The world has rightly reacted in horror to the OAFPOTUS's self-defeating tariff regime. But as economists Paul Krugman and Bobby Kogan point out, the tariffs are distracting us from the even more horrific Republican budget proposal:
PAUL KRUGMAN: So, it’s been a pretty amazing hundred days, but almost all of my focus has been on tariffs and other things like DOGE and all of that. But meanwhile, there's a much more sort of conventional Republican plan of huge tax cuts and big benefit cuts. There is a legislative push which in normal times would have been occupying all of our attention and maybe should be getting some of it. And you know more about this certainly than I do or than anybody I know.
So I thought I would get you to talk about what's happening. And so, where are we, what is actually happening on the budget right now?
BOBBY KOGAN: What we are seeing is an enormous tax cut bill that would spike the deficit by—depending on the version we're seeing—three-ish to five-ish trillion dollars partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and huge cuts to food assistance and some other things. So the net package will be a huge deficit increase while taking away people's health care and people's food.
PAUL KRUGMAN Yeah, anyone who thinks that Trump is being populist should have in mind that this is sort of the most aggressively un-populist, anti-populist legislation. How big are we talking about? The tax cuts, I think, it's a very big budget number. How serious are the cuts that we're talking about to Medicaid and basically food stamps?
BOBBY KOGAN Yeah, so they are shooting for $1.5 to $2 trillion of spending cuts. We haven't seen the Medicaid proposal yet. I think no matter what they're doing, it will be the largest Medicaid cut in history. And the only question is, by how much, right? Are we talking $500 billion of Medicaid cuts, 600, 700, 800? They gave the Energy and Commerce committee an $880 billion instruction. But some of that will be things that aren't Medicaid. The majority of that will be Medicaid.
On food stamps, they're looking at cutting it in quarter. Basically, there was a Biden-era reassessment of the thrifty food plan that kind of Reworked it already. Anyway, that doesn't matter. They want to undo that. Right now the average benefit is a little bit more than $2 per person per meal. So already very meager. Already incredibly meager, they want to take it down to a buck sixty-seven per person per meal. Really pinching pennies from hungry families.
Remember how the US used to lead the world in science? Yeah, that's gone too. Peer-equivalent health care outcomes? Forget those. Jobs? Them too.
And, of course, cutting all these things will create opportunities for private businesses to go after your money more directly. Why get weather reports for free if you can pay someone for them? Free enterprise! Too bad all those people have to die for corporate profits to increase.