeling the Republican nominee with television attack ads on the issue,” Allison writes. “The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has spent more than $1.7 million on television ads in Arizona specifically highlighting Masters’ comments on privatizing Social Security — a topic they’re still putting money behind on the air. Other Democratic groups have taken out digital ads on the topic. It appears their messaging is breaking through to voters. During a focus group conducted Thursday by the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, viewed exclusively by Politico, two of the nine Arizona voters participating — each of whom voted for Trump in 2016 but not in 2020 — brought up Masters’ views on Social Security.”
READ MORE:'Self-serving, multimillionaire' Ron Johnson targets Medicare and Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/ron-johnson-targets-medicare-and-social-security-for-annual-budget-discussions/)
GOP routinely block medicare expansion, even tho feds pay 90%
note covid giving big boost to medicare for all 3/20
an 922
House Republicans are set to release their policy platform that includes a critical assessment (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-commitment-to-america_n_632b7247e4b087fae6fbd777) of Democrats' proposal to reduce the cost of popular prescription drugs as they propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
In a piece published by HuffPost, writers Paul Blumenthal and Jonathan Nicholson reported about a document leaked on Wednesday, September 21. (https://www.huffpost.com/author/jonathan-nicholson)
Per the writers' report, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) planned to announce the Republicans' “Commitment to America” agenda. However, the writers noted, "a multi-page document bearing that name briefly appeared online Wednesday on McCarthy’s website."
READ MORE: Legal expert: Trump's dealings with Truth Social merger may have violated the law (https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/trump-truth-social-2658245025/)
Shortly after the document was released and shared via Twitter (https://twitter.com/anniekarni/status/1572648063948161025) by New York Times reporter Annie Karni, the viewing capabilities were changed on the site and it became password protected. However, multiple screenshots were taken. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also took to Twitter with screenshots of Republicans' proposed platform.
Per HuffPost, "The website placed policies into four separate categories: economic policies; immigration and national security; schools, health care, and technology; and an amorphous grouping of so-called government reforms."
"The GOP document promises to 'fight inflation and curb the cost of living,' but the only policies it proposes are federal government spending cuts. It also promises to cut taxes, which could increase inflation, and government regulations," the writers also noted.
More details about the platform were specified. "The platform also promises to 'save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare,' but lists no policies to do so. In June, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee held a roundtable on Social Security where they discussed policies that would reduce coverage and cut benefits to seniors," the writers reported. "The Republican Study Committee, a bloc of conservative House GOP lawmakers, included a plan to massively slash Social Security in its proposed 2023 budget."
READ MORE: The question is no longer whether Trump’s MAGA movement is fascist — but can we defeat it? (https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/trump-fascist/)
In wake of the reports about the policy platform announcement, McCarthy acted as if he was unaware of the rollout. Speaking to HuffPost on Wednesday, McCarthy said hadn't seen it.
CA extend food assist to undoc sr
https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/rick-scott-ron-johnson/
when up for re-election?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/ron-johnson-targets-medicare-and-social-security-for-annual-budget-discussions/
an 5 22
Republicans just voted against two bills to ease the baby formula shortage (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=baby+formula+shortage) they have spent weeks falsely trying to pin on President Joe Biden.
In tweets and in floor speeches, Republicans have been attacking President Biden for the nationwide baby formula shortage caused by one manufacturer’s recall and closure of its plant for bacterial infection after two infants died (https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/2nd-infant-dies-after-exposure-to-recalled-baby-formula-linked-to-bacterial-infections-fda-says/2771429/).The shortage has been exacerbated by a trade agreement signed by then-President Donald Trump (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/briefing/baby-formula-shortage-us-economy.html) that makes it extremely difficult and expensive to import formula from other countries, and the fact that 90 percent of baby formula in the U.S. is manufactured by just four companies (https://fortune.com/2022/05/13/diversifying-infant-formula-industry-critical-to-preventing-another-shortage-startup-founders-say/). Also, hoarding, and price-gouging (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/05/13/baby-formula-shortage-price-gouge-cost/9750034002/?gnt-cfr=1).
Last week President Biden sat down with manufacturers and retailers (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/05/democrats-launch-investigation-into-baby-formula-shortage-as-biden-meets-with-manufacturers/) to map out a plan to get more formula onto store shelves immediately and directed the Food and Drug Administration to help get the plant reopened. This week he went two steps further: he invoked the Defense Production Act (https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/05/18/house-formula-shortage-abbott/) to force manufacturers to produce more formula and produce it ahead of other products and created a program to use federal planes to import baby formula from other countries.
House Democrats last week also opened an investigation (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/05/democrats-launch-investigation-into-baby-formula-shortage-as-biden-meets-with-manufacturers/) into the baby formula shortage.
On Wednesday the House voted on two emergency bills to further ease the shortage.
One example of Republicans falsely attacking President Biden and the left is House GOP Caucus chair Elise Stefanik (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Elise+Stefanik)‘s now-infamous tweet accusing Democrats of having “no plan” as she labeled them “pedo grifters (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/05/opinion-gop-house-chair-crosses-line-with-pedo-attack-against-the-left-in-lie-filled-baby-formula-rant/).”...
one bill would give FDA $28 million to add staff, work to help get more formula to consumers, and create a long-term strategy, including increased safety inspections so this cannot happen again. The second would dramatically increase supply from foreign sources to consumers using the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program.
192 House Republicans voted against giving FDA $28 million to help fix the crisis and ensure it does not happen again.
Nine House Republicans voted against making it easier for WIC customers to get access to baby formula.
Many Americans are becoming outraged as the news from last night’s votes is spreading online.
[Here’s the list of 9 members of Congress (all Republicans)who voted NO:
Marjorie Taylor Greene Matt Gaetz Louie Gohmert Lauren Boebert Paul Gosar Thomas Massie Andy Biggs Clay Higgins Chip Roy.]
rick scott?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/revealed-new-gop-plan-to-raise-taxes-on-working-people-and-end-social-security/
// rick scott?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/madison-cawthorn-2656782306/
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Madison+Cawthorn) (R-NC) has revealed his “New Contract with America” that’s designed to destroy Social Security, one of the most successful and life-saving programs in U.S. history, to “incentivize” the elderly to return to work.
That’s just one aspect of what Cawthorn describes as a 10-point plan that reads like a far right-wing dream from capitalist kingpins to return America to the days of child labor, seven-day work weeks, and no retirement for senior citizens. But it does call for the federal government to “promote and celebrate the American manufacturing and agriculture industry by incentivizing domestic production,” despite the US economy being so on fire the Federal Reserve is poised to dramatically raise interest rates to cool off spending and so-called “inflation.”
The youngest member of Congress, currently facing a legal battle that could ban him from keeping his seat over his role in the January 6 insurrection, explained to Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/madison-cawthorn-unveils-republican-platform) his “new Contract With America is really a “retort” to the Green New Deal.
“I think the Green New Deal is much less of a climate plan and much more of a Communist manifesto.”
Cawthorn does not reveal who actually wrote the plan, which is in the form of a House resolution (embedded below) – so it has zero chance of passing as long as Democrats hold the chamber.
It includes “slashing government spending by a third by 2031; enacting a balanced budget amendment; and abolishing the income tax and finding a replacement flat tax or consumption tax by 2026,” Fox News adds.
“The contract also calls for abolishing the Department of Education, making English the official language of the United States, banning federal funding for critical race theory teachings, and enacting school choice on the federal level so federal dollars follow the students to their school of choice, including private religious schools.”
There’s also a companion video that looks more like a video game than a rational political agenda.
[vid] ncwa
struct fr
https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/to-us-oligarchs-majority-views-on-taxing-the-rich-count-for-little/
noah b
With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.
That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth.
Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a global corporate minimum tax (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/what-is-global-minimum-tax-deal-what-will-it-mean-2021-10-08/) of 15 percent.
At some point, corruption stops being a bug in democracy and starts becoming a feature of oligarchy.
Has the US passed that threshold?
Based on the sweeping and effective resistance to commonsense solutions to reign in wealthy tax scofflaws, the answer is not encouraging.
Since the 1970s, the United States has become steadily and inexorably more economically unequal. According to Pew (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/), upper income families have brought in a larger and larger share of total income.
US income inequality is the highest of all G7 nations. Its Gini coefficient is .434, well above second highest UK at .392.
In 1968, the top 20 percent of households earned 43 percent of national income. By 2018, the top 20 percent of households earned 52 percent.
In 1989, the richest 5 percent of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second poorest income tier. In 2016, they had 248times as much wealth.
In 2020 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-08/top-50-richest-people-in-the-us-are-worth-as-much-as-poorest-165-million), the 50 richest Americans had almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the US population.
This massive concentration of wealth is also a massive concentration of power. The wealthiest people have access to the best lawyers, the best tax attorneys and the most powerful politicians.
That means that it is very difficult for the government to restrain them, or to create a more equitable economy and society against their wishes.
That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth. [amp fdbk]
An example of oligarchical power is billionaire tax evasion. A recent IRS study (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/26/wealthy-tax-evasion/) found that wealthy Americans conceal more than 20 percent of their earnings. They are able to do this because of complex accounting scams involving offshore tax shelters.
The lost tax costs the government at least $175 billion a year in revenue. The top 1 percent of earners are responsible for a third of unpaid federal taxes.
In addition to these straightforwardly illegal accounting tricks, the very wealthy also benefit from at least nominally legal loopholes.
For instance, wealthy people have many assets that increase in value over time, but they do not pay taxes on those assets until they sell them.
They can borrow against those assets without paying taxes, since again the assets aren’t considered income. Then, if they die before selling the assets, they can pass them on to their heirs using trusts and other accounting shenanigans to avoid the estate tax.
ProPublica called this strategy Buy, Borrow, Die (https://www.propublica.org/video/buy-borrow-die-how-americas-ultrawealthy-stay-that-way). It’s a key method for hoarding generational wealth, and entrenching oligarchy.
The Biden administration, led by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, have proposed strong measures to rein in billionaire corruption. In part, they want to restrain inequality. In part, they hope to fund other priorities like climate mitigation and anti-poverty measures in the administration’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan.
To address billionaire tax evasion, BBB included $80 billion (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2021/10/bidens-irs-spending-plan-makes-it-through-build-back-better-act-framework/) to boost capacity and staff at the IRS. That would help make up for the steady budget-cuts under Republican administrations. Those have led to a 60 percent decrease in audits of taxpayers who earn more than $1 million. Biden said the investment would allow the IRS to collect $400 billion in taxes.
Biden, Yellen and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden have also been pushing for a billionaire tax (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2021/10/26/the-billionaire-tax-loophole-hunt-is-on-494854) to force the very wealthy to pay taxes on the increased value of their assets.
This would strike at the heart of the oligarchic “Buy, Borrow, Die” lifestyle. It would force the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share, like everyone else, every year, year after year.
Policies that prevent the rich from escaping a tax burden everyone has to pay should be easy to pass in a democracy. You’d think preventing billionaires from cheating on their taxes would be a popular policy.
And you’d be correct.
A 2019 poll, for example, showed (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/04/democrats-taxes-economy-policy-2020-1144874) that 76 percent of Americans agreed that the wealthiest should pay more in taxes. Proposals to tax income over $10 million at 70 percent — a huge increase over current rates — obtained more than 50 percent support.
In an oligarchy, though, public support doesn’t necessarily count for all that much.
A notorious 2015 study found (https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained) that politicians were much more likely to listen to and follow the political preferences of economic elites than those of the less affluent.
You can see that playing out in the politics of billionaire taxation.
Build Back Better, which included the beefed-up IRS funding, was scuttled by millionaire West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, in large part, reportedly (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manchin-build-back-better-child-tax-credit-drugs_n_61bf8f6be4b061afe394006d), because he was worried that poor parents would spend money on drugs.
A wealthy politician refused to enforce the law against billionaires because he was worried that poor people are natural criminals.
That is what you call class consciousness.
Wyden’s proposal to end “Buy, Borrow, Die” also failed after opposition from Manchin (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/10/27/billionaire-tax-dead-on-arrival-after-manchin-blasts-proposal-mere-hours-after-its-release/?sh=34f6a763bc36).It was of course opposed by Senate Republicans, whose main goal is to shovel as much money as possible to the rich in as short a time as possible.
Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a global corporate minimum tax (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/what-is-global-minimum-tax-deal-what-will-it-mean-2021-10-08/) of 15 percent. This would make it harder for businesses to escape tax burdens by moving their corporate offices. Congress still has to pass the treaty, but Yellen said she was confident (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/10/us-treasury-secretary-yellen-global-minimum-corporate-tax-debt-ceiling) they would do so.
The corporate minimum tax is a substantial achievement. But it’s also a small dam erected against the tsunami of inequality in the US.
With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.
The wealthy have been expanding their power and influence for decades in the US. The result is that the US regularly chooses to make the rich richer rather than helping the poorest feed their children (https://www.npr.org/2022/01/21/1074413273/end-expanded-child-tax-credit-families-effects).
The outlook for change is likely to be even bleaker if Republicans recapture one or both legislative chambers in November.
Yellen and Biden are to be commended for fighting an ongoing rearguard action against corruption. But if government inability to restrain corruption is a feature of oligarchy, then the US is already well down a path that it is very difficult to retrace.
aha // strict fr but anything collective is seen as commie:
aha land is wealth, mine me vs we and it is class/status; pharma keeps vax from world/ poor ppl b/c proprietary IP
xian nat'l prop over HUMAN rights:
omg npi
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/extremist-christians/
paul r salon
progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.
One leading figure within that small group, Rachel Tabachnick, was featured in a recent webinar hosted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (archived on YouTube
Her presentation sheds important light on at least three things: First of all, the vigilante element of the Texas anti-abortion law SB 8. Second, the largerpattern of disrupting or undermining governance, including the "constitutional sheriffs" movement, the installation of overtly partisan election officials and the red-state revolt against national COVID public health policies. While Donald Trump has exploited that pattern ruthlessly, he did not create it. And third, the seemingly baffling fact that an anti-democratic minority feels entitled to accuse its opponents — including democratically elected officials — of "tyranny."
Some dominionist ideas — such as the biblical penalty of death by stoning — are so extreme they can easily be dismissed as fringe, others have been foundational to the modern religious right, and still more have become increasingly influential in recent years. Those latter two categories are what we need to understand most, say both Tabachnick and Jackson.
"One of the things that struck me, as a relative newcomer," said Jackson, a former Congregationalist minister, "was that there was not sufficient understanding about the theological frames used by many individuals who are opposed to abortion." She continued, "I'm a strategist in a lot of ways, and one important strategy, I believe, must be to understand what the teachings and the theological frames are" on the other side. Which links directly to the question of what progressive activists need to do differently in this changed environment.
This failure to understand the nature of dominionism has hampered activists, not just in the realm of reproductive justice, but across an entire spectrum of political issues, both cultural and economic.Jackson discussed her own background, raised within a conservative Christian worldview.
"I was taught a very individualistic approach," she said, "taught that we shouldn't pay taxes, because doing so enabled people who were not working, and enables people whose lifestyle we don't agree with." There's nothing new about such views, but dominionism provides believers with an even stronger foundation for them.
Jackson describes her current understanding of religious faith as highly intersectional: "We believe that to understand the attacks on abortion also invites us — or even requires us — to look at attacks on voting, to look at attacks on immigrants, attacks on prison reform, attacks on equal pay and on and on," she said. "It's all of the same cloth: They are all attacks on humans flourishing. That's my language. The God of my understanding wants all of us to flourish in who we are."
the language of dominionism is strikingly different, to put it mildly. In her webinar, Tabachnick played a clip of one of the movement's leading figures, C. Peter Wagner, providing a definition:
Dominion has to do with control. Dominion has to do with rulership. Dominion has to do with authority and subduing. And it relates to society — in other words what is talked about, what the values are in heaven [that] need to be made manifest here on earth. Dominion means being the head and not the tail. Dominion means ruling as kings. It says in Revelation chapter 1:6 that "he has made us kings and priests," and check the rest of that verse, it says "for dominion." So we are kings for dominion.
Later she provided a definition from Frederick Clarkson, author of the 1997 book, "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy (https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Hostility-Struggle-Theocracy-Democracy/dp/1567510884)":
Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
Wagner, who died in 2016, is known as the founding father of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), one of the two main branches of dominionism, which grew out of the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions within evangelical Christianity. Dominionists in the other branch, known as "Christian reconstructionism," come out of conservative Calvinism, with a focus on bringing government and society under biblical law. They tend to be more circumspect, often obfuscating their true intentions and avoiding the word "theocracy" in favor of "theonomy," for example. But not Wagner, as can be seen in the title of his 2011 book, "Dominion!: Your Role in Bringing Heaven to Earth (https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9780768461640)." The NAR talks constantly about taking dominion over the "seven mountains" of society: education, religion, family, business, government, arts and the media.
But it's the other branch, the Christian reconstructionists, who have excelled at strategic organizing and providing blueprints across different right-wing constituencies for almost 50 years. They are the ones Tabachnick focused most of her presentation on, specifically two key figures: Rousas John Rushdoony, the movement's master theologian, and his son-in-law Gary North, a prolific strategist, propagandist and networker who was once a staffer for Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian hero.[ayn radical indiv ~ jesus charity]
Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."
In a recent private presentation, Frederick Clarkson asked a rhetorical question: "People have long said that there should be Christian government, but if you had one, what would it look like? What would it do? Rushdoony was the first to create a systematic theology of what Christian governance should be like, based on the Ten Commandments, and all of the judicial applications he could find in the Old Testament — including about 35 capital offenses."
But the "Handmaid's Tale"-style extremism of dominionists' ultimate vision shouldn't really be our focus, Tabachnick told Salon. "Nobody cares about the theocratic, draconian future envisioned by reconstructionists because they don't believe it will happen," she said.
What's happening right now, however, is that this ideology has had tremendous impact on more immediate politics. "Christian reconstructionism is the merger of a distinct brand of Calvinism with Austrian School economics," Tabachnick said. "In other words, it's an interpretation of the Bible grounded in property rights." The results have been far-reaching:
For more than 40 years, its prolific writers have provided the foundations and strategic blueprints for the attacks on liberation theology and the social gospel, as well as many other streams of Christianity which do not share the Reconstructionists' belief in unfettered capitalism as ordained by God and its fierce anti-statism.
The larger religious right's attack on public education, thesocial safety netand most government functions are largely grounded in the writings, strategies and tactics formulated by reconstructionist writers. Reconstructionism is not the only (and certainly not the first) source of interposition and nullification in this country. However, much of what is currently being taught today about using interposition to undermine the legitimacy of government is sourced in reconstructionism.
This idea of "interposition" comes through what's known as the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate," which we'll return to below. But its significance — especially in the post-2020 Republican Party — has only recently become apparent. Reconstructionism's initial appeal was more immediately, as Tabachnick explained in the seminar:
What Rushdoony provided is a package that included attacking what these fundamentalists hated and feared most in society, often expressed in terms of "This is communist. This is socialist." But Rushdoony provided a way to sacralize these ideas, and at the same time not just tear down the old order, but provide a blueprint for the new order.
Everyone didn't have to agree on the blueprint, she said: "Rushdoony's ideas went out in bits and pieces. The Christian right leaders took what they wanted and discarded what they didn't."
aha note gop sez ppl lazy and moral hazard of soc safe net but at same time quash vax mask Mandate EVEN WHEN LOCAL PPL /REPS VOTE FOR THEM, THEN PPL QUIT CRAPPY LOW WAGE DANGEROUS JOBS
Dartagnan (https://www.alternet.org/author/dartagnan)
and
Daily Kos (https://www.alternet.org/author/daily-kos)
October 24, 2021
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/unemployment-2655355131/
The business owners whose blood, sweat, and tears—or at least their fancy, high-priced educations, family connections and access to venture capital—built this country, dammitwere hellbent and determined to show American workers who was boss. This COVID-19 nonsense was not going to interfere with their profits any longer. It was time totake a stand.
So they all had their administrative assistants conference in their favorite state legislators, the same ones who helpfully passed legislation a few years back, keeping pesky unions out of their states. They called in their chits for all those campaign contributions to the governor. They called their Republican House reps and senators. Damn that Fauci, they complained. My business is hurting. No more lockdowns, no more of this "social distancing "crap. This state is going to open for business and I don't want to hear another word about body counts or stressed hospitals. I need workers and I need them now. I paid for your damn campaigns, so do something!
And those state representatives and senators leapt into action. In a matter of a few weeks we saw state after state brimming with self-appointed medical experts in their legislatures, railing about the tyrannical mask mandates and business lockdowns. CEOs and white-collar professionals cracked their whips—many still from the comfort of their fine second homes and pools. And thus the support staff, the retail clerks and the service workers, many of whom who had once been adoringly lionized as "essential" at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, were told it was time to return to work. And for added good measure, Republican governors in those statescut off (https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-states-cutting-unemployment-benefits-expanded-300-weekly-biden-stimulus-2021-5)their unemployment aid. That'll show them, they thought ...
But strangely enough, not all of those workers heeded the call. In fact, a good many of them quit.
As reported by Alyssa Fowers and Eli Rosenberg, writing for The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/states-labor-quitting-turnvoer-jolts/):
Kentucky, Idaho, South Dakota and Iowa reported the highest increases in the rates of workers who quit their jobs in August, according to a new glimpse of quit rates in the labor market released Friday.
The largest increase in the number of quitters happened in Georgia, with 35,000 more people leaving their jobs. Overall, the states with the highest rates of workers quitting their jobs were Georgia, Kentucky and Idaho.
As The Post points out, the interesting thing about this data is that service-sector jobs are most highly concentrated in urban areas. So why would people be quitting their jobs at such astronomical rates in such relatively rural states as Kentucky, South Dakota, Iowa and Idaho?
Fowers and Rosenberg offer a clue:
Employees quit or were hired at rates matching or exceeding the national average in the ten states with the highest rates of new infections that month: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee.
So the highest rate of turnover in August—employees quitting or getting hired—was found in the states which had the highest rate of COVID-19 infection for that month. Logically, that seems to make sense. Workers who live in one of those states were also likely to have a governor or, in the case of Kentucky, a Republican-dominated legislature (https://www.wlky.com/article/kentucky-lawmakers-give-education-bill-that-lifts-school-mask-mandate-final-passage/37533685)who opposed business closures, even while the delta variant ravaged the state's population. Such workers were essentially forced by these states policies to return to work if they could not work from home.
Those people forced back to work in an unsafe environment simply decided to quit—many of them likely before ever venturing back into their workspace. After all, they saw a job the other day that was offering more money. Or their next-door neighbor's cousin got a job that pays more and allows them to work from home. The Post article quotes Nick Bunker, an economist for the job search portal Indeed, who notes that the high quit rate in these red and rural states "may be a sign there's more competition in those parts of the country than other parts."
The other interesting point aboutallof the states having both the highest level of turnover and the highest infection rates? They are all so-called"right to work" (https://www.upcounsel.com/right-to-work-states) states,where legislatures passed legislation to disincentivize and discourage unions.So these workers have essentially no protection, no one to turn to for help remedying unsafe conditions, and no collective bargaining power; they can, for the most part, be terminated at will. That's what "right-to work"has always been about (https://aflcio.org/issues/right-work).
As one commenter to The Post story points out:
So, when you have a crappy job, for crappy wages, and a crappy employer who doesn't value you at all, and all of a sudden you find yourself in a labor market situation that actually encourages you to look for work elsewhere--what do you think is going to happen? The 'Great Resignation' is largely about working class people attempting to use what little leverage they have in order to make a moderately better wage for themselves in a mostly hostile, oppressive national work environment.
For employers, the downside of "right to work"— one they never saw coming—was the fact that workers in those states had little, if any, incentive to stay, especially when once-in-a lifetime opportunities arose for them to leave, while competition for higher wages and better working conditions further drove that exodus.
Some employers are responding by antagonizing would-be applicants. (https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-lifestyle-health-indiana-d3acd668eaf6343aada03cd660055bbc)
In Missouri, a group of businesses, still frustrated by labor shortages more than three months after the state cut off the $300-a-week federal jobless checks, paid for billboards in Springfield (https://apnews.com/article/business-springfield-missouri-664509b3cf71098900abeae2452b72f0) that said: "Get Off Your Butt!" and "Get. To. Work."
The state has seen no growth in its workforce since ending emergency benefits.
"We don't know where people are," said Brad Parke, general manager of Greek Corner Screen Printing and Embroidery, who helped pay for the billboards. "Obviously, they're not at work. Apparently, they're at home."
The attempt to force workers back to dangerous, unsafe pandemic working conditions—brought on by short-sighted Republican policymakers for political ends—has collided with a culture where workplace protections and the ability to bargain have been completely devalued (also by Republican politicians), leaving workers as essentially dispensable commodities.
No wonder they're quitting for greener pastures in those states. Republican elected officials and their business donors in those same states have no one to blame but themselves. They created this environment, and now they're going to have to cope and adjust with workers who want more out of their jobs … and know they can get it. They have to keep up and do better, or see their businesses go under.
Funny how that worked out.
How do we prevent America from becoming an aristocracy, while also funding the programs that Americans desperately need?
One way is to get rid of a tax loophole you've probably never heard of. It's known as the "stepped-up basis" rule.
Here's how the stepped-up-basis loophole now works. Take a man named Jeff. At his death, Jeff owns $30 million-worth of stocks he originally bought for a total of $10 million. Under existing law, neither Jeff nor his heirs would owe federal tax on the $20 million of gains because they're automatically "stepped up" to their value when he dies — $30 million.
Under Biden's proposal, Jeff's $20 million of gains would be taxed. And don't worry: Biden's proposal doesn't touch tax-favored retirement accounts, such as 401-Ks, and it only applies to the very richest Americans.
As it is now, the stepped-up basis loophole enables the super-rich, like Jeff, to avoid paying more than $40 billion in taxes each year. (https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fdeath-and-taxes-biden-wants-to-step-down-the-step-up-on-investment-gains-11619775021&t=MGJmMDdmOTA1OGQwZjFkODNkZjk2YjIyZDE5OWU0Mjk4MjI5M2FjNixCM3RCeTNnWg%3D%3D&b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&p=https%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F651468084798013440&m=1&ts=1621557175) It has allowed them to skip taxes on the increased values of mansions and artworks as well as shares of stock.
In fact, it's one of the chief means by which dynastic wealth has grown and been passed from generation to generation, enabling subsequent generations to live off that growing wealth and never pay a dime of taxes on it.
Unless the stepped-up basis loophole is closed, we will soon have a large class of hugely rich people who have never worked a day in their lives.
Over the next decades, rich baby boomers will pass on an estimated $58 trillion (https://href.li/?https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-millionaires-baby-boomer-inheritance-wealth-transfer-2019-10) of wealth to their millennial children — the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.
Closing this giant tax loophole for the super-rich is how Biden intends to fund part of his American Families Plan, which would provide every child with 2 years of pre-school and every student with 2 years of free community college, as well as provide paid family and medical leave to every worker.
Close this stepped-up basis loophole, and we help finance the programs the vast majority of Americans desperately need and deserve. We also end the explosion of dynastic wealth. It should be a no-brainer.
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Joe Biden's plans would target the ultra-wealthy for more tax dollars ... › (https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/biden-taxes/)
What would happen if we actually taxed the rich? - Alternet.org › (https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/tax-the-rich/)
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brownback just keeps on giving // texas cold disaster
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/kansas-gop/
gutted soc safe net, now covid fail
trump launches 'despicable' last-minute attack on Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-social-security/)
Jake Johnson (https://www.alternet.org/author/jake-johnson) Common Dreams (https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams)
December 07, 2020
Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hun
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aha this is a kind of extraction, pvtize profits, socialize costs; corps are tax dodgers thus leeches
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bernie-sanders/
'The Walton family is the real welfare queen': GAO report details how taxpayers subsidize corporate giants' low wages
pinpointing a reality denounced as "morally obscene (https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/18/taxpayers-subsidize-poverty-wages-walmart-mcdonalds-other-large-corporations-gao)" by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the nation's largest and most profitable corporations—including Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and Amazon—feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families afloat.
According to a statement from Sanders' office, the study he commissioned the Government Accountability Office to carry out—titled "Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs" (https://outreach.senate.gov/iqextranet/iqClickTrk.aspx?&cid=SenSanders&crop=15532.18827308.7723352.1814872&report_id=&redirect=https%3a%2f%2fwww.gao.gov%2fproducts%2fGAO-21-45&redir_log=042177405248243)—found that an estimated 5.7 million Medicaid enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018earned wages so low that they qualified for these federal benefits. In addition, an estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some point in 2018.
Upon the study's release Wednesday, Warren Gunnels, staff director and policy adviser for Sen. Sanders, tweeted: "The real looting in America is theWalton family becoming $63 billion richer during a pandemic, while paying wages so low that 14,541 of their workers in 9 states need food stamps—all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Yes. The Walton family is the real welfare queen in America."
According (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/food-stamps-medicaid-mcdonalds-walmart-bernie-sanders/) to the Washington Post:, based on the GAO report:
Walmart was one of the top four employers of SNAP and Medicaid beneficiaries in every state. McDonald's was in the top five of employers with employees receiving federal benefits in at least nine states.
In the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits—Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington—Walmart was found to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with 8,780, according to Sanders's team. In six states that reported Medicaid enrollees, Walmart again topped the list, with 10,350 employees, followed by McDonald's with 4,600.
In Georgia, for example, Walmart employed an estimated 3,959 workers on Medicaid—an estimated 2.1 percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people in the state receiving the benefit. McDonald's was next on the list, employing 1,480 who received Medicaid, or 0.8 percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people on the program.
"At a time when huge corporations like Walmart and McDonald's are making billions in profits and giving their CEOs tens of millions of dollars a year, they're relying on corporate welfare from the federal government by paying their workers starvation wages," said Sanders in a statement. "That is morally obscene."
With the individual wealth of high-ranking executives and members of billionaire families (https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/18/billionaire-bonanza-continues-workers-pounded-pandemic-recession-and-gop-relief) like the Walton's, who own Walmart, soaring even as front-line, minimum wage employees and their families struggling to stay afloat amid the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, Sanders argues that the stark contrast should be a wakeup call for those who have refused to see how unjust and economically backward it is for the federal government, meaning taxpayers, to subsidize the cruel wages that massive profitable companies force their workers to accept.
"U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America," said Sanders. "It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald's and other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage."
The Walton family is worth $238 billion. Yet they pay wages so low, 14,541 of their workers in 9 states are forced… https://t.co/NHcullycqz
— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders)1605742875.0 (tel:1605742875)
"No one in this country should live in poverty," Sanders added. "No one should go hungry. No one should be unable to get the medical care they need. It is long past time to increase the federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15, and guarantee health care to all Americans as a human right."
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Why Millennials Love Bernie Sanders: This Is What Trump, Hillary ... › (https://www.alternet.org/2016/06/why-millennials-love-bernie-sanders/)
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an 1020 in middle of covid crisis, when mcconn/trump cut off $; this makes no sense right before election, so mebbe lag effect?
judge strikes down Trump effort to slash food stamps for 700,000 Americans: Victory for 'basic human decency' (https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/victory-for-basic-human-decency-judge-strikes-down-trump-effort-to-slash-food-stamps-for-700-000-americans/)
note i have not captured all the withholding scams trump trying to pull in covid
Trump really does have a plan to destroy Social Security (https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-really-does-have-a-plan-to-destroy-social-security/)
Nancy J. Altman (https://www.alternet.org/author/nancy-j-altman/) / Common Dreams (https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/) September 11, 2020
Donald Trump’s nonstop lies, together with his endless cries of “fake news” and “hoax,” make the role of media fact checkers more important than ever. Unfortunately, on the crucial issue…
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-payroll-tax-ploy-ploy-endangers-social-security-and-it-will-have-to-be-paid-back-next-year/
// says will cut payroll dedeuction covid but stealth attack on SS?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-just-admitted-on-live-television-he-will-terminate-social-security-and-medicare-if-he-wins-reelection/
GOP coronavirus relief package to include Romney bill that would ‘fast-track Social Security and Medicare cuts’an 720 (https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/gop-coronavirus-relief-package-to-include-romney-bill-that-would-fast-track-social-security-and-medicare-cuts/)Common Dreams (https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/)
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/white-house-pushes-pure-giveaway-to-rich-investors-while-urging-cut-to-pandemic-unemployment-aid/
no lnx twt
White House pushes ‘pure giveaway’ to rich investors — while urging cut to pandemic unemployment aid
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 15, 2020
The Trump White House is publicly advocating a massive tax cut for wealthy U.S. investors while simultaneously urging Congress to pare back the expanded unemployment benefits currently serving as a financial lifeline for more than 30 million—and counting—jobless Americans.
In an interview on Fox Business Monday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said President Donald Trump wants included in the next Covid-19 stimulus package “a payroll tax holiday”—which critics warn is astealth attack on Social Security—and a reduction in the capital gains tax.
A levy on profits from the sale of assets, the capital gains tax disproportionately affects the wealthy and most of the benefits of any cut would largely be enjoyed by rich investors.
Slashing the capital gains tax is a longtime goal of congressional Republicans and Trump, who last year considered but ultimately abandoned a legally dubious plan to lower the tax with an executive order.
While stressing that formal talks with Congress on the next stimulus package have not yet begun, Kudlow said the administration is also pushing for “reforms” to the $600-per-week boost in unemployment insurance (UI) payments, which he characterized as excessively generous “disincentives” to work.
The benefits are set to expire at the end of the month without action from Congress.
“So the White House position is that we have to cut the incomes of 30 million people who lost their jobs or who lost hours, while also giving a giant tax cut to the biggest corporations and the richest people in the world,” tweeted Michael Linden, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank.
“Regarding the ‘capital gains holiday,’ remember this key stat: 82% of all capital gains tax is paid by the richest 1%,” Linden added. “A capital gains tax holiday is a pure giveaway to the rich.”
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that after previously urging complete expiration of the enhanced unemployment benefits, “Trump administration officials have begun opening the door to accepting a narrower version of what Congress previously approved.”
“One potential compromise discussed by Republican lawmakers would involve cutting the unemployment benefit from $600 per week to between $200 and $400 per week and making up at least part of the difference by sending another round of $1,200 stimulus payments,” the Post reported.
Trump spokesman Judd Deere told the Post that the White House is open to approving a reduction in the current weekly UI payments but remains opposed to extending the full $600-per-week.
“UI reform is a priority for this White House in any phase four package and we are in ongoing discussions with the Hill,” said Deere.
Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, warned in a blog post last week that if Congress fails to extend the enhanced unemployment benefits through next year, “it could cost us more than five million jobs and $500 million in personal income.”
“We should despair for the millions who have lost their jobs and for their families,” Wolfe wrote, “and our top priority as a country should be protecting the health and safety of workers and our broader communities by paying workers to stay home when possible, whether that means working from home some or all of the time, using paid leave, or claiming UI benefits.”White House pushes ‘pure giveaway’ to rich investors — while urging cut to pandemic unemployment aid
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 15, 2020
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romney?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-gops-covert-plot-to-gut-social-security-is-gaining-steam/
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congressional GOP rejects a second round of stimulus checks as unemployment hits 36 million (https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/congressional-gop-rejects-a-second-round-of-stimulus-checks-as-unemployment-hits-36-million/)
Matthew Rozsa (https://www.alternet.org/author/matthew-rozsa/) / Salon (https://www.alternet.org/author/salon/)May 21, 2020
Congressional Republicans are attempting to stop the passage of another relief package for Americans economically suffering as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as an estimated 36 million Americans have…
"disaster socialism?! yes pls
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aha soc safe net is a buffer, adds resilience, includes unemployment insurance that keeps workers alive when they get fired (slowly in case of "creative destruction" mkt shifts, or more sudden recession / pandemic); so it enables capitalism, basically a subsidy to corps?!
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/inside-trumps-brazen-plot-to-gut-social-security/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-trump-administrations-monstrous-idea-direct-payments-in-exchange-for-cuts-to-social-security-benefits
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/we-had-a-better-social-safety-net-then-we-busted-unions/
...1935 act...
Unions became a lynchpin to a robust social welfare system during World War II. They built on what they had won at the bargaining table, and began to accept employer-provided benefits in lieu of wage increases, which were restricted by the National War Labor Board. After the war, it was not clear whether the country would increase or decrease the government’s role in the safety net. Many unions demanded a more robust state presence and pushed (unsuccessfully) for universal health coverage, full employment legislation that would guarantee all workers a job, and even legislation that would link wages to prices. When they lost these legislative battles, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and other unions began to push for employer-provided health care and retirement plans in labor contracts. Workers and employers struggled over the developing employer-provided social safety net. In the early 1950s, up to three-quarters of strikes were over health and welfare issues....
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/this-is-horrible-florida-republicans-furious-after-unemployment-system-they-mangled-puts-trumps-re-election-in-jeopardy/
no lnx
‘This is horrible’: Florida Republicans furious after unemployment system they mangled puts Trump’s re-election in jeopardy
Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story April 3, 2020
Republicans are furious that Florida’s broken unemployment system was working exactly as former Gov. Rick Scott intended — and it could help kill President Donald Trump’s re-election chances.
The coronavirus outbreak has sent thousands of suddenly unemployed workers to the state’s byzantine system to apply for help, and Republicans privately admit the $77.9 million system was designed to discourage jobless claims to keep numbers low after the great recession, reported Politico.
“It’s a sh*t sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” said one advisor to Gov. Ron DeSantis. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
Jobless Floridians are encountering dropped calls and busy signals in the Department of Economic Opportunity’s “Connect” system, and even those who get through are finding they’ll get just $275 a week for a maximum of 12 weeks.
“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” one DeSantis adviser told Politico. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now, and no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”
The system was implemented on the promise that it would lower unemployment taxes for Florida businesses, and a 2011 analysis by the state legislature estimated the changes would save business owners more than $2.3 billion between 2011 and 2020 — but the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed its deficiencies and made it a political liability.
“This is horrible for people, I don’t want to minimize that,” the DeSantis adviser said. “But if we have to look past the crisis, it’s bad for the president and it’s bad for the governor.”
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kochs push hard for work req for welfarE DURING COVID
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/03/11/despite-coronavirus-threat-americans-prosperity-still-leads-fight-against-medicaid-expansion/
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Koch-Backed Work Rule Requirements Suffer Setback at Hands of GOP Governor
By Don Wiener | March 25th, 2020 at 11:39 AM (CDT)
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine asks Trump administration to drop work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more>> (https://default.salsalabs.org/T2bc956b8-9755-45c6-b125-4938768a9324/ac94ac0d-31ce-11e7-960b-0a8abee05f34)
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/coronavirus-is-shaking-the-global-economy-but-its-had-an-underlying-disease-for-a-long-time/
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-trump-has-made-it-harder-for-the-u-s-to-weather-a-recession/
no lnx
How Trump has made it harder for the US to weather a recession
President Donald J. Trump listens as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Larry Kudlow speaks at a press conference during the 50th Annual World Economic Forum meeting Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020, at the Davos Congress Centre in Davos, Switzerland. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)]
Written by Cody Fenwick March 17, 2020
As the coronavirus send the United States and the entire global economy hurtling toward recession, President Donald Trump and his defenders have claimed the administration’s policies have left the United States better prepared for the downturn. But in reality, the president’s effects on the course of the economy thus far have been greatly exaggerated, and many of his policies have actually put Americans at greater risk in the event of financial catastrophe.
To understand why Trump’s policies have put us at risk, you have to appreciate the best possible policy response to a recession: automatic stabilizers.
Many automatic stabilizers are actually very familiar to most people. The category includes, for example, SNAP (commonly called food stamps) and unemployment insurance.
These policies are critically important because as a recession worsens, they automatically start ramping up. As more people lose their jobs, more people go on unemployment, and the program starts paying out more money. When more people on short on cash and need help buying for food — a common occurrence in a recession — they apply for and get SNAP to feed their families. The government starts doing exactly what it should do in a recession: spending public money to make up for the private shortfall in spending.
The best policies are “automatic” in the sense that lawmakers don’t have to change the law in a recession for the programs to spend more money; they respond to the need, and if there’s more need, the programs spend more money.
This is a great way to fight a recession because it provides support to the people who are hurt worst by the downturn. That’s good for humanitarian reasons, but also in crudely economic terms because it means the money the government is almost guaranteed to be spent back into the economy. If you give money to people who are doing OK in a recession, they might just try to save it for later. Since recessions are defined by a reduction in economic activity, policies that can efficiently promote economic activity will help soften the blow and speed the recovery. And since these policies ramp up automatically, there’s less uncertainty about how much support there will be, which can help reassure businesses and investors that the recession won’t be as severe as it might otherwise be. And you can skip entirely the interminable debates and political gamesmanship endemic to the U.S. Congress.
But because of the anti-government and anti-welfare ideology that still poisons the GOP and conservative movement, under the Trump administration, many automatic stabilizers have been significantly weakened.
For example, in December 2019, the Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue announced a plan that could kick almost 700,000 people off the rolls of SNAP. It imposes stricter work requirements on the program, which makes it harder for adults who don’t have jobs to get support. Purdue framed this as an effort to fight back against “dependency” on government:
“We need to encourage people by giving them a helping hand but not allowing it to become an indefinitely giving hand,” said Secretary Perdue. “Now, in the midst of the strongest economy in a generation, we need everyone who can work, to work. This rule lays the groundwork for the expectation that able-bodied Americans re-enter the workforce where there are currently more job openings than people to fill them.”
The administration has worked in other ways, too, to limit access to the program. Even in good economic times, these kinds of rules can impose large burdens on people who, for whatever reason, struggle to get or keep a job and need help buying food. If a recession hits, these restrictive measures are even worse. As recently as last week, BuzzFeed reported that the administration had considered delaying the implementation of the rule but had decided to push forward. On Monday, a federal judge halted the change, as Chicago Tribune reported:
“Especially now, as a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is essential,” wrote Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
…
Howell halted the rule’s implementation until the court makes a final decision on its legality, saying it will likely be deemed “arbitrary and capricious” because it didn’t appear to consider the hundreds of thousands of submitted comments that raised concerns. The USDA had estimated 1.1 million people would be newly subject to the work rules and nearly 700,000 people nationwide were likely to lose food assistance as a result of the change. Some 36 million Americans are enrolled in SNAP.
But as the Tribune pointed out, tens of thousands have already been kicked off the rolls of SNAP because of similar federal rules under the Trump administration.
The problem goes far beyond SNAP. Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post reported that under Trump — as well as before him — states and the federal government have weakened other policies that could serve as automatic stabilizers:
Elsewhere, the administration has been demanding states add additional paperwork requirements for enrollment in both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, causing eligible families to lose coverage.
The administration also recently announced a proposal to convert part of Medicaid to block grants. This would mean states would get a capped annual amount of federal dollars for the program. It would also limit states’ ability to expand enrollment during a downturn.
Then finally there’s the unemployment insurance program, yet another policy designed to serve as a safety net both for individual families and the macroeconomy as a whole. In theory, it allows jobless people to keep paying bills and patronizing local businesses.
…
This problem clearly pre-dates Trump. Even so, his administration has since encouraged states to add more bureaucratic hurdles — including by doing more widespread drug testing as a condition of benefit receipt. This appears to be a solution in search of a problem, based on the handful of states that have experimented with similar programs before. It’s also expensive, and it slows down benefit receipt.
And it’s not just public health insurance that has been diminished under Trump. After his extensive efforts to undermine Obamacare, the uninsured rate began rising under his administration after consistently falling under his predecessor. This, too, will impose greater burdens on Americans in a recession — especially a recession driven by a public health threat.
Rampell also noted that Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council under Trump, had touted the benefits of automatic stabilizers in the face of a recession without acknowledging how significantly they had been diminished.
Now, it does appear as if Congress and the administration are prepared to move forward with some non-automatic stabilizers to fight the coming recession. This could potentially be stimulus spending in the form of direct cash to families, which would likely be the best option. But many argue that Democrats — who generally favor such policies — should only agree to go along with such a plan if Republicans agree to make the policy automatic. That way, if a recession happens under the next Democratic president, the same beneficial counter-cyclical measures could ramp up without Congress needing to act. Because as Republicans proved in 2009, if a Democrat is in the White House, the GOP is much less willing to spend money to benefit the American people.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/disaster-socialism-will-coronavirus-crisis-finally-change-how-americans-see-the-safety-net/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/rise-of-a-shadow-political-party-how-christian-nationalists-worship-power-and-why-they-love-trump/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/rise-of-a-shadow-political-party-how-christian-nationalists-worship-power-and-why-they-love-trump/
no lnx
Rise of a ‘shadow political party’: How Christian nationalists worship power — and why they love Trump
Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon March 4, 2020
It’s one of the most enduring conundrums of the Donald Trump era: How is it that the Christian right, the self-appointed monitors of American morality, have come to so enthusiastically back a thrice-married chronic adulterer who lies as easily as he breathes?
Author Katherine Stewart has the answer: Because the true god these folks worship is power. In her book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” Stewart details how she traveled around the country, getting to know the various Christian conservative figures that are whipping support for Trump and his agenda. She deems the “Christian nationalists” and demonstrates how their supposedly Christian values always come second to their endless quest for power.
Stewart spoke with Salon about her new book. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In the intro of the book you write that most Americans view the Christian right as a “cultural movement centered on a set of social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.” But in fact, it’s a political movement and its ultimate goal is power. What do you mean by that?
I think when we think of the religious right, we’re often thinking of a cultural movement or social movement that works from the bottom up, expressing the anxieties and reactions of a particular group in American society to change social realities, focused on issues like reproductive rights or same-sex marriage. But Christian nationalism really works from the top down. It actively shapes and manipulates its target population, and it often shifts its target.
When movement leaders are talking to the congregants or to pastors who speak to congregants, it’s all abortion all the time. The foot soldiers may even believe that they’re fighting for things like a ban on abortion or same-sex marriage, but the leaders have actually consciously reframed these issues in such a way that they can control the vote of a large subsection of the American public. They use that to solidify and maintain political power for themselves and their allies, to increase the flow of public and private money in their direction, and to enact economic policies that are favorable to their funders.
When you dig a little deeper into what the movement leaders talk about when they talk with one another, they actually advocate for a very wide range of policy issues that don’t just have to do with abortion or same-sex marriage. A lot of it has to do with economic policy. A lot of it has to do with foreign policy, social policy. It’s important to look at the movement in this broader fashion as a political movement that wants power.
Tell me more about that. How does someone argue that there’s something Christian about, say, low tax and low regulation?
They say that the Bible favors minimal government or no government. The Bible is against regulation, against the social safety net. Unless the social safety net is managed by the church.
Someone like Ralph Drollinger — who targets political leaders at the top levels of government — he’s got this Bible study group in the Capitol that’s been attended by at least 11 members of Trump’s cabinet, including Mike Pence. He also has Bible study groups targeting the Senate and House of Representatives, and they’re very well-attended. So he’s arguably one of the most politically influential pastors in America.
He argues that social welfare programs have no basis in Scripture. He says that the government should not directly fund needs for the poor. He says the responsibility to meet the needs of the poor lies first with a husband and a marriage, second with a family if the husband is absent, and third with the church. He says nowhere does God command the institutions of government or commerce to fully support those with genuine needs.
These policies are incredibly favorable to the plutocratic fortunes that are funding the movement. The movement wouldn’t be what it is without some subsection of very wealthy individuals and extended families that are supporting the movement financially. I’m thinking of like the DeVos, Prince families, the Green family, and so many others that I described in my book.
These families, in turn, benefit from a deregulation of lack of environmental control regulation, low taxation, and minimal workers’ rights. Drollinger himself derived a lot of his early funding from agribusiness kings, people who own large agribusiness conglomerates in Central Valley, California, and the San Joaquin Valley. So it’s a kind of economic policy that actually is favorable to many of the big-picture funders of the movement.
We also have to recognize that the role of public money is absolutely huge. A lot of the calls for “religious freedom” that characterize much of the activism of the movement today are often seen, rightly so, as a demand that conservative Christians should be able to discriminate against LGBT Americans, nonreligious women and members of the religious minority groups. But even more than that, activists have their eye on a vast potential flow of public funds in the future. This is one of the reasons why the calls for religious freedom are just like this ever-louder drum beat that we’re hearing in so many places.
This agenda has been made really explicit in the field of public education where activists are determined to expand access to public funds in the form of vouchers. They’ve actually placed a key voucher case before the Supreme Court, which they hope will allow a greater funnel of funds in their direction.
The United States spends something like $700 billion a year on K-12. So Christian nationalists realize that, if they can get their hands on a small portion of that in the name of religious liberty, the money will flow without end. So when you look at the larger demands of the movement, it’s not just about these culture war issues, it’s about public policy, foreign policy, and it’s about money.
You call it a Christian nationalist movement, not a white nationalist movement, not the Christian right even. Why do you call it a Christian nationalist movement?
Christian nationalism is a political ideology. It says that what makes the United States distinctive is not our democratic system of government, or our Constitution, or our history of assimilating diverse people in a pluralist society. Instead, it insists that the foundation of legitimate government is bound up inextricably with the reactionary understanding of a particular religion. It basically says that the U.S. was founded on the Bible, and can only succeed if it stays true to that foundation.
It’s also not just an ideology, but a device for mobilizing and often manipulating large segments of the population and for concentrating power in the hands of this new elite. Vladimir Putin in Russia, or Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Erdogan in Turkey tie themselves closely to religious conservatives in their countries, to consolidate an authoritarian form of power. We’re seeing this today with Trump’s alliances, with our own religious conservatives.
You write that America’s conservative churches have been converted into “loyal cells of a shadow political party.” What do you mean by that?
Leaders of the movement have figured out that pastors drive votes, and so they organize pastors into these networks, to get them on the same page politically. They give them tools through networks of conservative churches in order to do that, to help them turn out votes for hyper-conservative candidates.
Recently, I found myself at a small church in rural North Carolina, with dozens of evangelical pastors from the area. I was at an event sponsored by an organization called Watchmen on the Wall, which is an initiative of the Family Research Council, which is one of the largest and most powerful policy groups of the Christian right.
Watchmen on the Wall claims to have over 25,000 pastor members. They get all these pastors networked together, and they have these presentations where they tell them what issues matter and how to turn out the vote on these “biblical issues.” There wasn’t a slightest doubt about which way these pastors were expected to tell their congregations to vote.
They were instructed to form what they call culture impact teams within their churches. They have to figure out which members of their congregation are politically active, well-connected with other members, and motivated to get them to vote according to “biblical values.” They gave these pastors these booklets, 200 pages of material that help them form these culture impact teams.
They actually give them tools to get them out to vote. They give them tens of thousands of voter guides, and pastors were encouraged to take as many as they could use and hand out.
Your chapter on the anti-abortion movement in the book is titled “Inventing Abortion.” You write that it’s a myth that the movement was a reaction to a sincere belief in protecting fetal life. Tell me more. What is this Christian right obsession with abortion? Where does it come from? What is it actually about?
When Roe v. Wade was passed, the liberalization of abortion laws was something that many, if not most, Republican partisans supported. The early battles over abortion tended to be between Catholics and Protestants, with Protestants largely on the side of liberalization of abortion laws. Even though Catholic hierarchy is opposed to abortion, many Catholic individuals supported some form of liberalization based on sort of lived experience.
At that time that Roe v. Wade passed, the abortion law reform really conformed with the Republican party’s support for Protestant values, birth control. Billy Graham in 1968 said, “In general, I would disagree with the Catholic stance. I believe in Planned Parenthood.”
The most liberal abortion law in the country was signed in 1967 by California’s Republican governor, Ronald Reagan. Barry Goldwater, who is this great conservative hero, supported abortion law liberalization early in his career. His wife, Peggy, was a co-founder of Planned Parenthood in Arizona.
When Roe v. Wade passed, in fact, there was a wire service run by the Southern Baptist Convention. The bureau chief of the Baptist Press wrote a piece saying that religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court decision.
This was not an issue that united the Republican party at all, until activists from the new right got involved and were really searching for an issue that could unite the party.
At the time, they’d come together out of concern that institutions like Bob Jones University would be deprived of their lucrative tax advantage. But they knew that preserving tax advantages for racially segregated academies is not going to be an issue that could really unite the party. So they kind of looked around for an issue that could unite conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants.
Bit by bit, they settled on abortion and sort of purged the Republican party of its pro-choice representatives. They needed a single issue that they could get people to vote on, and abortion became that issue.
Let’s talk about Donald Trump. He’s obviously not a religious man. He knows little of Christian theology. He can’t even get the terminology right. He can’t really even be bothered to pretend otherwise. So how is a man like that such a hero to the Christian nationalists?
First, the movement realizes that much of their agenda is advanced through the courts and he’s delivering them everything that he promised.
I was at a Road To Majority conference, that’s Ralph Reed’s conference, right before the election. Trump held up a list of justices and he said, “I’m going to choose Supreme Court justices from this list,” and every single one of them was pro-life. Of course, the issue wasn’t just abortion, but abortion becomes code for the entire agenda.
There’s that transactional side of it. But I think that there’s another side too. Trump’s anti-democratic attributes are a vital part of his attraction for this movement.
This movement doesn’t really believe in modern representative democracy. At bottom, they sound as though they prefer autocrats. In fact, what they really want is a king. Paula White is always calling Trump a king. Ralph Drollinger is always talking about kinging and kings. Trump has been referred to as King Cyrus.
The thing about kings like Cyrus is that they don’t have to follow the rules. They are the law. Trump understands this longing for the hard hand of the despot. That is what has made him such an attractive leader to this movement.
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trump admits he’ll be ‘cutting’ entitlements — but here’s what he really revealed
Cody Fenwick
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-latest-judicial-nominee-wants-to-abolish-social-security/
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Trump’s latest judicial nominee wants to abolish social security
Written by Joan McCarter / Daily Kos February 26, 2020
There’s another deplorable nominee on Mitch McConnell’s conveyor belt: Stephen Schwartz, nominated to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and pending in the Judiciary Committee. This is impeached president Donald Trump’s second go at having Schwartz appointed to this court, which hears claims against the federal government. Trump wants Schwartz there because he’s argued that Social Security should be abolished because being elderly and disabled “is a natural aspect of the human condition” so those people shouldn’t get any assistance.
Those are recent views from the too-young Schwartz, who wrote them 15 years ago in the student newspaper at Yale. When he was an undergraduate. He also “wrote that the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Education lack a ‘constitutional basis,’ and that Social Security benefits were intended to prevent ‘outright starvation’ but had become a ‘standard component of most retirement programs.'” Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you lollygagging 80 year olds.
Of course that’s not all. Schwartz has also been in on legal efforts to disenfranchise African American voters in North Carolina and in Virginia’s public bathroom wars, trying to make transgender students’ bladders explode. As a pet attorney for the Koch network in its Cause of Action institute, he has sued the federal government multiple times. “There are lots of circumstances today in America where agencies of the federal government exercise their discretion in ways that are terrible for personal liberty, for economic freedoms,” he said in an interview during one of those suits.
Because personal liberty and economic freedom mean having to find a job when you’re in your 70s or 80s or 90s so you can eat. “Schwartz is another example of Trump’s ideal nominee for the bench: a conservative ideologue who is determined to undermine civil rights and federal agencies,” Vanita Gupta, who headed the Obama Justice Department’s civil rights division, told The Washington Post.
Schwartz faced stiff opposition in 2017 from a variety of quarters, and his nomination eventually languished as the committee and Mitch McConnell focused on more critical seats. This appointment needs to be squelched again.
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aha: gop voodoo reductionist cut gov't boost economy: but floor needed for innovation/start small biz: se corp coup: trumpistas stick w/ him tho he is clearly hurting them.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/financial-writer-explains-why-trumps-proposed-federal-budget-would-be-an-economic-calamity-possibly-pushing-the-us-to-the-brink-of-a-recession/
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Financial writer explains why Trump’s proposed federal budget would be an ‘economic calamity’ — possibly pushing the US to ‘the brink of a recession’
Written by Alex Henderson February 20, 2020
Whoever the Democratic Party ends up nominating for the 2020 presidential election — whether it’s Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg or someone else — President Donald Trump will no doubt be campaigning aggressively on the state of the U.S. economy, claiming that a second Trump term would be synonymous with prosperity and economic growth. But liberal/progressive writer Michael Linden, in a February 20 op-ed for CNN Business’ website, offers a long list of reasons why he believes that the federal budget Trump is proposing would be an “economic calamity.”
Trump’s proposed budget, according to Linden, is “full of outdated ideas that would instantly weaken the economy and undermine our ability to grow and prosper over time.” For example, Linden notes, Trump “proposes massive immediate cuts to the kinds of public services, protections and health care that help propel short-term economic growth by supporting demand for goods and services.”
“Just last quarter,” Linden observes, “the government was contributing the most to GDP than at any other point since the end of the Great Recession. President Trump’s budget would reverse that, withdrawing critical support at a time when growth has already slowed. The cuts are so deep, so massive and so poorly targeted that they could be large enough to even push us to the brink of a recession.”
The CNN Business contributor goes on to point out that “overall economic activity grew by only 2.1% over the last year. Well, Trump’s budget includes roughly $958 billion in total cuts in the first four years. That amounts to about 1% shaved off of total gross domestic product right there.”
Deep cuts to social programs, Linden emphasizes, don’t promote economic growth — they harm it.
“Programs like Medicaid, food stamps and tax credits for low-income families tend to permeate throughout local economies most effectively, and those are exactly the resources that President Trump’s budget envisions cutting to the tune of about $335 billion in the next four years,” Linden explains. “These cuts could reduce overall economic activity by another .3% to .4%. Put it all together, and Trump’s plan would slash the overall economic growth rate down to well under 1% over the next few years — putting us right on the edge of outright economic contraction.”
One of the things liberal presidents of the past understood — including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s and President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s — is that when the American middle class prospers and has more money to spend, that money goes into the U.S. economy. 2020 presidential hopefuls Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren clearly understand those principles of New Deal and Great Society economics.
Trump’s proposed federal budget, Linden contends, fails to recognize the vital role that “workers and consumers” play in the economy.
“Workers and consumers are what drive growth and prosperity,” Linden asserts. “When workers have the support and investment they need to do their best work, they innovate, create and do more with less time and fewer resources. When consumers have money in their pockets, they drive demand for goods and services and induce businesses to invest in the future…. Trump’s budget slashes at those very foundations: education, health care, research and development.”
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https://theconversation.com/ai-algorithms-intended-to-root-out-welfare-fraud-often-end-up-punishing-the-poor-instead-131625
President Donald Trump recently suggested there is “tremendous fraud” in government welfare programs.
Although there’s very little evidence to back up his claim, he’s hardly the first politician – conservative or liberal – to vow to crack down on fraud and waste in America’s social safety net.
States – which are charged with distributing and overseeing many federally funded benefits – are taking these fraud accusations seriously. They are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence and other automated systems to determine benefits eligibility and ferret out fraud in a variety of benefits programs, from food stamps and Medicaid to unemployment insurance.
Of course, government agencies should ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent effectively. The problem is these automated decision-making systems are sometimes rife with errors and designed in ways that punish the poor for being poor, leading to tragic results.
As a clinical law professor who has researched safety net programs and has represented low-income clients in public benefits cases for over 20 years, I believe it’s essential these systems are designed in ways that are fair, transparent and accountable to prevent hurting society’s most vulnerable.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/whit-house-budget-to-propose-savage-cuts-to-medicare-medicaid-and-social-security-while-hiking-pentagon-and-wall-funds/
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Trump’s assault on the social safety set
Ryan LaRochelle, Luisa S. Deprez / Washington Monthly
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-shame-of-child-poverty-in-the-trump-era-poor-kids-lose-as-billionaires-cash-in/
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Rajan Menon / Tom Dispatch February 3, 2020
The plight of impoverished children anywhere should evoke sympathy, exemplifying as it does the suffering of the innocent and defenseless. Poverty among children in a wealthy country like the United States, however, should summon shame and outrage as well. Unlike poor countries (sometimes run by leaders more interested in lining their pockets than anything else), what excuse does the United States have for its striking levels of child poverty? After all, it has the world’s 10th highest per capita income at $62,795 and an unrivaled gross domestic product (GDP) of $21.3 trillion. Despite that, in 2020, an estimated 11.9 million American kids — 16.2% of the total — live below the official poverty line, which is a paltry $25,701 for a family of four with two kids. Put another way, according to the Children’s Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70% of them have at least one working parent — so poverty can’t be chalked up to parental indolence.
Yes, the proportion of kids living below the poverty line has zigzagged down from 22% when the country was being ravaged by the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and was even higher in prior decades, but no one should crack open the champagne bottles just yet. The relevant standard ought to be how the United States compares to other wealthy countries. The answer: badly. It has the 11th highest child poverty rate of the 42 industrialized countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Winnow that list down to European Union states and Canada, omitting low and middle-income countries, and our child poverty rate ranks above only Spain’s. Use the poverty threshold of the OECD — 50% of a country’s median income ($63,178 for the United States) — and the American child poverty rate leaps to 20%.
The United States certainly doesn’t lack the means to drive child poverty down or perhaps even eliminate it. Many countries on that shorter OECD list have lower per-capita incomes and substantially smaller GDPs yet (as a UNICEF report makes clear) have done far better by their kids. Our high child-poverty rate stems from politics, not economics — government policies that, since the 1980s, have reduced public investment as a proportion of GDP in infrastructure, public education, and poverty reduction. These were, of course, the same years when a belief that “big government” was an obstacle to advancement took ever-deeper hold, especially in the Republican Party. Today, Washington allocates only 9% of its federal budget to children, poor or not. That compares to a third for Americans over 65, up from 22% in 1971. If you want a single fact that sums up where we are now, inflation-adjusted per-capita spending on kids living in the poorest families has barely budged compared to 30 years ago whereas the corresponding figure for the elderly has doubled.
The conservative response to all this remains predictable: you can’t solve complex social problems like child poverty by throwing money at them. Besides, government antipoverty programs only foster dependence and create bloated bureaucracies without solving the problem. It matters little that the actual successes of American social programs prove this claim to be flat-out false. Before getting to that, however, let’s take a snapshot of child poverty in America.
Sizing Up the Problem....
efining poverty may sound straightforward, but it’s not. The government’s annual Official Poverty Measure (OPM), developed in the 1960s, establishes poverty lines by taking into account family size, multiplying the 1963 cost for a minimum food budget by three while factoring in changes in the Consumer Price Index, and comparing the result to family income. In 2018, a family with a single adult and one child was considered poor with an income below $17,308 ($20,2012 for two adults and one child, $25,465 for two adults and two children, and so on). According to the OPM, 11.8% of all Americans were poor that year.
By contrast, the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published yearly since 2011, builds on the OPM but provides a more nuanced calculus. It counts the post-tax income of families, but also cash flows from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), both of which help low-income households. It adds in government-provided assistance through, say, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), Medicaid, subsidies for housing and utilities, and unemployment and disability insurance. However, it deducts costs like child care, child-support payments, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. According to the SPM, the 2018 national poverty rate was 12.8%.
Of course, neither of these poverty calculations can tell us how children are actually faring. Put simply, they’re faring worse. In 2018, 16.2% of Americans under 18 lived in families with incomes below the SPM line. And that’s not the worst of it. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study commissioned by Congress found that 9% of poor children belong to families in “deep poverty” (incomes that are less than 50% of the SPM). But 36% of all American children live in poor or “near poor” families, those with incomes within 150% of the poverty line.
Child poverty also varies by race — a lot. The rate for black children is 17.8%; for Hispanic kids, 21.7%; for their white counterparts, 7.9%. Worse, more than half of all black and Hispanic kids live in “near poor” families compared to less than a quarter of white children. Combine age and race and you’ll see another difference, especially for children under five, a population with an overall 2017 poverty rate of 19.2%. Break those under-fives down by race, however, and here’s what you find: white kids at 15.9%, Hispanic kids at an eye-opening 25.8%, and their black peers at a staggering 32.9%.
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timing bizzaRE unless smash and grab window?
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-trump-administration-just-declared-war-on-social-security/
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The Trump Administration just declared war on social security
Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul, Image via Screengrab CSPAN.
Written by Alex Lawson / Independent Media Institute December 18, 2019
American workers contribute to Social Security with every paycheck. When they do, they are earning comprehensive insurance protections. Social Security insures against the loss of wages due to old age, disability, or (for the surviving family of a worker) death. While Social Security is best known as a retirement program, disability and survivor’s benefits are equally essential.
An attack on any part of Social Security is an attack on the entire system and all current and future beneficiaries. The latest proposal from Donald Trump’s administration, which is designed to rip benefits away from hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities, amounts to a declaration of war on Social Security.
The Trump administration proposal would require millions of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries to re-prove their eligibility for benefits as often as every six months—far more frequently than is currently the case. There is no justification for this policy. The United States already has some of the strictest eligibility criteria for disability benefits in the world. More than half of all claims are denied.
We should be making it easier for workers to claim the Social Security benefits they’ve earned with every paycheck, not harder. And ripping benefits away from current beneficiaries, who rely on them to survive, is even worse.
We know what the effects of the Trump proposal would be, because Ronald Reagan implemented a very similar benefit cut back in the 1980s. Reagan’s policy ripped away the benefits of 200,000 Americans with disabilities. The New York Times reported that “people with obvious physical and mental disabilities” lost their benefits “without having been interviewed.”
Ultimately, Reagan was forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry, and bipartisan condemnation from Congress—but not before 21,176 people died, including several who died by suicide, “because their benefits were cut off.”
Donald Trump himself might not be a diligent student of history, but his advisers—men like Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff and a longtime enemy of Social Security—know exactly what they are doing. They want to resurrect Reagan’s Social Security cut knowing full well that it killed people.
This could impact any of us, even those of us who are currently healthy. Imagine that you are hit by a car tomorrow, and suffer life-altering injuries that prevent you from working. You’re faced with crushing medical bills, and you’ve lost your income. In such situations, SSDI benefits are a crucial lifeline. Donald Trump wants to rip that lifeline away.
Trump and Mulvaney are targeting people with disabilities first, because they perceive them as politically vulnerable. But if they are allowed to get away with this attack, it will be only the beginning. They want to destroy every part of Social Security, including retirement benefits, and turn it over to their criminal friends on Wall Street.
We must stop Trump’s plan. The Social Security Administration is collecting comments on the proposal until the end of January. You can comment opposing the plan here. Everyone must also call their elected officials. Congressional condemnation played a huge role in forcing Ronald Reagan to reverse his version of the attack, and it can stop Trump in his tracks.
If we let the politicians in Washington, D.C., take away some people’s earned benefits, it means they can take away all of our earned benefits.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Alex Lawson is the executive director of Social Security Works, a non-profit advocacy group that supports expanding benefits to address America’s growing retirement security crisis. Lawson has appeared on numerous TV and radio outlets and is a frequent guest host of The Thom Hartmann Program, one of the top progressive radio shows in the country.
omg; border is our future, stalking horse trial balloons?
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/a-consulting-firm-advised-ice-to-cut-migrants-food-and-medical-care-to-save-costs-worrying-agency-officials/
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A consulting firm advised ICE to cut migrants’ food and medical care to save costs — worrying agency officials
Written by Ian MacDougall / ProPublica December 3, 2019
Two years of Republican government has been an incompetent circus — and even worse than we expected
Heather Digby Parton / Salon December 24, 2018
So long, Republican Congress, and good riddance.
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Two years of Republican government has been an incompetent circus — and even worse than we expected
Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon December 24, 2018
Poor Paul Ryan. The golden boy of the Ayn Rand crowd was once assumed to be a future president, or at least one of the great statesmen of the Republican Party. He was considered a rarity among Republican pols — a policy wonk with the polish and personality of Ronald Reagan. (I know that sounds crazy, but people really did think that.)
When Barack Obama came into office he saw Ryan as a partner in reducing the federal deficit and the White House went out of its way to feature him prominently in various domestic policy "summits" that were held in the early months of that administration. Obama's opinion changed after he tried to negotiate with Ryan and his cohorts in the House Republican leadership, but it took years for the political media to see Ryan for what he really was: a callow ideologue without much character when the chips were down.
Paul Krugman had his number back in 2010:
Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his "Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”
But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.
But oh, did they love those blue, blue eyes of his.
Ryan never wanted to be House speaker. He wanted to be president. But when John Boehner was finally forced out by the Freedom Caucus and his heir apparent, Kevin McCarthy, tanked his chances with loose talk about using the Benghazi hearings to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Ryan was the only person all Republicans could agree on. He reluctantly signed on. And in doing that he ended up signing his political death warrant.
Ryan's performance as speaker showed him to be feckless, hypocritical and weak in just about every way. He couldn't control his crazies on the one hand and couldn't deal effectively with the crazy in the White House on the other. He ended up being a yes-man for an unfit president who didn't even understand how the three branches of government work. Krugman nailed it again this year upon word of Ryan's retirement. Commenting on the media's surprise, even now, that Ryan and his cohorts have blown the deficit up to unprecedented proportions and happily enabled Donald Trump, Krugman wrote:
[T]he principles they claimed to have never had anything to do with their actual goals. In particular, Republicans haven’t abandoned their concerns about budget deficits, because they never cared about deficits; they only faked concern as an excuse to cut social programs.
And if you ask why Ryan never took a stand against Trumpian corruption, why he never showed any concern about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, what ever made you think he would take such a stand? Again, if you look at Ryan’s actions, not the character he played to gullible audiences, he has never shown himself willing to sacrifice anything he wants — not one dime — on behalf of his professed principles. Why on earth would you expect him to stick his neck out to defend the rule of law?
Surprise. Paul Ryan is just another partisan hack. Still, I don't think even I expected him to be as terrible at the job as he has been. As he takes his farewell tour, which President Trump generously stepped all over with his silly government shutdown, it pays to recall just what a disaster he has been and the rubble he leaves in his wake.
First, let's recall that when Boehner saw the writing on the wall, he at least made a deal to keep the government open and raise the spending limit for two years as a parting gift to the American people. Granted, he wasn't negotiating with an insane president, but he did have the insane Freedom Caucus in the House, allied with the meddling Ted Cruz in the Senate at the time. He spent every last chit trying to calm things down on his way out the door. Ryan's just rolled along with all of Trump's lurching about on the budget and the wall and is leaving in the midst of total chaos.
We have finally reached the end of this two-year period of total Republican control of the government. It's important to look at what they did when they had it. They managed to pack the courts with unfit, inexperienced extremists in the mold of the man who nominated them. No matter how few people agree with their agenda or vote for them in the future, they will have a strong influence through the extremist right-wing judiciary they have installed in lifetime positions. That's one mission they actually accomplished. Of course, that had nothing to do with Paul Ryan.
They managed to get tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, their Holy Grail, enacted. That was just a generous gift to their big donors, no strings attached and no expectation that it would benefit average Americans. It hasn't.
They just passed a criminal justice reform package that was backed by the Koch brothers and other big-money libertarian types, one suspects just in time to help a spate of rich white guys heading off to jail. (Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner pushed this through having lived through his father's incarceration for fraud. What a family.)
They couldn't get Obamacare repealed, although Trump's minions have been working overtime to sabotage it from within. They didn't get Trump's wall. The national debt has exploded and the president is on the verge of being impeached. That's quite a record.
But don't worry. This will work out just fine for them. It's just a more extreme version of what they always do. They wreck the economy and destroy all faith in government. Then when the Democrats win as a result of their malfeasance, they stand on the sidelines and wail about fiscal responsibility and demand that Democrats cut services for average people. Like clockwork, rich media celebrities will undoubtedly stroke their chins and sagely advise the people to "grow up" and "take their medicine" by giving up things like health care and retirement security.
Look for Paul Ryan to be batting those baby blues and wringing his hands on TV over debt and deficits any day now. It's a beautiful scam and it's been working for decades. If you didn't know better you'd almost think they planned it this way.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/punishing-the-poor-for-being-hungry/
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Punishing the poor for being hungry
Written by David K. Shipler / Washington Monthly October 11, 2019
The United States might be the only country in the world where poverty is considered a moral failing—on the part of the victims, not the society. When conservatives are in charge of government, this judgment infiltrates policy. Republicans move repeatedly to twist regulations around an assumption that the poor don’t want to work and don’t make sound decisions. And when this bias affects children’s nutrition, it can cause lifelong impairment.
In the last year alone, the Trump administration has taken multiple shots at food stamps, now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which helped feed about 40 million people last year. The latest change, one week ago, would cut benefits by $4.5 billion over five years. Even in a booming economy, one in seven households with children were considered “food insecure” last year, according to the Department of Agriculture’s 2018 survey, meaning that they weren’t sure of having enough food for everyone.
Research in the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience has documented the severe biological assaults caused by inadequate nutrition during sensitive phases of brain development. Numerous studies, compiled in a lengthy National Academy of Sciences report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, portray a devastating landscape of cognitive deficiency resulting from nutritional deprivation. The insufficiency of healthy food during a pregnant woman’s second trimester can reduce the creation of neurons, the brain’s impulse-conducting cells. Malnutrition in the third trimester restricts their maturation and retards the production of branched cells called glia.
Iron is essential to promote the growth of the brain in size and the creation of the nerve-transmitting myelin sheath around the brain’s nerve fibers. The impact of iron deficiency in a baby, therefore, never disappears, even once the deficiency is eliminated. One longitudinal studythat followed children from infancy through adolescence found that they scored lower “in arithmetic achievement and written expression, motor functioning, and some specific cognitive processes such as spatial memory and selective recall.”
Teachers reported that such children displayed “more anxiety or depression, social problems, and attention problems.” It is no great leap of logic to see learning disabilities as one result of malnutrition. And a child who can’t do decently in school, who can’t follow half of what a teacher is saying, is more inclined to drop out.
For those Republicans who are moved more by self-interest than empathy, it’s worth noting that high school dropouts earn less that those with degrees, pay less in taxes, have more serious medical problems, and are at higher risk of ending up in jail.
Yet Trump’s people have sought to saddle the $68 billion-a-year SNAP program with restrictions and cuts to the monthly benefits, which now come on debit cards with declining balances, and typically last a family only two or three weeks. Certain regulations that the Trump administration has either enacted or has openly considered would treat needy Americans with suspicion and distrust. For instance:
Officials have considered imposing a drug-testing regime on SNAP recipients (although not on farmers who receive huge federal subsidies as part of the same legislation).
The Agriculture Department, which administers the program, published a rule in July to eliminate states’ option to raise eligibility limits above the federal ceiling, which is 130 percent of the poverty line.
Previously, states could get waivers to enroll families earning more if their housing and child-care expenses soaked up a big percentage of their income. More generous housing subsidies would help, because in many parts of the country, where rent can consume 50 percent or more of a family’s budget, the money for food gets squeezed. The comment period on the rule change ended in September; once adopted, it will cut off about 3 million recipients.
In last week’s action, the administration effectively took away $75 in benefits from one out of every five families by recalculating how housing and utilities costs are figured.
The Trump administration tried to tighten work requirements in this year’s budget, Congress refused, and officials have gone ahead anyway to partially evade the legislative intent. Since 1996, single able-bodied adults with no dependents, up to age 49, could get SNAP benefits for only three months in a three-year period unless they worked or were in job training at least 80 hours a month. States could waive the rule in areas with acute joblessness. Trump wanted to expand the requirement to age 59 and, more harmfully, apply it to those with children over six years old. That was rejected by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. So last December the Agriculture Department did what it could administratively by making it much harder for states to get waivers.
In his 2019 budget, Trump proposed replacing half of a family’s cash grants with a food package of cereal, pasta, peanut butter, canned fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, and other items deemed good for them. Sending such packages to 40 million people would have been so costly and impractical that the idea collapsed of its own weight. But the notion seemed borne of a patronizing attitude toward the poor, who suffer from a disparaging stereotype that they do not act responsibly.
Clinics treating childhood malnutrition see a broad array of causes. Lack of money is the centerpiece, but lack of knowledge about healthy eating can also contribute to some cases. Health providers find that some parents don’t know how to cook with relatively inexpensive ingredients. New immigrants unfamiliar with American food can be fooled by ads into thinking that Coke and Cheetos are healthy. So can Americans themselves. Lots of junk food is cheap and filling, hence the nation’s epidemic of obesity, which can be a sign of malnutrition.
Supermarkets with fresh, healthy food are scarce in many low-income neighborhoods. A child’s food allergies can be baffling without the funds and information required to have a large assortment of choices on hand. Single parents doing shift work can’t keep track of what their kids are being fed by multiple caregivers. Nor do they usually have the orderly life that allows them to sit children down calmly to feed them, or have a regular family meal.
In other words, childhood malnutrition is created at the confluence of problems and disabilities that magnify and reinforce one another. They must all be addressed. The cognitive impairment that results cannot be attacked by a country that keeps electing officials who entangle the safety net in a set of punitive impulses.
David K. Shipler is a Washington Monthly contributing writer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven books, and a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He blogs at The Shipler Report.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-want-to-cut-social-security-behind-closed-doors/
no lnx
Trump’s big farmer grift: He’s giving millions to the rich while starving the poor
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-big-farmer-grift-hes-giving-millions-to-the-rich-while-starving-the-poor
Written by Jim Hightower / Creators Syndicate August 15, 2019
Donald Trump loooooves farmers. We know this because he says so. “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he declared in December. And we’ve learned that whenever The Donald says something, it’s true — even when it’s not.
These days, he’s loving farmers to death. Trump has ignored the obvious need to get monopolistic price-fixing bankers, suppliers and commodity buyers off their backs. And he’s ineptly playing tariff games with China and other buyers of U.S. farm products, causing exports and farm prices to tumble. The result is that our ag economy is tumbling into a deep ditch, slamming farm families and rural America with a rising tsunami of bankruptcies.
Adding crude insult to economic injury, Trump’s doofus of an ag secretary, Sonny Perdue, laughed at farmers, branding them “whiners” for opposing his majesty’s disastrous policies.
So, needing a political “I love you” gesture, Trump has been sending big bouquets of money to some of his beloved farmers. Our money. Lots of it — $28 billion so far, in what he cynically (and comically) calls the Market Facilitation Program, otherwise known as a taxpayer bailout.
But TrumpLove turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners. The Department of Agriculture initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators. The slickum in this deal is that assorted members of a family can claim to be owners of the same farm and be eligible for bailout money, even if they do no actual farming and live in New York City! Thus, one Missouri farm family got $2.8 million worth of subsidy love from Trump, and more than 80 families topped half a million in payments.
Meanwhile, the great majority of farmers — 80% of eligible grain farmers — got zilch from Donald the Dealmaker. The smaller producers who are most endangered by his export collapse got less than $5,000. So Trump’s “Market Facilitation” is squeezing the many who are most in need while helping a few of the largest get even bigger.
While the Trumpistas are presently trying to plow a multibillion-dollar subsidy into big grain farms, they’re shockingly stingy when it comes to our society’s moral responsibility to make sure the least-wealthy among us get an adequate level of food. Their latest effort in the practice of mass minginess is to try literally taking food off poor children’s plates. Using a tangle of federal red tape, Trump ideologues and bureaucratic minions are intervening to prevent states from providing food stamp assistance to millions of their people.
According to federal rules, to qualify for food aid, a family of three should have an income under $27,000 a year. But with rents, utilities, health care and even food prices constantly rising, millions of Americans can’t make ends meet on such a low income. Thus, 40 states have stepped in to loosen that income restriction so families at least get the minimum nutrition humans need. Far from being welfare moochers (as far-right-wing extremists screech), these recipients overwhelmingly are working families, children, the elderly and Americans with disabilities. The benefit is hardly lavish; it averages only $127 a month, but even this modest outlay has proven enormously successful in mitigating poverty.
Congress actually authorized states to make such pragmatic income adjustments in a 1996 revamp of the law. But look out! Here comes Sonny Perdue again, rising up on his hind legs to proclaim that naughty state officials are using that authority as a “loophole” to circumvent Trump’s federal authority. So Sonny and Donnie are demanding that a whole new bureaucracy of food stamp “eligibility police” be set up to monitor the assets of hard-hit people who’re just trying to get adequate food on their tables. This nonsense will cost tens of millions of our dollars to harass the poor in an autocratic hope of nabbing a couple of hungry families who have a dime more in assets than miserly Trumpistas claim they should have.
What we have here is government by plutocratic authoritarians who’ll gleefully dole out millions to a wealthy family and then just as gleefully go out of their way to deny food to millions of poor families.
Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/republican-attacks-on-the-social-security-2100-act-are-an-assault-on-public-health/
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aha ish: lakoff strict fr is tough love go to bed w/o supper, sink or swim it's a tough world; nurturing mo feeds kids. ?
AN pa threat to jail take kids] links to
Last year in Texas, as his friends stood and watched, a 12-year old boy had his school breakfast taken from him and thrown in the trash. It wasn't the class bully acting out, it was a school cafeteria worker supposedly following policy. Why? The child's meals card, which can be refilled by parents, was 30 cents short. This week, it happened again, only it wasn't a 12-year old boy in Texas, it was 40 elementary school kids in Utah who had their school lunches taken out of their hands and thrown in the trash in front of them. The reason? Insufficient funds on their meals cards. The Salt Lake Tribune interviewed one parent, who said she had not been notified that her child's meals card was overdrawn.
The school claims to have notified all the parents and saw a growing problem with non-payment, so they took action -- by literally taking food away from hungry children, in front of their friends. Apparently, no teacher or administrator stepped in to stop the madness, although one teacher may have paid for some of the lunches from her own pocket. "It was pretty traumatic and humiliating," said Erica Lukes, whose 11-year-old daughter had her cafeteria lunch taken from her as she stood in line Tuesday at Uintah Elementary School," the Salt Lake Tribune reports. "Lukes said as far as she knew, she was all paid up. 'I think it's despicable,' she said. 'These are young children that shouldn't be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up.'" KSL reports "Sophia Isom, Lukes' daughter, was met by a district nutrition manager who was monitoring accounts."
"SO SHE TOOK MY LUNCH AWAY AND SAID, 'GO GET A MILK,' " SOPHIA SAID. "I CAME BACK AND ASKED, 'WHAT'S GOING ON?' THEN SHE HANDED ME AN ORANGE. SHE SAID, 'YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY IN YOUR ACCOUNT SO YOU CAN'T GET LUNCH.' " SHE SAID THE FOOD WAS BEING THROWN OUT. SOPHIA SAID THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO MANY STUDENTS, AND IT WAS THE TALK OF THE LUNCH PERIOD.
Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district's child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue, he said. The school district released a statement saying the "situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize." The statement, posted to Facebook, has almost 6000 comments, most of them negative.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-trump-administrations-insidious-plan-to-cut-social-security-benefits/
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/trump-continues-his-attack-on-working-people-by-moving-to-redefine-poverty-and-slash-social-programs-for-millions
Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 8, 2019
The Trump administration on Monday moved to change the definition of “poverty” in the United States in a proposal which combines the president’s attempts to portray the U.S. economy as…
The Trump administration on Monday moved to change the definition of “poverty” in the United States in a proposal which combines the president’s attempts to portray the U.S. economy as strong with his repeated attacks on the working poor and their access to government services.
In a regulatory filing, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote that it may change how inflation is calculated in order to reduce the number of Americans who are living below the federally-recognized poverty line and are therefore eligible for certain government support services and social programs.
As Melissa Boteach, who oversees income security programs at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), wrote on Twitter, the change “seems technical, but it’s actually a big attack on working people.”
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
May 6, 2019
Replying to @mboteach
Remember last year when the Trump admin declared that “our War on Poverty is largely over and a success”? https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Expanding-Work-Requirements-in-Non-Cash-Welfare-Programs.pdf ….
Now he’s acting on this bogus notion, trying to slowly define people out of poverty by decree. 2/
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
Seems technical, but it’s actually a big attack on working people. In short, Trump wants to weaken how our poverty definition keeps pace with cost of living. So each year, as costs go up, many working people w/low pay would gradually be stripped of WIC, Medicaid & other basics 3/
15
5:27 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC
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Under the administration’s proposal, which was first reported by Bloomberg News, the government would shift to a system known as “Chained CPI,” which assumes consumers will change what they buy as items grow more expensive through inflation, suggesting that they are not struggling to afford necessities.
The definitional change would result in a slower inflation rate, which is used to determine how many Americans are eligible for programs like Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and other federal assistance.
As of 2018, a family of four making $25,900 per year was considered to be living in poverty, based on the necessities they could afford with the current inflation rate.
Under the new system, OMB officials wrote in the proposal, “changes to the poverty thresholds, including how they are updated for inflation over time, may affect eligibility for programs that use the poverty guidelines.”
Boteach wrote that the proposal demonstrates “how out of touch Trump is with lives of working-class people,” noting that even the current poverty line does little to reflect the amount of money an American family actually needs to live comfortably in the wealthiest country on the planet.
In fact, wrote Boteach, the new standards will make the government’s understanding of poverty and inequality even less accurate.
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
May 6, 2019
Replying to @mboteach
Seems technical, but it’s actually a big attack on working people. In short, Trump wants to weaken how our poverty definition keeps pace with cost of living. So each year, as costs go up, many working people w/low pay would gradually be stripped of WIC, Medicaid & other basics 3/
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
This proposal shows how out of touch Trump is with lives of working-class ppl. “Americans on average report that it would take more than $55,000 in annual income to be considered out of poverty.” That’s more than TWICE our current threshold https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/reports/2014/01/07/81702/50-years-after-lbjs-war-on-poverty/ …
4/
12
5:29 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC
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50 Years After LBJ’s War on Poverty - Center for American Progress
A major new study of public attitudes about poverty, work, and economic opportunity reveals that many Americans remain in economic hardship and desire new efforts to provide low-income families with...
americanprogress.org
15 people are talking about this
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
May 6, 2019
Replying to @mboteach
Sadly, even w/low unemployment, poverty & hardship are still a mainstay in American life. And guess what? Unilaterally redefining it doesn’t do a damn thing to help someone secure a better job, put food on the table, or pay critical health care bills.6/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/reports/2018/03/07/447412/ensuring-basic-living-standards/ …
View image on Twitter
Melissa Boteach
@mboteach
This is a cynical attempt to squeeze working-class people. Their incomes will STILL be too low to make ends meet, but Trump’s decree would make it harder for them to qualify for help. 7/
9
5:40 PM - May 6, 2019 · Washington, DC
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Some critics on social media denounced the proposal as Trump’s latest “cruel” measure aimed at weakening the systems meant to support the poorest Americans and struggling working class families.
David Roberts
?
@drvox
Trump is going to change how poverty is measured, with the intent of rendering a bunch of people ineligible for social assistance. His base will support this arbitrary cruelty b/c even though it hurts them, it also hurts brown people. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …
133
12:15 PM - May 6, 2019
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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls
The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.
bloomberg.com
79 people are talking about this
Democratic Coalition
?
@TheDemCoalition
This appears to be the latest cruel and incompetent effort by the Trump administration to make it harder to access welfare programs.#ShitholePresidenthttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …
243
12:53 PM - May 6, 2019
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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls
The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.
bloomberg.com
358 people are talking about this
Paul Krugman
?
@paulkrugman
For the moment, Republicans have mostly stopped pretending to care about deficits. But they're still eager to cut aid to the poor 1/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/trump-poverty-line-inflation …
1,691
5:32 AM - May 7, 2019
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Trump May Redefine Poverty, Cutting Americans From Welfare Rolls
The Trump administration may alter the way it determines the national poverty threshold, putting Americans living on the margins at risk of losing access to welfare programs.
bloomberg.com
The OMB’s proposal follows multiple attacks on social welfare programs by the Trump administration as it attempts to keep families from accessing SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps, and Medicaid. The administration and the Republican Party have pushed in 2018 to require people who use food stamps to work at least 20 hours per week, a move which would push at least one million Americans out of the program.
The federal budget proposal unveiled in March also included more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, threatening the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans.
The administration has spent much of the last two years insisting that the American economy is thriving—frequently pointing to the GDP, the stock market, and low unemployment rates as evidence.
But studies have shown that low unemployment numbers offer a misleading picture of how American families are actually coping in the economy, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count “600,000 ‘discouraged workers’ who say they are no longer looking because they don’t think they can find a job,” according to Quartz.
Critics have pointed out that 40 percent of families are unable to save enough moneyto pay for a $400 emergency; 137 million American households struggle to pay healthcare costs; and nearly 80 percent of workers live paycheck-to-paycheck—regardless of the GDP or the stock market.
The OMB’s proposal, wrote Georgetown University and public policy researcher Joan Alker, is “a novel way to take healthcare, etc., away from people AND make it look like there are fewer poor people.”...
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/a-federal-judge-just-struck-a-blow-to-the-trump-administrations-cruel-plot-to-gut-medicaid/
On Wednesday, a federal judge dealt a massive blow to one of the Trump administration’s pet projects.
Washington, D.C. District Court judge James Boasberg struck down work requirements in Kentucky and Arkansas, ruling that the waivers granted by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar were not valid because work requirements do not further the Medicaid Act’s mission of improving public health.
The rules differ in some ways, but both broadly require certain Medicaid recipients to complete a minimum number of work or community service hours each month and provide proof to the state.
Kentucky’s work requirement, known as Kentucky HEALTH, was the first to be approved by the Trump administration but was struck down last year by the same judge, and the newly revised rules were scheduled to take effect on April 1. Arkansas has already implemented its work requirement system, known as Arkansas Works, with disastrous consequences — over 18,000 people in the state have lost Medicaid coverage, many of whom actually were working but couldn’t figure out how to meet the state’s confusing reporting requirements, especially those in rural areas who don’t have easy access to the internet.
Boasberg criticized Arkansas for doing virtually nothing to help Medicaid recipients understand and comply with the new work requirement, saying “the State’s outreach efforts may well be falling severely short.” He further criticized Kentucky, which argued that their work requirement does further the mission of expanding health coverage because Gov. Matt Bevin intended to cancel Medicaid expansion entirely if he didn’t get his way: “The Court cannot concur that … states are so armed to refashion the program Congress designed in any way they choose.”
Several other Republican-controlled states are currently seeking approval for similar work requirement programs.
Medicaid is a joint federal-state program — both Congress and the states provide funding, and the states are in charge of administering the program within their borders. The Medicaid Act sets strict guidelines about how the program can be run, but the Department of Health and Human Services can approve what are called “Section 1115” waivers if a state has a custom-designed plan that would promote health and coverage beyond what traditional Medicaid does. The Trump administration is trying to flip this on its head, encouraging states to apply for waivers that will lead to fewer people being covered.
Boasberg’s ruling holds that states cannot use Section 1115 waivers in this manner. “That provision of the Act does not turn the comprehensive Medicaid program into a buffet for states,” he wrote.
Medicaid work requirements are a particular passion of Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. She has claimed that denying low-income people health coverage is actually good for them, insisting that “it is not compassionate to trap people on government programs or create greater dependency on public assistance.” She has also claimed that work requirements do further the mission of Medicaid, pointing to studies that show people with jobs tend to be healthier (when in reality the correlation is probably the other way around.)
Arkansas and Kentucky were early adopters of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which made the program available to people up to 138 percent of the poverty line. The Affordable Care Act originally required states to expand Medicaid, but a Supreme Court ruling allowed states to decide whether they wanted to or not. Republicans in these states are now intent on chipping away at this progress, and work requirements are one way the Trump administration is encouraging them to do it.
For now, that effort has hit a roadblock.
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NEO-LIB
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/time-for-a-change-can-2020-democrats-break-free-from-the-failures-of-neoliberalism/
One of the most striking things about the blossoming 2020 Democratic primary campaign is how much the candidates have broken with the party’s defensive, neoliberal posture of the past quarter-century — a period of time in which Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once, but have nonetheless dominated the parameters of debate. Now, all that has changed. In 2016, Bernie Sanders’ advocacy of Medicare for All was read as a fringe position by a fringe candidate. Heading into 2020, it has polled as high as 70 percent support, and is now a mainstream candidate position, embraced by his Senate colleagues Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, as well as former HUD Secretary Julián Castro and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
The dramatic health care shift is just one facet of a much broader transformation that a younger, increasingly diverse electorate is demanding — a transformation leading away from the Democrats’ decades-long infatuation with neoliberalism, with a similar expansion of support for ideas like a $15 minimum wage, debt-free college education, taxing the wealthy, a federal jobs guarantee and a Green New Deal.
Up until 2016, leading Democrats had accepted the basic premises of conservatives (“The era of big government is over,” Bill Clinton famously proclaimed), while still claiming continuity with traditions they had largely abandoned. Typically, as exemplified by “welfare reform” (my 2010 critique here), means-testing would replace universal programs, with success defined by reducing costs and the number of people served, rather than by improving people’s lives. Clinton’s presidency followed a path laid out by Charles Peters, founder and editor of the Washington Monthly, in his influential 1983 essay, “A Neoliberal’s Manifesto,” where he put it thus:
We still believe in liberty and justice for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have to distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.
In short, neoliberals argued they shared liberal/left values, but favored “more practical solutions.”
But time has shown them not to be more practical after all, as Democratic activists and base voters have increasingly come to realize. The question in 2020 is how the party as a whole evolves, how it honestly comes to terms with its past. It’s a question that all the presidential hopefuls must grapple with — and their supporters as well.
Economic policies like NAFTA and Wall Street deregulation represent core neoliberal failures in the economic realm that stretch back long before Peters, as described by economic historian Philip Mirowski (“Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste”) and colleagues (“The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective”). But the economic vision has profound social consequences, as Mirowski elsewhere notes: “While neoliberal think tanks are busy riling up the groundlings with debt clocks and boogeyman statistics of ratios of government expenditure to GDP, neoliberal politicians organize to extravagantly increase incarceration and policing of those whom they deem unfit for the marketplace.”
A whole host of such offshoot policies incubated by Peters, his colleagues and funders — mass incarceration, school privatization, welfare reform, etc. — have likewise been discredited as well, with profound impacts on the unfolding 2020 presidential primary race. A growing awareness of how these failures are linked, and what’s required to replace them, ought to play a significant part in that race. If it does not, Democrats risk needlessly repeating past failures and handing Republicans yet another chance to make things dramatically worse.
Republicans are doing that right now, imposing work requirements to roll back Medicaid expansion, even as new research shows welfare reform had significant negative impacts on children: The “intergenerational effects of welfare reform on adolescent behaviors were unfavorable, particularly for boys, and do not support longstanding arguments that limiting cash assistance leads to responsible behavior in the next generation.”
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[cf hedges we need to give ppl security/net or they will keep going for fake populism/magical thinking; is this reverse/leverage? but ties into road to serdom RR BS?]
ballot measures in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah to expand Medicaid didn't just draw out a lot of voters; it might have created some, and not just for the midterm election. Evidence from the last four years of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion suggests that people who get Medicaid turn into voters.
1118
Trump and Republicans in Congress love to demonize government handouts, which, in fact, their own supporters depend on and are increasingly financed by taxpayers in blue states.
The federal program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families – what we used to call “welfare” – provides cash assistance to fewer than 1 percent of Americans.
But the Trump administration is proposing to lump many social programs under a new agency with the word “welfare” in its title.
A recent White House report on imposing work requirements, for example, put Medicaid, food assistance, and housing aid into a rebranded program called “noncash welfare.”
Defined this broadly, a large chunk of America relies on welfare. Add in disability benefits, unemployment insurance, and medical benefits, such so-called “welfare” amounts to 17 percent of the average American’s income.
Welfare has become especially unpopular in “red” states that vote Republican and support Trump.
But these same states are often the biggest beneficiaries of government assistance.
Include price supports for agriculture, subsidies for land management and forestry, and defense contractors, and you find that a large portion of the economies of red states depend on federal dollars.
Here’s the irony. Residents of “blue” states send more tax money to Washington than they get back in federal help, while residents of “red” states send less money to Washington than they get back in federal help.
In 2015, for example, New Jersey got back only 74 cents in federal spending for every tax dollar it sent to Washington. New York got back 81 cents, Connecticut: 82 cents, and Massachusetts: 83 cents.
But when you turn to the red states, it’s the opposite. Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar it sent to Washington. West Virginia: $2.07. Kentucky: $1.90. And South Carolina: $1.71.
Taking the Trump administration’s expansive view of the meaning of welfare to its logical conclusion to include all those benefiting from federal spending, blue states are sending welfare to red states – the same red states that say they don’t like welfare.
Under Trump’s new tax law, blue states will be giving even more welfare handouts to red states. That’s because the law set new limits to the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct from their federal taxable incomes. And since people in blue states pay much more state and local taxes than people in red states, blue-staters will be paying that much more in federal taxes.
Which means an even bigger transfer from blue state residents to all those red state Republican voters, whose party despises handouts.
Now, I should add that some of us here in blue states don’t mind giving red states a bigger helping hand. The vast majority of Americans also oppose cuts to programs that aid the poor, elderly and sick. Because most Americans figure we’re all in this together, and those of us who can do so ought to help out those in need.
We don’t regard it as welfare handouts. We call it social insurance. Indeed, social insurance is needed and used by almost all of us, when you include Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. And even programs relied upon mostly by the poor end up helping a large portion of us because roughly one-third of all Americans are poor at some point in their lives.
So remember, attacks on so-called welfare are just another means of attacking the things most of us need, and dividing the country into us and them.
In reality, voters in red states are as dependent on the federal government as voters in blue states, and, truth be told, even more dependent.
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...Vote on the issues that are important to you: health care, education, the environment, women's reproductive rights, student loans, etc. Vote locally for local candidates you trust on issues that affect you, your family and community.
But also keep asking yourself, why should we continue to allow a know-nothing, narcissistic egomaniac free rein to destroy a democracy that once represented, in Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, “the last best hope of Earth?”
Because the economy is doing well? This shameless president is quick to take credit for what is, according to Forbes magazine, “just a continuation from Obama’s presidency.” Job growth has been steady for the last eight years.
And try selling that booming economy to those who are working two and three and four jobs to scratch out a living, the 41 million Americans in poverty, a third of them kids—or to the more than half a million homeless. As Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty, said in June, “In a rich country like the United States, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power.”
Why would you vote to keep Trump unchecked? Because he and Republican candidates suddenly are promising that they’d never, cross their hearts, ever disallow people with pre-existing conditions from decent health care? That’s a lie; they’ve spent eight years trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act some seventy times and the Justice Department backs a Texas lawsuit that would overturn Obamacare’s protection of insurance for those with pre-existing conditions.
And lest we forget, should they hold onto their majorities in the House and Senate, the GOP leadership is openly talking about gutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the programs you’ve paid for throughout your working life. These reductions are to compensate for the trillion-dollar deficit they themselves created with their billions in beloved tax cuts for the rich. There’s even talk about cutting or eliminating the Federal minimum wage.
Or would you vote for Trump’s cohort because you think Democrats want open borders—another lie—or that marauding caravans of brown-skinned foreigners are going to sweep into the country laden with disease and explosive vests? Trump makes incendiary noises about voiding the 14th amendment to the Constitution and sending as many as 15,000 troops to the Mexican border, defending us against an imaginary, bogus enemy.
Former secretary of state and chair of the joint chiefs of staff Colin Powell said, “I see no threat requiring this kind of deployment,” and he’s right. It’s a flim-flam charade that could cost taxpayers up to $10 million a day, a cynical political stunt steeped in resentment and hate.
"Barbed wire used properly can be a beautiful sight.” Trump honest-to-God said that on Saturday. Let that sink in for a moment. Land of the free and home of the brave.
He says such things even though the United States is a nation of immigrants, a society made up of people from every other country, Trump concocts a phony national emergency, rejects refugees, tears children from their families and places them in prisons, mocks other lands, and pledges to build a wall to keep people out of America.
His infamous wall will not be built; the wall is in his mind, the wall is in the minds of those of his followers who refuse to open their eyes and ears to comprehend the contributions and needs of the world around them. Such beliefs must be rejected. We must celebrate the opposite, the belief that openness and unity are the only paths to peace and freedom. You can take a stand with your vote.
This is a presidency built on indecency, amorality and falsehood. The Washington Post’s FactChecker database of his “tsunami of untruths” has now gone past 6420: “[I]n the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims — an average of 30 a day.”
According to Peter Baker and Linda Qiu of The New York Times, it is “a litany of misleading statements and falsehoods that exaggerate even legitimate accomplishments and distort opponents’ views beyond the typical bounds of political spin. In the past couple of weeks alone, the president has spoken of riots that have not happened, claimed deals that have not been reached, cited jobs that have not been created and spun dark conspiracies that have no apparent basis in reality. He has pulled figures seemingly out of thin air, rewritten history and contradicted his own past comments.”
Domestically, Trump has resorted not only to lies but to paranoid politics, fear-mongering and racism aimed at diverting attention from the hollowness of his programs. There is no national emergency; the “American carnage” he decried in his inaugural address comes instead from a weaponized extreme right he urges on as he simultaneously attacks the nation’s free press as an enemy of the people. He’s deeply afraid of what reporters uncover about his rule on what seems like an hourly basis: corruption run amok, nepotism, deep deregulation, injustice, his failure to cope with infrastructure or gun violence or schools or veterans or pretty much anything of substance.
As for overseas, it’s true that it’s a difficult world out there but our president makes it far worse with his zero-sum, it’s-not-enough-for-me-to-win, everyone-else-has-to-lose philosophy. He has embraced dictators in a bear hug, declared America First while encouraging rabid nationalism in other countries, fostered an inchoate trade policy and rejected global cooperation.
His lack of historical knowledge and refusal to learn the lessons of the world are deadly dangerous. When news came out that he refused to give up a mobile phone that is being hacked regularly by the Chinese and others, perhaps even more disturbing was that some aides were unperturbed, “because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.”
Tuesday will be our chance, on a nationwide basis, to steer our—our—country away from a further descent into madness, to throw a roadblock in front of a lying would-be tyrant, to set boundaries, to force oversight. And we must vote not only for the representatives who will challenge his policies and investigate his scheming in Washington but for the state officials and legislators who will press for reform, change voting laws and oversee redistricting after the 2020 census that will combat the plague of gerrymandering that has given the GOP disproportionate power in the House of Representatives.
As Abraham Lincoln said in 1862, “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Vote. Vote. Vote.
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https://www.alternet.org/heres-why-americans-hate-big-government-even-when-they-benefit-it
For 40 years, Republicans have attacked Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty as a disastrous failure. Suddenly, last month, President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors stood decades of history on its head, much as Trump himself did when he claimed, “Hillary Clinton started birtherism, and I ended it!” The War on Poverty was a tremendous success, Trump’s CEA said in a new report. Poverty is no longer problem. But dependency on government is: The remaining problem is “the decline of self-sufficiency”!
“Between 1961 and 2016, consumption-based poverty fell from 30 percent to 3 percent, amounting to a 90 percent decline,” the report claimed. “Based on historical standards of material wellbeing and the terms of engagement, our War on Poverty is largely over and a success.”
But the so-called “consumption-based poverty” rate is absurd on its face, as seen in a chart accompanying that text, showing less poverty during the Great Recession than during the dot-com boom a decade earlier — a rare period of tight labor markets and rising wages, even for low-wage workers. In short, as is often the case in Trumplandia, the narrative had nothing to do with reality. But the narrative is a powerful one, echoing Mitt Romney’s scorn for the 47 percent of Americans he labeled as “takers.”
Fortunately, a new book by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler seems custom-made for blowing this report to bits, as well as illuminating a complex history at odds with many common myths. “The Government-Citizen Disconnect” explains that government social spending has grown substantially over the years — more so in red states than blue — even as wages have largely stagnated ever since the 1970s. Never before have so many Americans gotten so much from their government in so many different ways, or appreciated it so little.
Examining 21 federal programs — Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, the home mortgage interest deduction, etc. — Mettler finds that 96 percent of adults have received benefits from at least one of these policies, and that the average person has utilized five. What’s more, those who get the most tend to have the most negative anti-government attitudes. Rather than shedding light on what’s happening in America today, the CEA report can best be understood as a classic symptom of the long-standing disconnect that Mettler explores in her new book.
The relationship between government social benefits and the health of democracy has been a recurrent theme throughout Mettler’s work. On the most positive side, in “Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation,” she found that the GI Bill didn’t just help millions of veterans join the middle class, it inspired them to become active participants in civic organizations as well as politics, producing a civic "golden age." On the other hand, in “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy,” she explored how benefits distributed indirectly — through tax breaks or services from private companies (as with Obamacare subsidies) — obscure the role of government, as well as responsibility for who benefits most.
Throughout all her books, we can see how government policies have the potential to enrich people’s lives materially as well as encouraging their participation as citizens — or how they can fail to do so. In “The Government-Citizen Disconnect,” Mettler focuses on the central dilemma of how government programs over the past 40 years have come to produce civic and material results so profoundly at odds with one another.
I want to begin by asking about the subject of your book — the government-citizen disconnect, and two things you've said about it. You write that "while trust in government has eroded and suspicion and hostility have grown, people are more reliant on government than ever." Secondly, you've written, "What is at stake here is not only the future of American social provision but, more importantly, the well-being of democratic governance," which goes to its significance. Salon spoke with her about her book, about the disconnect, and about what it means for America as a functioning democracy.
I was actually really surprised by it too. I have been, for many years, studying changes in the rates of Americans who use 21 different federal social policies. When I began this research a long time ago, I thought that some of these policies were atrophying in coverage. But when I got back to the project, I found that, really, policies across the board have increased their coverage, at different rates. We’re in a long period now, since the 1980s, of hostility toward government social programs on the part of conservatives, and that has continued. But they only succeeded in getting one major policy decimated, and of course that was AFDC — Aid to Families with Dependent Children — in 1996.
Every other policy has remained intact, and coverage has grown. When you look at it across time, what you find is that when you add up all these policies — if you’re looking at just the direct, visible policies, in 1969 they made up 7 percent of the average American’s income, and now it’s 17 percent. Then I looked further and included policies in what I previously called the "submerged state," policies in the tax code that serve the same purposes as the other policies — like housing, health care, and so on — but we often don't think of them as social policies, because of their design. If you add those in, the average American adult uses about 4.5 policies in their lifetime. So those policies are very common, and people are using lots of different social policies, at different times for different reasons. Yet on all sorts of indicators, people's attitudes about government and become more negative over the past several decades.
You look back to the middle of the 20th century, and Americans had very high levels of trust in government. On measures that we call political advocacy, statements like "government officials don't care about people like me," or "I have no say what government does," most Americans would disagree with those negative statements back then, whereas now the vast majority agree with those. It's been a change over time, so that started back in the Vietnam era, with Watergate, etc., but then it's really increased over time. What surprising is if you look back at that time, in the middle of the 20th century, we actually asked a lot more of citizens then. Tax rates were higher then, and we had conscription during the Vietnam War, with men having to serve in the military. Now, relatively speaking, we don’t ask vmuch of citizens, we give them more in terms of social benefits, and yet people have these very poor attitudes. So that's the paradox that I'm trying to grapple with in the book. That's the puzzle.
First of all, it means that these policies are constantly under attack. When you look at who participates in politics, people who are not very well aware of the policies they use are most likely to participate. So higher income people participate more, and most of their benefits come through the tax code. People aren't thinking much about government doing much for them.So that's the nature of the disconnect. What about its significance?
The Trump administration has made several efforts, most recently through the new CEA report and recommendations, to add work requirements to some of the most frequently used social policies — SNAP (previously called “food stamps”) and Medicaid -- and to refer to these programs as “welfare.” We used to reserve that term solely for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a policy that was terminated in 1996, and replaced by the more restrictive Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which is now used by less than 1 percent of Americans annually. But now conservatives are trying to reignite and widen the war on welfare with these efforts to stigmatize more policies, treating them as if they are for the “undeserving,” and undermining their legitimacy.
As a political strategy, it makes sense, in that those who rely on means-tested policies are less likely to participate in politics than others, so they lack political clout. Meanwhile a good share of Americans, over 40 percent, hold very unfavorable views of welfare.
But in fact, the average American uses a means-tested policy at some point in his or her life. We rely on the safety net when unemployment soars, as it did in the Great Recession; furthermore, changes in the economy and workplace since the mid-20th century have made these programs all the more important, given slow wage growth, increased job insecurity and fewer jobs that offer benefits.
Then there are the larger concerns that I see about Americans lacking confidence in government. This is something I’ve worried about for a long time, yet it seemed kind of like an academic concern not that long ago. Now it's more of a real concern. We’re been in a long period where our major political discourse is anti-government discourse, and people have bought into that. What this country is founded on is the principle of self-government, that we can govern ourselves, and yet what people are endorsing, really, is thinking of our own government as the enemy. That is in the long-term fundamentally detrimental to our capacity as a society to engage in collective action, to work together across differences and to make headway on all the challenges that are facing us.
One of the things you write about is the theory of policy feedback. That's something people outside the field may not be familiar with, but it’s important for focusing attention on the experiential foundations of policymaking and reality-based self-governance. Can you explain what that is?
Policy feedback is a concept that's been around now for a few decades among political scientists. It means that policies, once established, can have the effect of reshaping politics. They may affect who participates in politics, or the kinds of political demands people make. For example, Social Security, as Andrea Campbell at MIT has shown, has over time fostered more political activity among senior citizens who wanted to protect the benefits, and it's been quite protected over time, because of that dynamic.
In this book, I was looking more broadly at how the use of policies affect people's attitudes about government, generally speaking. I did not find compelling evidence that there's much impact. I found that people who use visible means-tested policies, there are some policy feedback effects for their attitudes about government. They're more likely to think "government has helped me in times of need," or "government has provided opportunities for me to improve my standard of living," that kind of thing.
But overall, I thought that the policies that are hidden in the tax code would not have much impact, and they don’t. I was surprised that the visible policies did not have more of an impact on people's attitudes about government. I thought they would, across the board, have more positive effects than they do, and for the most part they have not had much impact. So I don't think people connect the dots very much. I don't think they think, "You know, if I look across my lifetime, government was there for me in various instances, and therefore I think government cares about people like me." Not many people make that connection.
You point out that in both 2012, when Romney made his infamous "47 percent" remark, and in 2016, the Republicans won more states that are more dependent on government. Why is significant and not just some odd quirk?
It's really interesting, Romney had made that comments suggesting that people who use government benefits are more likely to support the Democrats. When I look at the Electoral College and the average usage of social benefits by state there's not really a relationship. There are plenty of solidly red states that were in Romney’s column and then in Trump’s column that rely heavily on social benefits. So then it's like the plot thickens: Here you have people in areas that rely a lot on social benefits, and yet they are electing people who are often promising to scale back those benefits. We've seen a lot of that in recent years. And so that's a problem piece. What's going on? What can explain this?
I think various different things are at play. In the analyses that I did, one factor that was consistently significant, and shaped people's attitudes about government in a negative direction, was their views about welfare. When people are asked about welfare, about 45 percent of Americans will say they have unfavorable views of it,. It turns out that that is a very significant determinant of their broader views about government.
Because if people look at that one policy — whatever they mean by that — and they extrapolate, they’re thinking that government has these policies that I don't think are fair or right, and that's basically what government is: It gives special advantages to people who don't work to pay their own way, it gets them special benefits and doesn't take care of people like me who work hard, etc. I think conservatives have managed to capitalize on that kind of approach and that has served them well. For example, I look at the state of Kentucky.
Yes I wanted to ask about the history there, over time. I thought it was fascinating.
To me, this is just a book full of puzzles and paradoxes, and Kentucky is one of them. I felt like if I could understand what's happening in Kentucky, I could understand American politics. You go back to as recently as the 1980s, and Kentucky was sending moderate Democrats to Congress, and they included some progressives who were responsible for some really important social and educational social policies. By the 1990s, they begin to send moderate Republicans to Congress. And then, from the mid-'90s to the present, their delegation becomes more and more conservative, so that they're sending Tea Party folks and Freedom Caucus folks to Congress. But at the same time — I have a graph [below] in the book that shows this — the proportion of the average Kentuckian's income that comes from the federal government increases dramatically, from 10 percent in 1970 to 23 percent in 2015.
I drill down to the congressional district level. For example, in Kentucky's 6th District, the congressman's name is Andy Barr, and he's one of the proponents of having work requirements and time limits for food stamps. In some counties in his district, 52 percent of the average person's income comes from federal social transfers. This is just mind-boggling.
So I tried to learn what I can about this. That philosophy about welfare is probably a factor that comes into play there. I looked at the determinants of those negative attitudes about welfare. There's long been attention to race, and I do find that race is significant, that whites are more likely than people of color to be anti-welfare. But the other factor that is highly significant is income growth. I divided up the respondents into all these subgroups, and each of the middle-income groups had a very negative feeling toward welfare, much more, more so than both low-income people and high-income people.
You have people who we been in this long era of rising economic inequality, where for middle-income people and low-income people their wages have been pretty stagnant, or in some occupations deteriorating over time. So I think people have felt like they're not getting ahead, their kids are not having greater opportunities, and the Republican Party in Kentucky has effectively made the case of connecting the dots for them in a way that says the problem is Democrats and their environmental policies which have been detrimental to the coal industry and so on. Now, if you dig down, there's not good evidence for that, but they have managed to command the narrative and gives people an explanation. And while Americans generally like the policies they use, when it comes to these more general principles, they are still very anti-government. I'm sure there's other things that play into it, but those are some of the main things that stood out to me.
You look at two specific policy areas in more detail, and I’d like to ask you about them. First, your comparison of welfare and the earned-income tax credit.
This is something else I found really boggling. So the earned-income tax credit, for sociologists or economists who write about it, it's a big success. It's our largest anti-poverty program now, that has a big impact in raising a lot of people's household incomes above the poverty level. From that point of view, it's quite successful. Respondents like it very much; they feel it’s a policy that treats them with dignity and respect. They get to go to the offices of H&R Block to fill out their tax forms and get the returns; they like it much better than when they went to these dark, dingy welfare offices where they were treated in a way that was very disrespectful.
But I wanted to know: What is the political impact of that? Does that make people feel better about government? I thought maybe it would, and to the contrary, I found that it does not have an impact, and in fact, people who use EITC have very negative attitudes about government, and those attitudes remain intact and unaffected by EITC. What that says to me is that these people are the working poor, whose lives have been very difficult in recent decades. They epitomize what I've been saying about people who are middle-income and yet they’re seeing less opportunity, they’re not getting ahead, and I think they’re borne much of the brunt of that.
There's also, for people in that group, a sense of this fiscal cliff: They may have qualified for some other social benefits for a time, and then, just when they start making more income, suddenly they no longer qualify for those things, such as food stamps, for example. So then they're more resentful. We did a bunch of open-ended, in-depth interviews with people to try to explore what they were thinking about these policies. That's what many people told us, that they felt that government was unfair because people would make more income and then they wouldn’t qualify for things.
That's what I saw happening with the earned income tax credit. Now those individuals – when we compared them to AFDC and TANF beneficiaries, those [latter] folks were more likely to have more positive attitudes about government, but the EITC folks were more likely to vote, more likely to participate in politics than the AFDC/TANF beneficiaries. So it illustrates that wider pattern I was finding. It's interesting because most policies in the tax code are for high-income people. They’re submerged, people use them but they don't think government has done anything for them. I wondered, would that be different for these low-income people who are EITC beneficiaries? But it's the same basic pattern. I think a general pattern of these policies and tax codes is that people view it not as government giving them a benefit, but rather them getting to keep more of their own money, simply because of the way it’s distributed, designed and delivered.
Another issue area you focused on was higher education, and the different forms of support involved. What did your comparison of those different forms of support show?
There again, policies with the most visible design have an impact. So people who used the G.I. Bill, and Pell Grants are — controlling for other factors — more likely to feel that government has provided opportunities them to improve their standard of living. I was really struck by these findings. It's consistent with early research I’ve done with other data sets. I wrote a book about the World War II G.I. Bill, and found it really had a very positive impact in different ways.
In each of these instances, what you're seeing is that when policies are delivered in a way that government’s role is clear, it has a different impact than when it’s channeled through the tax code, as is the case with say the 529 benefits or the American Opportunity Tax Credit or student loans, which is a hybrid sort of policy — it's visible in some ways, but less so in others, and does not have that much of an impact on people's feelings that government cares about them or has provided opportunities.
What would be your broadest, major takeaway from all this?
The major takeaway is that people's views about welfare was the one thing that was consistent in every single model I ran, every attitude that we looked at. People's views about welfare were highly significant. Some of those other things about people's social identities and partisan affiliations, they would pop up in one model or another, but not with the same clear pattern that there was about views about welfare.
Returning to something touched on before, about the different levels of participation — both for voting and otherwise. You showed that America's voting gap is quite large. No other country is really similar, but it's invisible, virtually, in terms of the political discourse. It’s not a subject that gets a lot of air time, ink or electrons. These people don't vote, and the issues that matter for them just sort of disappear from the conversation. What did you find? And why does it matter?
I'm not really breaking new ground here, there's a big scholarship that shows that people who are lower-income and have less education are less likely to vote. I'm just adding to that: Yes, these are people who use these particular policies and their voices are not heard. We have known for a while, from scholars that study economic inequality, that politicians respond particularly to high income people. There's really great work on this by Martin Gilens at UCLA, for example, and this underscores that same finding. The policies that benefit higher-income people tend to be protected, and policies that benefit lower-income people tend to be under attack more often.
I like to end my interviews by asking what's most important question I didn't ask. What would that be for you? And what’s the answer?
Maybe where this leaves us is: Where do we go from here? What can be done? I've been talking for a while in my work about how we ought to create policies where government's role is more visible, and we ought to deliver policies in a way where we're trying to make that evident to people. For those things to happen, I think you have to have the political will, and right now that's not the case. What I actually think is more significant now is organizing on the ground, interacting with people and helping to connect the dots for them.
If you go back to the middle of the 20th century, when many more Americans belonged to labor unions than today, labor unions helped to make it more evident to people what difference government makes to them, and what policies were helpful. The AARP does that and continues to do that for retired people, on the role of Medicare and Social Security in their lives. But we don't have many other organizations that do that. For these problems we have been talking about, and lots of others that are confronting American democracy these days, it's necessary for people to become active at the grassroots level in organizations, and for those organizations to make these connections with people.
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6/18
https://www.alternet.org/house-republicans-pass-bill-requiring-millions-work-food-stamps
House Republicans just passed major legislation that would
require millions of people who are disabled or possibly otherwise unable to work, to work to be eligible for food stamps. The farm bill passed by a very narrow margin: 213-211. 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to oppose the archaic legislation.
The work requirement, which President Trump specifically praised in a statement via Twitter, would require "millions of low-income Americans who receive nutritional assistance to work at least 20 hours a week or enroll in a job training program," USA Today reports. but Democrats oppose the legislation, especially the work rule, saying "the new requirements would slash benefits to needy families and the elderly, jeopardizing their ability to put food on the table."
The food stamp program is officially known as SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
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voodoo tax cut --> austerity:
https://www.alternet.org/holy-grail-republican-tax-cuts-about-paul-ryans-parting-gift-rich
yet another Tax Day in America. Eager to deliver another so-called win ahead of the midterm elections, Republicans are using the occasion to roll out even more tax cuts for the rich.
With fewer than half of Americanscomplaining that their personal tax obligation is too high — the smallest percentage in more than five years — and the recently passed GOP tax bill still significantly underwater, Republican lawmakers somehow think the best way to fend off building Democratic momentum is to reward wealthy GOP donors all over again.
Standing next to anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist (he of "drown government in the bathtub" fame), Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, recently announced his plan to ease the tax burden paid by America’s wealthiest citizens. Mind you, those people have already been helped out tremendously by the GOP’s tax law, which made a 40 percent reduction in the top corporate tax rate permanent while setting a 2025 expiration date on cuts to individual taxes and rates.
“When you’re investing more capital in businesses it means you’re hiring more people, it means you’re buying more equipment, it means you’re raising wages and that you’re driving economic growth,” Cruz said of his new proposal to index capital gains for inflation. The Texas Republican's push for a second part of the GOP tax cuts is certain to exacerbate already growing concerns about budget deficits.
Just last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Republican tax cuts will fuel historic deficits. In March the federal deficit was $208 billion, an increase of $32 billion from last year. The Treasury Department had already said that the deficit increased 18.4 percent in February compared to 2017. GOP tax cuts are estimated to add $1 trillion or more to federal budget deficits over a decade, even after economic growth is taken into account.
Nevertheless, Republicans have stayed calm and carried on with tax cuts.
On Monday, President Donald Trump traveled to Florida where he praised the GOP tax law for driving one of the "greatest booms" to the U.S. economy. But job growth has actually slowed since Trump took office. Introducing his bill to discount capital gains taxes, in effect, to account for inflation, Ted Cruz claimed, “We’re seeing the economic benefits of this tax cut, even just a few months into it. Over four million Americans have already gotten pay raises or bonuses directly as a result of the tax cut.” But most Americans have not noticed a larger paycheck since the law was enacted, according to a CNBC poll released in March. A recent analysis from the pro-reform group Americans for Tax Fairness found that 433 corporations out of the Fortune 500 have not offered any bonuses or wage increase to employees since the passage of corporate tax cuts. Instead, the analysis found, companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks.
Even as GOP groups pour money into efforts to sell their tax cuts for the donor class to the voting base, the law remains massively unpopular. (A group linked to the Koch brothers has spent about $30 million in ads focusing on the tax law since August, and plans to run $400 million worth of ads in vulnerable GOP districts leading up to this year’s midterms.) Just 27 percent of Americans think the GOP tax cuts were a good idea, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Monday. In other words, the Republican tax plan has actually gotten less popular with voters over time.
ut popularity was never really the goal, was it? The point was to starve the federal government of tax revenue in order to justify slashing the social safety net — something Republicans in Congress and the White House began to address in earnest last week.
Just one day after the CBO released its forecast of a ballooning federal deficit, Trump ordered federal agenciesto conduct a broad review of so-called welfare programs to identify new work requirements to place on recipients. Right on time, House Republicans then introduced the 2018 Farm bill, featuring a stringent new proposal to mandate that adults between the ages of 18 and 59 work part-time jobs or be enrolled in at least 20 hours per week of job training in order to receive food stamps under the SNAP program.
Aside from the fact that SNAP spending is already down — from $79.8 billion in 2013 to about $70 billion in 2017 — the CBO estimates that as many as one million people could be kicked off the program as a result of Republicans’ proposed new rule. Most working-age SNAP recipients who don't receive disability benefits already work, especially those able-bodied, childless adults who House Republicans claim abuse the system.
Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress followed up their corporate tax cuts with a massive omnibus budget that boosts spending past previous budget caps by $300 billion over two years....
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https://www.alternet.org/economy/pete-petersons-ghost
Peter G. “Pete” Peterson, the billionaire businessman and anti-government crusader, died last week at the age of 91. He leaves behind family and friends who will miss him, and a vast coterie of consultants and politicians who may miss his checks even more. They can take comfort from the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley: “He doth not sleep/he hath awakened from the dream of life …”
Peterson will be mourned by those who loved him. But that’s no reason to forget the harm he has done, especially since his family vows to continue his work. His son, speaking on behalf of the foundation Peterson created, says that “we will carry on his legacy with passion and pride.”
That legacy is marked by Pete Peterson’s long war against Social Security and Medicare, his austerity economics, and the false aura of objectivity Peterson used to promote his ideology.
Behind his carefully stage-managed veneer of bipartisanship (his team once tried to get me suspended from a publication for calling him right-wing), Peterson engaged in a decades-long war on the social contract. Programs like Social Security and Medicare were his immediate targets, but his ultimate goal was even broader: He wanted to extinguish the ideal of public goods, and put an end to the notion that certain social programs should be universal.
Peterson took conservative ideas and gave them an undeserved air of truth and neutrality. Politicians who embraced them were more likely to receive a steady flow of high-dollar contributions and gaining entrée to the right salons and alliances.
Thanks to Peterson, prominent journalists can make outlandish and inaccurate statements about “entitlement” programs, while still laying claim to journalistic objectivity. That’s no mean feat on Peterson’s part – although it becomes easier when you can spend nearly half a billion dollars in four years to promote your agenda, as Peterson did. (Peterson engaged in his crusade for decades; his total spending isn’t known.)
Peterson may be gone, but his ideology still holds sway in the corridors of political and media power.
Doing the Math
“The standard operating procedures of private equity—purchasing businesses, adding debt, minimizing taxes, cutting costs (and facilities and employment), extracting large fees—are just the sort of things to aggravate popular anger about finance.”Peterson was a corporate success at a young age, and then joined Richard Nixon’s Cabinet. But he became a billionaire as co-founder of the Blackstone Group, one of four firms that exemplify what The Economist calls “the barbarian establishment.” As that (hardly left-wing) publication writes:
Peterson promptly put his billions to work on a new mission: Cutting government programs, especially Medicare and Social Security, and reducing government deficits. (The fact that these moves would reduce the political incentive to tax billionaires is never mentioned in Peterson’s work.)
Peterson’s sleight-of-hand trick, and it was a brilliant one, was to present his opinions as neutral and objective truth. As the New York Times reported in 2011:
“If some consider him Cassandra and others Chicken Little, Mr. Peterson considers himself, in self-deprecating (and self-interested) terms, as a data-driven businessman who ‘simply did the math.’”
The Peterson team claims that its proposals would exclude the poor, but cuts are a slippery slope. Social Security benefits are already meager, and any reductions – including cuts to cost-of-living increases and increases in the eligibility age – will lead to added poverty. Here’s some real math: Medicare saves lives, and “greater spending per beneficiary is associated with significantly lower mortality rates.” So does Medicaid. Social Security lifts 22 million Americans out of poverty, including children and non-elderly adults.
And poverty kills.
Sleight of Hand
Deficits were Peterson’s obsession. But when it came to economics, Peterson did the arithmetic, not “the math.” His zero-sum approach to government budgets failed to recognize the wide range of policy choices that are open to governments or the ways that government spending can create economic growth.
In a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Peterson argued that “spending cuts must play a lead role in any solution to our long-term structural deficits.” That’s an ideological statement that can’t be found anywhere in “the math.” For revenue, Peterson’s go-to solution was a consumption tax that would disproportionately harm the middle class.
No cut is too cruel for the Peterson crowd. A Peterson-backed group praised the draconian spending cuts in Donald Trump’s budget proposal last year, writing, “The President deserves credit for setting a fiscal goal and working to meet it.”
But it chastised the Republican for failing to apply an equally heavy hand to Social Security and Medicare.
Testing Mean
The policy heart of the Peterson agenda is means testing: of Social Security, Medicare, and other vital government programs. The Concord Coalition, which Peterson co-founded, pioneered the idea of means-testing Social Security benefits and reducing them for anyone making $40,000 per year or more. The idea quickly spread to Medicare and other universal programs.
It sounds reasonable, at first. Why should rich people collect taxpayer-funded benefits? One answer – because it’s an insurance program – can be hard to convey, but is nevertheless important.
Voters forget that means-testing is a slippery slope. Once it’s applied to vital programs, it can be ratcheted down until most Americans are excluded from them. Should we means-test public high schools? Elementary schools?
Means-testing works for anti-poverty programs. But under social insurance programs like Social Security, everybody contributes and everyone is eligible for benefits (with limited exceptions).
For 50 years, both political parties favored these kinds of universal programs. Peterson changed that.
When people are debating means-testing, they’re not asking a more obvious question: If we’re so concerned about giving “free rides” to rich people, why don’t we just raise their taxes?
Supporting Cast
Peterson assembled an ensemble cast of characters to push his message. Ex-senator Alan Simpson became a key spokesman, primarily because he shared Peterson’s gift for making a heavily ideological agenda sound like blunt truth-telling. Erskine Bowles, David Walker, and a coterie of economic and policy consultants also filled the ranks.
Peterson recruited media figures, too, through his “Fiscal Summits” and other events. Prominent journalists were offered hosting and guest appearances at Peterson events (and were presumably paid for them) At least one received a board seat on a Peterson organization, while at the same time “objectively” covering Peterson-style initiatives. (I reported on Lesley Stahl’s conflict of interest in 2013.) Journalists were also given talking points to help them sound knowledgeable about fiscal policy.
Politicians of both parties embraced the Peterson agenda for years. Bill Clinton, who received Peterson funding on the road to the White House. turned the Democratic Party in a more Peterson-friendly fiscal direction. Clinton emphasized deficit reduction, privatization, and means-testing as president, while over-praising the skills of the private sector.
Reaching the Summit
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Blue Apron but for the poor. On the heels of a $1.5 trillion tax cut for multinational corporations and the richest tenth of the 1 percent, it's a proposal so transparent in its contempt for lower-income earners that few public officials would consider it, much less pitch it to the public. Then again, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is not most public officials.
According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration aims to roll back the federal food stamps program, embracing what Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, calls a "Depression-era approach" to fighting hunger. Rather than receive paper coupons or credit toward an EBT card, as many as 81 percent of SNAP recipients would be issued "America's Harvest Boxes" approved by the USDA, each containing nonperishable food items like shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter and beans, as well as canned meat, fruits and vegetables.
“What we do is propose that for folks who are on food stamps, part—not all, part—of their benefits come in the actual sort of—and I don't want to steal somebody's copyright—but a Blue Apron-type program where you actually receive the food instead of receive the cash,” Mulvaney told the White House press corps during a Monday briefing. “It lowers the cost to us because we can buy [at wholesale prices] whereas they have to buy it at retail. It also makes sure they're getting nutritious food. So we're pretty excited about that."
Where to begin? While a meal on food stamps costs $1.37, the average order from Blue Apron's meal-kit delivery service runs upwards of $10 per person. Blue Apron also allows its customers to purchase from a menu of eight meals, including fresh fish, meat and produce—a privilege neither the president nor his budget director believes the poor are entitled to.
Adding potential injury to insult, Mulvaney makes no mention of how the Harvest Box plan will address the individual dietary restrictions of millions of Americans. Nor does he explain how canned meats and produce, which are typically loaded with preservatives, will meet the nutritional needs of their recipients.
The proposal would likely upend the supermarket industry, with chains like Walmart, Target and Aldi losing billions in food stamp payments. Unsurprisingly, the Food Marketing Institute, a lobbying group for grocery stores, has called the boxed meals "expensive, inefficient and unlikely to generate any long-term government savings."
Blue Apron itself has not been without its detractors. As the Post notes, the company "saw its customer base contract in 2017. A recent report by the market research firm Datassential found that four in 10 lapsed meal-kit subscribers dropped their service because they were too costly."
The Trump administration's latest budget proposal is almost certainly dead on arrival. But as long as the GOP controls all three branches of government, no social welfare program is safe and no prospective cut is too shameless.
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voodoo --> omg
AH 12/17
djt dick-ensian:
hat same attitude is driving social policy in the United States today. Only now that the tax overhaul is all but a done deal have we begun to read about why our Republican House and Senate and President seem so little worried about tax cuts that, simple arithmetic tells us, we cannot afford. All month we have been reading about the size of the tax cuts and the plutocrats who will benefit, but there has been very little honest reckoning about what will be the most serious human consequences.
Now, however, are we learning the reason. The real goal is eliminating dependency by punishing the poor for being poor.
In a short update, Chye-Ching Huang of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells us: “The congressional budget resolution that Congress approved in October, which created the process and set the parameters for the tax bill, also calls for $5.8 trillion in budget cuts over the coming decade, including deep cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and other health care programs; basic assistance including food assistance through SNAP (formerly known as food stamps); and non-defense discretionary funding, the part of the budget that funds education and training, transportation and other infrastructure, medical research, child and elder care, and other important priorities.”
From the Washington Post‘s Caitlin Dewey we learn that Trump-appointed officials in the Department of Agriculture are considering major limitations within the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): “SNAP is America’s largest anti-hunger program, providing an average benefit of $125 per person each month to 42 million Americans. The majority of SNAP recipients are children or seniors, though participation rose sharply across all demographic groups during and after the recession, peaking in 2013 at 47.6 million.” Officials are considering “new restrictions on purchases of soda and candy,” but also considering more significant cuts: “The agency is also considering a proposal to allow states to reduce payments to some groups of people, including undocumented immigrants’ citizen children… The secretaries’ proposals would allow states to significantly change how they offer nutrition assistance. Through the use of the waivers, the USDA could unilaterally enact the proposals on a state-by-state basis without further congressional action….”
Why are these proposed changes so utterly devastating? Here is Harvard University ethnographer Kathryn Edin—from her (2015) book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America—reporting on the collapse of welfare programs after passage in 1996 of the welfare reform law and the subsequent shift of responsibility for welfare programs from the federal government to the states, which have provided very unevenly for poor families: “Starting in 2001, more and more families with children who were receiving SNAP began to report that they had no other source of cash income to live on—not from work, not from public assistance. By 2006, the number of such families had grown 143 percent from a decade before. By 2012, 1.2 million families on SNAP told eligibility workers they had no other income.” (pp. 30-31)
Earlier this week POLITICO published a scathing indictment of planning that has been going on in federal departments to reduce federal services once tax reform has been enacted: “The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hoping to make the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation, using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps Medicaid and housing benefits. The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely. And GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for these programs… Federal health officials are encouraging states to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults on Medicaid—a major philosophical shift that would treat the program as welfare, rather than health insurance. The Agriculture Department said last week that it would soon give states greater control over the food stamp program, potentially opening the door to drug testing or stricter work requirements on recipients of the $70 billion program long targeted by fiscal conservatives… The president is expected to sign the welfare executive order as soon as January, according to multiple administration officials, with an eye toward making changes to health care, food stamps, housing and veterans programs, not just traditional welfare payments… Although the effort to reshape the country’s welfare system is all but guaranteed to produce powerful political backlash, it appears to have broad backing from conservative congressional Republicans, who are already coordinating with the White House on a legislative agenda to complement expected executive actions.”
Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who, for years, has proposed his own miserly federal budget plans, is quoted by POLITICO: “We have a welfare system that’s basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work, and we’ve got to work on that.” Not considered in all this planning is whether jobs are available and whether people using programs like SNAP are able to work.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and regular columnist for the NY Times, is one writer who has highlighted what all this will mean for our society and our children. As an economist, Krugman believes cuts in programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and welfare programs like SNAP—programs that, incidentally, help children be able to thrive at school—are economically foolish. He also deplores what such cuts to social programs say about the decline in our society’s ethic of social responsibility: “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… By the way, broadly similar results have been found for the food stamp program: Ensuring adequate nutrition for the young means healthier, more productive adults, so that in the long run this aid costs taxpayers little or nothing. But such results, while interesting and important, aren’t the main reason we should be providing children with health care and enough to eat. Simple decency should be reason enough. And despite everything we’ve seen in U.S. politics, it’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.”
If you wonder what all this commentary about planned cuts to social service and health and nutrition programs is doing in a public education blog, consider these previous posts—about sociologist Sean Reardon, writing about the impact of poverty on education—about Harvard’s Daniel Koretz examining how poverty affects test scores—about author Jack Schneider reflecting on poverty and public education.
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https://www.alternet.org/economy/3-noxious-myths-about-poor-republicans-are-using-slash-social-safety-net
Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the richand deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.
These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money.
Based on my research and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.
Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well.
Most welfare recipients are makers not takers
The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.
Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.
As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.
In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”
Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.
Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.
In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than half their income on housing. And there is no county in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only 1 in 4 eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.
To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, people who cannot or should not work. These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.
Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within three years.
Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, every dollar in SNAP spending is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity.
Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing work opportunities. The earned income tax credit contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children.
The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family. AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato
What the needy deserve
The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.
This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.
Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile – the poorest 20 percent – will stay there. And the same “stickiness” exists in the top quintile.
As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.
The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesn’t accomplish its goals.
In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.
The facts of welfare
In trotting out these myths, Republican lawmakers are also tapping into long-standing racist stereotypes about who receives support. For instance, the “welfare queen” – a code word for an African-American woman with too many children who refuses to work – is a fiction.
The facts of welfare are that most recipients are white, families that receive aid are smaller on average than other families and the program requires recipients to work and is tiny in relation to the overall federal budget – about half a percent. Yet, the welfare queen is an archetype invoked to generate public antagonism against the safety net. Expect her to make frequent appearances in the months to come.
Americans should demand fact-based justifications for tax and entitlement reforms. It is time to retire the welfare queen and related tropes that paint needy Americans as undeserving.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Michele Gilman is a venable Professor of Law, University of Baltimore and is affiliated with the ACLU of Maryland and the Women's Law Center