As the Trump II administration has taken shape over the past two weeks — in the form of haphazard nominations via Truth Social posts — and as policy proposals once cloaked in the shadows of Project 2025 make their way into the sunlight, we’re starting to get a picture of which vulnerable segments of the population will suffer first.
Immigrants will, unsurprisingly, be an early target of a second Trump administration and their congressional allies. Lower-income people, we’re learning, will be as well.
Republicans have done a lot of singing and a lot of dancing over the years about how much they don’t want to make cuts to two particular federal programs, Medicare and Social Security (even though they very much do, so long as the cut is camouflaged in other terminology). President Biden famously confronted the party’s blatant hypocrisy on the issue directly during his State of the Union address in 2023, when he forced Republican members of Congress to commit, on live TV, to not cutting Medicare and Social Security, even though there is a new push to shrink both programs every few years.
The theatrics of that moment were a satisfying if short-lived victory for the Biden White House and Democrats — pinning Republicans down publicly on protecting the very popular entitlement programs that they quietly try to go after every time they have the opportunity.
Republicans are less rhetorically creative about their disdain for other federal social safety net programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. Cuts to these programs are often disguised as attempts at “streamlining” or supposedly common sense reforms pushed by conservative policy shops, like work requirements for enrollees. While Trump himself publicly campaigned in 2016 on a promise to protect Medicaid, his administration also cleared the way for 13 Republican-controlled states to add work requirements to their programs — a move that set off a firestorm of legal challenges and ended up being only temporarily successful in one state. Per WaPo: “The requirements only took full effect in one state, Arkansas, for a five-month period when about 18,000 people were dropped from the program.”
It appears that this disingenuous approach to “protecting” Medicaid will continue in Trump II. As part of their brainstorming on how to offset the massive costs of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, congressional Republicans and economic advisers close to Trump are considering making changes to Medicaid, as well as other federal safety net programs, like SNAP — in the form of work requirements and spending caps.
But they’re reportedly worried (as they should be) about how it’ll look to gut social safety net programs in order to extend tax cuts that lowered taxes for the majority of Americans, but primarily benefited those making $400,000 or more a year.
Among the options under discussion by GOP lawmakers and aides are new work requirements and spending caps for the programs, according to seven people familiar with the talks, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Those conversations have included some economic officials on Trump’s transition team, the people said.
However, concern is high among some Republicans about the political downsides of such cuts, which would affect programs that provide support for at least 70 million low-income Americans, and some people familiar with the talks stressed that discussions are preliminary.
…
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters Wednesday that a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” for Medicaid benefits resembling the one that already exists for food stamps could yield about $100 billion in savings. He also said another $160 billion in reduced costs could come from checking Medicaid eligibility more than once per year.
“I feel like there are some common sense, reasonable things, that almost 90 percent of the American people would say, ‘That’s got to change,’” Arrington said.
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They voted for him. They fucked around and now they will find out.
The more you have, the more you have to lose.
I disagree that the title that this is about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Rather, this is about taking from the middle class and giving to the rich.
While the poor are being singled out and scapegoated, the fact is you can’t squeeze blood from a turnup and the poor do not have anything to take from. However, in regard to the middle class, they have more and therefore they have more to take from and that is what Trump will do.
Ronald Reagan was no different. While scapegoating the poor, Reagan mostly took from the middle class and gave to super rich.
The people who will hurt most from Trump will be those with something worth stealing from and that is not the poor but rather is mostly the White working and middle class.
Or, a quote from Paul Krugman I have used many times:
“In regard to our current politics how did we get here. Wealth elites used White grievance to gain power and then used that power at the expense of the very people who gave them that power all the time scapegoating minorities. Until the rise of Donald Trump it was possible to deny all this with a straight face.”
I’m still shaking my head at the Annals of Mandates:
I appreciate what Josh is saying, but when you are making this argument, you have already lost. The Democrats can speak all they want, but in the meantime Trump will be destroying the federal government, our standing in the world, and the lives of tens of millions of Americans and immigrants. He won’t be listening to Congress and the Courts, so why would he listen to American voters who did not vote for him?
Remind me again how the redistribution of wealth is an unAmerican socialist/communist plot.
We need to remember that cutting food stamps as the program is currently constituted will actually raise and not decrease the deficit.
But before getting to that, Trump and his people are going to steal everything that is not nailed down. I also predict in addition to killing NATO and forcing countries like Turkey out of its western lean and into Putin’s control, Trump will hallow out our military because Putin wants a weaker America.
But the big money is in the SS trust fund that Bush Jr. tried to raid but was unsuccessful. Republicans will go after the SS trust fund which more than for the poor is really most of the savings of the White middle class.
As for Food Stamps in particular, above all else that is an agricultural subsidy more than it is an aid program for the poor. That is the very purpose of Food Stamps is to create bigger markets for farmers. But the important thing to remember about Food Stamps, and you can look this up if you doubt me as the Government actually keeps statistics on this, is that the Food Stamp program for the last 50 years has actually brought in more revenue into the U.S. Treasury through increased economic activity then the program costs.
It is like that big lie Republicans tell about tax cuts for billionaires, that giving billionaires tax cuts will cause an increase in economic activity and bring in more money then the cuts themselves. But unlike tax cuts for billionaires where it is a big lie, in regard to Food Stamps it is and has been true for decades.
Food Stamps goes to little people who spend them on little people almost all of which is grown or made in America and the result is the economic multiplier, 1 divided by (1 - the marginal propensity to consume) results in more tax revenue then is actually spent on Food Stamps themselves. Again, if you doubt me you can look this up online.
But the point is aside from inflicting needless pain on Americans, cutting Food Stamps actually increases the deficit.