Based on the promises he made while campaigning throughout the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump (with the help of his chief benefactor, Elon Musk) made it clear he plans to slash billions of dollars from the federal budget, even eliminating entire departments and cutting back on numerous programs that are part of the U.S. social safety net for the most vulnerable in the country.
And those budget cuts, it turns out, would be devastating to many of Trump’s supporters, especially those who live in red states, according to Andy Sullivan and Ally J. Levine of Reuters.
“Roughly two out of every three dollars is spent on pension, health care and other programs that provide tangible benefits to U.S. residents, meaning that any cutbacks could cause an outcry,” Sullivan and Levine explain.
Healthcare could be devastated, they note.
“Consider the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare expansion that was the signature accomplishment of Democratic President Barack Obama. Republicans vowed to roll back ‘Obamacare’ when Trump was first elected in 2016, but they failed to do so. The program has dramatically grown since then.”
The largest programs that cost the most money are Social Security and Medicare, both of which Trump has promised not to cut, which means that administration bean counters will have to slash the budgets of programs that benefit the poorest Americans.
“Both the Medicaid health plan for the poor and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which helps pay for groceries, tend to play a bigger role in Democratic-leaning states. But cutbacks in these areas also would hit hard in poor, conservative states like Louisiana.”
Attempting to balance the budget on the backs of the poor isn’t exactly a new idea for Republicans. They’ve been actively trying to cut social programs that help raise people out of poverty as far back as the 1980s when Ronald Reagan demonized “welfare queens” suggesting that many who received benefits were too lazy to work and preferred to stay home and collect a government check.
But what about the children, disabled, elderly, and veterans who are also helped by such programs? Are Trump and the GOP willing to watch as they are tossed into the streets and starve to death? Considering that the Republican Party is now controlled by predatory capitalists like Musk, don’t be surprised if it happens and millions die.
