(Commence thread.)
What Donald Trump and Speaker Ryan are calling for (to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations) is huge cuts that will hobble essential programs.
For example:
☑️ $1.4 trillion in cuts to Medicaid
☑️ $197 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance
☑️ $72 billion in cuts to Social Security disability
In fact, they learned the hard way this year how unpopular cutting Medicaid is.
That’s why they’re trying to smear popular programs like Medicaid as “welfare.”
(Spoiler: Taking away jobless workers’ healthcare/housing/food isn’t gonna help them find work any faster.)
(Spoiler: Low-income people actually use illegal drugs at *lower* rates than their more well-to-do counterparts.)
But hey, no better way to stigmatize people who turn to assistance than to make them all out to be “addicts.”
When wages aren’t enough.
When we lose a job.
When we can’t get enough hours at work.
When we need to care for an ill loved one.
CASE IN POINT: Fully 70% of Americans will turn to a means-tested assistance program to make ends meet at some point during their lives.
This is core to the Trump playbook.
It's no accident that Trump and Ryan use the word every chance they get.
If Trump & Ryan were serious about cutting poverty and promoting work, they'd be strengthening the very priorities their budgets gut – education, job training, Pell Grants, etc.
(Oops.)
That’s why we can’t let them get away with calling this Robin Hood in reverse agenda “welfare reform.”
(Hint: it’s spelled C-U-T).
But the fight isn’t over.
Now that they’ve rammed their billionaire tax cuts through Congress, our healthcare and so much is squarely in the cross hairs for 2018.
None of us can afford to sit this one out.
/end