Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ attack on the working class

If satirists tried to produce a caricature of legislation designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich, they couldn’t have done much better than the “big, beautiful bill” that the US House of Representatives passed by one vote on 22 May.

Trump describes as “beautiful” a 1,100-page plan that incorporates the Republican Party’s wish list of tax cuts for wealthy Americans while raising costs and imperilling the health and education of millions of working-class Americans. Simultaneously, it calls for a military budget of more than $1 trillion and a vast expansion of the deportation apparatus that is the core of Trump’s program. It would also increase the budget deficit by US$4 trillion over the next decade.

Just how tilted to the rich is the “big, beautiful bill”? The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would decrease the household incomes of the poorest tenth of Americans by up to 4 percent annually, while increasing those of the richest tenth by the same amount. In dollar terms, the poorest 40 percent of the population would lose money while the richest 0.1 percent would gain about $390,000.

The administration wants tax cuts skewed toward the upper end of the income distribution, and the slashing of government-provided health insurance for the poor and disabled (Medicaid) and the food program for low-income individuals (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). Cuts to these two essential programs amount to more than $1.2 trillion over a decade. Data journalist G. Elliott Morris summed it up: “The Republicans want you to pay more for less”.

Along with Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled, Medicare, the government medical insurance program for the elderly, is popular with many Republican and Democratic voters—so popular that it is usually considered “safe” from cuts. Yet if Trump’s bill passes the Senate, there will also be mandatory cuts of up to $500 billion to Medicare. For this possibility, we can thank Democratic President Barack Obama and the 2010 Democratic-majority Congress, led by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They pushed through the Pay As You Go Act, which makes cuts to these programs mandatory if the federal deficit exceeds certain levels.

The bill’s effects will be devastating in a country where four out of ten people can’t find $400 in case of an emergency, and where almost 80 percent report living “paycheque to paycheque”. Analysts predict that as many as 15 million people could lose health coverage as the federal government imposes stricter eligibility requirements for entitlements, and states are unable to fill the resulting gaps.

Medicaid is not just a program for the poorest Americans. Through the 1997 Children’s Health Insurance Act and the 2010 Affordable Care Act, it now provides health insurance assistance to almost 80 million Americans. In fact, it covers more people than Medicare.

So, in many ways that aren’t entirely apparent, Medicaid is a crucial support for the working class. It is the leading funder of nursing homes and home care for the elderly and disabled. In many parts of urban and rural America, it supports the public health infrastructure. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 65 percent of people—either themselves, family members or close friends—have benefited from Medicaid.

These cuts are not popular. In none of the country’s 435 congressional districts do more than 15 percent of voters support cuts to the SNAP food assistance program. Even Trump’s far-right adviser Steve Bannon warned Republicans against cutting Medicaid. But they did anyway. House Republicans who swore they wouldn’t support a bill that cut Medicaid voted for it. They will now spend months playing word games trying to explain that their vote wasn’t for a “cut” but for something else.

In another attack on working people, the bill would also slash education grants that help low-income students afford college. As many as 4 million students could be affected. New provisions applying to student loans would increase payments and lengthen the debt repayment period for most borrowers.

Cuts to medical care, food assistance and education support are only part of the story. But they should demonstrate how laughable it is that some people call Trump’s Republican Party a “working-class party”.

The rest of the bill is a Trumpian wish list, including: a thirteen-fold increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s carceral system; allowing the administration to terminate the tax-exempt status of any non-profit it deems politically unacceptable; barring state regulation of artificial intelligence technology; even crippling plaintiffs’ ability to seek court injunctions blocking administration actions.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where some Republicans have vowed not to support it, have called for large-scale changes to it, and so on. Don’t believe them. Most of the critics don’t think it cuts spending enough. Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s plea of “Don’t Cut Medicaid” in a New York Times op ed owes more to political theatre than to political conviction.

The bill represents the entirety of the Trump/Republican domestic policy agenda. And even though the Senate might make some cosmetic changes, it will pass the Congress largely intact. By the northern autumn, the US working class will begin to experience the most serious legislative assault on it in more than half a century.