The Rich Have Their Tax Cut, So Now It’s Time to Screw the Poor

A few months ago Republicans unanimously voted to pass a huge tax cut for corporations and the rich. This will increase the deficit over the next ten years by about $2 trillion, but today Republicans got that old-time religion again:

The group of senators were bombarded with more questions about family separation, until Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) stepped in to end the line of questioning. He admonished the group of journalists for focusing on the wrong story and suggested that family separation at the border is not a crisis. “I apologize, guys, we came here to talk about a crisis,” he said, visibly agitated….“God help us if we don’t solve this debt crisis. This is the No. 1 topic in America today, and we’ve got to solve it.”

Here’s how they plan to solve it:

First they add nearly a trillion dollars to a defense budget that’s already the biggest ever and by far the biggest on the planet. Then they slash spending on Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, SNAP, TANF, veterans affairs, retirement benefits, and anything else that doesn’t especially benefit the rich.

There’s all the usual drivel about how this won’t hurt anyone because the cuts come from clamping down on wastefraudandabuse. Plus spending cuts on the poor will hypercharge economic growth. And anyway, it’s tough love that will put the poor back to work and give them back their dignity.

In other words, the usual. And none of this will ever get a vote on the House floor, let alone the Senate. Still, this is their vision for America. In December we got their tax cuts for the rich, now we’re getting their spending cuts for the poor. That’s the Republican way.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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