The Republican Budget Plan Is Just What We Feared: Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich

Reverse Robin Hood Policies Need To Be Resisted

This was what Trump's first tax scam looked like

The Republicans in Congress are struggling to find a way to offset the costs of the tax breaks for the billionaire class that they are fashioning with Trump and Musk. While Trump was— according to Bernie’s telling— ignoring “almost every significant issue facing the working families of this country,” from a dysfunctional healthcare system and climate change to ballooning wealth inequality— his congressional allies were working diligently on plans to make everything worse with a dystopian budget.

In their zeal to kiss up to and protect billionaires, Republicans are reaching for petty, mean-spirited policies— like taxing workplace gyms— while leaving the true waste of military overpayments untouched. This isn't about fiscal responsibility; it's class warfare.Yesterday, Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren reported how House Republicans are looking at making drastic cuts to programs that help working families to help fund the tax cuts for the wealthy. Draconian work requirements for Medicaid recipients, for example, would strip healthcare from 600,000 Americans, leaving vulnerable populations at risk— because the GOP sees healthcare as a privilege, not a right. 

“Top Republicans,” wrote Edmonson and Duehren, “are passing around an extensive menu of ideas to cover the cost of a massive tax cut and immigration crackdown bill. They could create a 10 percent tariff on all imports, bringing in an estimated $1.9 trillion. They could establish new work requirements for Medicaid recipients, bringing in $100 billion in savings. They have even calculated that they could generate $20 billion by raising taxes on people who can use a free gym at the office, according to a 50-page list of options that the House Budget Committee has circulated in recent days. The bigger challenge for Republican leaders is trying to figure out what can pass Congress and be signed by Trump. With slim majorities in both chambers, they are searching for the right mix of policy changes that could offset some of the costs of Trump’s most expensive proposals, placating spending hard-liners who are concerned about ballooning the government’s debt, while also maintaining the support of more centrist members who are loath to slash popular programs.”

Complicating their task is a political challenge: Many of the cuts Republicans are contemplating target programs aimed at helping low-income Americans, all in the service of paying for the extension of tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The overarching goal is to push through a behemoth bill that cuts taxes and clamps down on immigration using a process called reconciliation, which would allow Republican leaders to avoid a filibuster and move legislation through the Senate with a simple majority, even if all Democrats are opposed.

Many of the GOP’s anti-spending members have said they cannot support a bill that adds significantly to the nation’s debt. But most of the major policies Trump wants included in the legislation are extremely expensive. Extending the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017 alone is expected to cost $5 trillion.

That has left Republicans casting about for ways to offset those costs. The budget panel’s menu of possibilities includes everything from major clawbacks of current policy to lower-hanging fruit. Among many others, there are proposals to repeal major health care subsidy programs established by the Affordable Care Act, put caps on Medicaid funding, and end a policy that makes employer-provided meals and lodging tax-exempt.

…Republicans have long sought to scale back Medicare and Medicaid, the government programs for the elderly and poor, and the budget panel’s list outlined a slew of options for doing so, including reducing federal Medicaid payment rates and establishing work requirements for the program’s recipients.

One option floated by the committee would try to undercut the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which led to a ballooning in program enrollment. It would reduce the share of Medicaid costs the federal government pays for, increasing the burden on states.

Another on the list would impose work requirements for Medicaid recipients on able-bodied adults without dependents, with exemptions for pregnant women, students and primary caregivers of dependents. Work requirements would cause 600,000 people to lose coverage, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, cutting federal spending by at least $100 billion over the next decade.

House Budget Committee aides estimated that they could recoup as much as $800 billion with a rollback of clean energy efforts, including repealing tax credits created in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark bill meant to reduce health costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and raise taxes on corporations. The rollback would also include nixing a climate regulation put in place by the Biden administration that is designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.

But undoing huge swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act could prove politically perilous. Some hard-right lawmakers have argued that Republicans should completely repeal the law, but others— particularly those with large clean-energy businesses in their districts or states— have implored congressional leaders to allow some of the measures to remain. Eighteen House Republicans last year wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson warning that “a full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

…The budget panel document also proposed taxing all scholarship and fellowship income, which is currently exempt from taxes, which would produce an additional estimated $54 billion in federal revenue.

…The proposals include ending the tax deduction for interest on home mortgages, one of the most prized sections of the tax code. While Republicans limited the deduction in their 2017 tax law, ending it entirely could save an additional $1 trillion over 10 years, according to the budget panel document. Real estate agents and lawmakers from suburban districts with many homeowners would most likely balk at such a measure.

In a letter to Elon Musk at his DOGE operation, Elizabeth Warren had some useful ideas to making the government more efficient and cost-effective.  Her over 30 proposals would, she claims “cut at least $2 trillion of wasteful government spending over the next decade. “My recommendations,” she wrote, “would reduce spending on wasteful programs and contracts, would cut out unfair loopholes and giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, would make the government more efficient and effective, and would save taxpayers at least $2 trillion over the next decade.” Her  recommendations include:

1. Cutting Wasteful Spending at the Department of Defense: Through negotiating better contracts for the Department of Defense, increasing competition in the defense sector, and tackling repair restrictions on U.S. military equipment.

2. Cutting Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in Federal Health Care Programs: By curbing abuse by Medicare Advantage insurers that overcharge taxpayers, lowering prescription drug costs by expanding Medicare price negotiations on the most expensive and common drugs, and cracking down on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). 

3. Saving on Education Programs: By eliminating or reducing funding for the federal Charter Schools Program and making for-profit colleges that mismanage and waste federal grants ineligible for federal grant aid.

4. Cutting Waste and Abuse in the Federal Tax Code: By closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and fully funding the IRS to catch tax cheats.

While Republicans target low-income families and clean energy to fund their billionaire tax breaks, Warren’s proposals demonstrate a path toward real fiscal responsibility: cutting defense waste, reining in Medicare Advantage fraud, and closing loopholes for the ultra-rich. The contrast couldn’t be clearer. Her suggestions may be effective and well-thought out proposals, but they are not the kinds of solutions most Republicans have been willing to even give serious consideration to.