Even For Republicans, Cutting Medicaid & Food Stamps Is A Bad Look To Lower Taxes On The Top 1%

It matters almost not at all— unless you’re an undocumented migrant— what Trump campaigned on. Now we get to see which Project 2025 policies will become his regime’s actual agenda. Joshua Green noted that he has an impossible task of delivering for both billionaires and the working class in order to “keep his sprawling coalition intact. As a candidate, he promised something for everyone— plutocratic populism. He’d extend his 2017 tax cuts, beloved by the wealthy and Wall Street (price tag: $4.6 trillion); remove taxes on tipped wages for service workers ($250 billion); increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 to shore up family budgets ($3 trillion); and eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits to give seniors a boost ($1.8 trillion). But Republicans can’t possibly deliver all this, or even most of it, despite having full control Washington.” Oh, and the top reason voters gave for pulling the lever for him: inflation.

Green wrote that “All of this would seem to argue for a Trump presidency laser-focused on bringing down prices. But that’s not necessarily what’s in store. Early indications are that he’ll initially tackle issues likeliest to excite the Wall Street portion of his base. With many of the 2017 tax cuts set to expire next year, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has unveiled a legislative agenda for Trump’s first 100 days that has extending those cuts as the top item… [and] he’d like to slash the corporate tax rate even deeper than the 21% he established in his first term. ‘I like 15% better,’ he said. Prioritizing tax cuts for corporations and high earners would pose political risks that even some staunch Trump supporters are leery of… A bigger risk than the political optics of showering tax cuts on billionaires could be their inflationary impact,’ which will be further exacerbated by his tariff plans.

Of course, it’s impossible to talk about Trump’s “actual agenda,” without noting the new oligarchy’s firehose of corruption headed our way. Last week, Greg Sargent reminded his readers that Trump “didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country— and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance. There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term. In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom... Trump will be selling the government off for parts to his oligarchic right-wing elite cronies, and the jarring incongruity of it all won’t disturb these pundits in the slightest. After winning the presidency again despite making these corrupt deals right out in the open, why would Trump feel remotely constrained?

Meanwhile, reports Jacob Bogage, Jeff Stein and Dan Diamond, “Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans have begun preliminary discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal safety net programs to offset the enormous cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts next year. Among the options under discussion by GOP lawmakers and aides are new work requirements and spending caps for the programs… 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.”

While Republican leaders support extending the tax cuts, many are concerned that the resulting loss of revenue would further increase borrowing, so the hunt for savings is on: In addition to social safety net programs, many Republicans are also looking to repurpose clean energy funds approved by Democrats. Trump’s tariff plans could also raise additional revenue. But those ideas may prove unworkable or insufficient to fully account for the cost of a sweeping new tax package.

Republicans warn that Medicaid spending has ballooned in the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion, saying that the program’s structure puts outsize pressure on the federal budget. While states administer the program, the federal government provides matching payments that heavily subsidize it.

…Republicans have long denied that they are trying to reduce benefits for low-income Americans on either Medicaid or food stamps. They have framed their efforts as an attempt to reduce wasteful and unnecessary spending, arguing that streamlining the programs would preserve government benefits, not penalize people who use them.

…The politics of federal safety net programs has frequently splintered the GOP coalition. Some GOP aides and policy experts predict cuts to Medicaid and food stamps will ultimately be jettisoned from any tax bill, particularly if the legislation also has a cut in the corporate tax rate.

“Some of them are looking at Medicaid and food stamps. When you talk about spending, that is the place they immediately go,” said one GOP policy adviser. “But I’m not sure they want the headlines about paying for tax cuts by cutting those programs.”

If Congress balks at lowering Medicaid spending, Republicans may be able to reduce it anyway. While Trump vowed to protect Medicaid as a candidate during his 2016 presidential bid, the first Trump administration allowed 13 GOP-led states to add work requirements to their Medicaid programs, a controversial change that was the focus of legal battles. 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.

The Biden administration rescinded approval for those states’ work requirements, with liberals citing evidence that the initiatives created new administrative burdens and arguing that it jeopardized enrollees’ health. But the new Trump administration could again issue waivers that allow states to impose work requirements on enrollees, say current and former officials.