Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Even The Russians Aren’t Buying His Budget Bullshit

The budget proposal put out by Trump is so fraught with lies, wishful thinking, and cuts to entitlement programs (which many fervent Trump supporters depend on) that even a Russian media outlet isn’t buying it.

So it has come to this: A Russian government-funded propaganda outfit schooling the Trump administration on the cruelty of its proposed federal budget.

Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget director, unveiled Trump’s ghastly 2018 budget proposal Monday afternoon in the White House briefing room, and one point of pride was that it proposed that the child-care tax credit and the earned-income tax credit — benefits for working families — be denied to illegal immigrants. “It’s not right when you look at it from the perspective of people who pay the taxes,” Mulvaney declared.

But Andrew Feinberg, a reporter with Russia’s Sputnik news outfit, pointed out that many of the children who would be cut off under Trump’s proposal are U.S. citizens. “Whether they’re here illegally or not,” Feinberg noted, “those families have American-citizen children.”

Mulvaney, who probably didn’t know he was being interrogated by Sputnik, argued back, saying that Feinberg wasn’t duly considering taxpayers and that “we have all kinds of other programs” for poor kids.

At this, another reporter in the room interjected: “You’re cutting that, too.”

[…]

The budget claims it balances the budget over a decade without touching Social Security and Medicare, while spending more on national security, the border, infrastructure and more.

How? The budget would eviscerate aid to the poor, and it makes preposterous assumptions about future growth. In other words — a cruelty wrapped in a lie. Mulvaney on Monday acknowledged it’s a “fair point” that Congress will ignore the proposal. But this outrage deserves attention.

Trump, who once vowed “no cuts” to Medicaid, would now cut Medicaid by more than $800 billion, denying support to 10 million people. He lops a total of $1.7 trillion off that and similar programs, including food stamps, school lunches and Habitat for Humanity.

Like all White House budget proposals, this one will never become law.  But it does tell us what they’re thinking, and that is that the poor and the sick have no place in our society if they’re not productive.  Even the Russians aren’t buying that cruelty.

2 barks and woofs on “Even The Russians Aren’t Buying His Budget Bullshit

  1. Victorian England. I expect we’ll find cities blackened by smoke, too. And poor houses to dump those who couldn’t pay the rent along with mentally handicapped people who’ve been sleeping on the streets.

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