Thread by @rebeccavallas

Tonight, Donald Trump signed an executive order that sums up how little he understands about poverty in America.

Here’s why.

(THREAD)

Millions of Americans are working 2+ jobs to get by.

Half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

But Trump’s plan for “economic mobility” is to take healthcare, food & housing away from struggling folks just months after giving huge tax cuts to millionaires.

2/x

Trump says his EO is about “welfare reform.” But let’s get one thing clear. WE DON’T HAVE WELFARE IN AMERICA ANYMORE. Congress eliminated it in 1996. What’s left of America’s tattered safety net is meager at best and so, so very far from enough to live on. Let’s take a look. 3/x

SNAP—aka food stamps—provides just $1.40 per person per meal. Imagine that as your food budget. Most folks run out of SNAP by the third week of the month because it’s so far from enough to feed a family on. 4/x

Housing assistance reaches just 1 in 5 eligible low-income families. Those left without help can spend 60, 70, even 80% of their income on rent and utilities each month, while they remain on decades-long waiting lists for aid. 5/x

Today fewer than 1 in 4 poor families with kids get help from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—the artist formerly known as "welfare"—because it was converted to a flat-funded block grant that’s lost fully one-third of its value since 1996. 6/x

And the small fraction of families lucky enough to receive TANF are still pretty much screwed because in no state are TANF benefits more than half the federal poverty line. For example, a Tennessee family of 3 receives a max of $185 per month—or a little over $6 a day. 7/x

At the heart of the EO Trump signed tonight is the GOP’s favorite hobby-horse: so-called “work requirements.”

Make no mistake: taking healthcare, food, and housing away from struggling workers has nothing to do with helping anyone work. americanprogress.org/issues/poverty… 8/x

Rather, pushing for “work requirements” is at the core of the GOP strategy to reinforce the following myths about poverty in America... 9/x

1) That “the poor” are some stagnant group of people who “just don’t want to work”

2) That anyone who wants a well-paying job can snap her fingers to make one appear

3) That having a job is all it takes to not be poor

10/x

Reinforcing these myths is core to Trump’s divide & conquer playbook. That’s why he’s so keen to smear Medicaid, SNAP, & other popular programs as “welfare”—a term with a deeply racially charged history, evoking decades of stereotypes about who is poor in this country. 11/x

By using dog-whistle terms like “welfare,” Trump’s trying to paint people who turn to Medicaid, SNAP, and other public programs as Reagan's mythical “welfare queen” -- so we don’t notice that he’s coming after the entire working and middle class. 12/x

FACT: 70% of Americans will turn to at least one means-tested program—like Medicaid or SNAP—at some point.

That’s why polling finds Americans overwhelmingly oppose cuts to these and other programs that are there for us when we fall on hard times 👇 americanprogress.org/issues/poverty… 13/x

Trump says his EO is about eliminating "poverty traps."

If he knew anything about poverty--aside from what he's learned from Fox News--he'd know the real poverty trap is the poverty-level minimum wage. 14/x

CASE IN POINT: The federal minimum wage has stayed stuck at $7.25/hour for nearly a decade, as the GOP has stymied efforts to give workers a much-needed raise. 15/x

As a result, a minimum wage worker in 2018 is taking an effective pay cut of $2,370 this year—that's a whopping ***47 times*** what she can expect to receive under Trump’s tax law (cue Paul Ryan's deleted tweets about "crumbs"...) 16/x

If Trump were really trying to promote "self-sufficiency" -- a concept he clearly doesn't think applies to the millionaires he just gave massive tax cuts -- he'd be all over raising the minimum wage. 17/x

In fact, raising the minimum wage just to $12 would save a whopping $53 billion just in SNAP over a decade—as more low-wage workers would suddenly earn enough to (gasp!) feed their families without nutrition assistance. 18/x

So I ask:

Where, @realdonaldTrump, is raising the poverty-level minimum wage in your shiny new “Principles of Economic Mobility”?

(crickets)

19/x

@realDonaldTrump Worth nothing: This EO itself doesn’t carry any real weight—it directs agencies to review programs that help families make ends meet.

Its real purpose is to smear the programs Trump and his colleagues in Congress want to slash to pay for their millionaire tax cuts.
20/x

@realDonaldTrump Trump is clearly hoping to poison public opinion on SNAP ahead of the upcoming debate around the Farm Bill, which Congressional Republicans are eyeing as their best opportunity for draconian public assistance cuts this year. 21/x

@realDonaldTrump First Trump came for our healthcare.

Now he's coming for food, housing, and everything else that helps families afford the basics, brick by brick.

All to pay for his $1.5 trillion in tax giveaways to the wealthiest people in this nation.

22/x

@realDonaldTrump We saved the ACA because we stood together and said in unison #HandsOff.

We can do it again if we refuse to let him divide us.

Join the fight and share your story of what the programs Trump is trying to gut mean to you and your family at handsoff.org.

/end (for now)