‘Unaffordable and inaccessible’: Trump allegedly wants to cut food stamps, Medicaid funding

According to Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, “”if Americans want less taxes and more money in their pockets, the only option is to vote for President Trump.” According to Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that will only be the case for the richest Americans. The rest of the nation will be forced to fund to the wealthiest, with the nation’s bottom 20% of earners fronting most of the cost.

And where is that money going to come from? Cut Medicaid funding.

“Unaffordable and inaccessible” were the words that Rep. Summer Lee (D-Penn) used to describe the soon-to-be state of social services under a Trump Administration. All to “pay tax cuts for their billionaire donors.” Republican lawmakers are intending to make qualifying for medicaid benefits and food services like SNAP all the harder, creating stricter work requirements for Americans while introducing spending caps to the programs. According to research from The Center on Budget and Policy priorities, stricter work requirements “do little for long-term work opportunities”, and make it harder for people to meet basic needs .

“Make no mistake who they’re serving,” she concluded. One look at Trump’s tax proposal makes that fact abundantly clear. According to the report by Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the top 1% of earners would enjoy an average average tax cut of over $36,300, the next highest 4% would earn average tax cuts of nearly $7,200. The other 95% of Americans? Tax increases from $600 to nearly $1,800 are on the forecast depending on tax bracket.  Amy Hanauer, ITEP’s executive director, has called the report “the most comprehensive analysis that anyone has done” on Trump’s tax plan, and that the report’s findings are “crystal clear.” Corporations and rich elites will flourish, while the rest of America foots the bill.

Trump’s tax cut plan even has Republicans concerned. But not for poor people, no, for their own political public image.  “You start to add things to reduce the deficit, and that gets politically more challenging,” said a GOP advisor. Trump himself made campaign promises not to cut benefits for low-income Americans, but it now appears that he’ll be relying on Elon Musk, the newly appointed chair of the currently unofficial Department of Government Efficiency to do his dirty work.

Musk has claimed that he wants to cut $2 trillion from federal spending, an idea that economic experts have called absurd. Musk intends to save the money by eliminating “waste” i.e. spending it on social programs that help the poorest of Americans. While an NPR report has said that Musk will “probably” be unable to do this, “probably” is not exactly a comforting word when the life-saving benefits of millions are on the line.

To make matters worse, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Trump’s tax plans are likely to add $4 trillion to the nation debt over the next decade, bringing the total figure up from $36 trillion to a clean $40 by 2034. I sure hope that Elon can find trillions worth of lose change rattling around the seats of his Tesla, cause if he and Trump’s plans go into effect, American is really gonna need it.