Happy holidays, MAGA: Trump’s war on the poor is hurting everyone

The fresh ruling body shutdown longest in our history is now fading into memory but no one should forget which party refused to negotiate while applying political pressure by taking food from millions of Americans mouths and refusing to pay air traffic controllers so Americans encountered chaos at the nation s airports A refusal to fund SNAP benefits despite court orders leaving million Americans hungry a desire to get unhoused people out of sight and out of mind a likely income tax increase for people who make or less a willy-nilly tariff program that raises prices for all American consumers costing the average household thousands a year just for starters as U S trading partners organize to cut America out of the equation as much as accomplishable I m old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson s War on Poverty and I can tell you that those Christian-like efforts have been turned on their head to become Donald Trump s anti-Christian War on the Poor Related Multiple more are ready to leave MAGA and I know how hard that is It reminds one of how Charles Dickens in response to Britain s th-century Poor Law an amendment to earlier poor laws that required the poor to live in purposely unpleasant workhouses wrote Oliver Twist Trump s Big Brutal Bill amounted to nothing more than the rich taking more from the poor and working class Republicans will never stop insisting against all evidence that giving tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations results in economic upsurge when what in fact helps the financial sector is to help poor and working people perhaps especially the working poor Each dollar of SNAP benefits distributed is worth to to the commercial sector helping not only employees at grocery stores but also rippling along the food distribution supply chain to truckers warehouse workers and farmers Republicans will never stop insisting against all evidence that giving tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations results in economic expansion when what indeed helps the business sector is to help poor and working people But Trump and MAGA know nothing about any multiplier effect they know only how to divide Remember Trump only of late learned the words groceries and affordability so with him it s best to stick with Gilded Age era economic terms After all tariff remains the most of beautiful word in Trump s paltry lexicon along with frankly and me If members of the Trump administration were led by open minds instead of the rigid ideology spelled out in Project they might understand that SNAP benefits as economic boosters and a bulwark against recession But as financial and economics writer Morgan Harman notes in a succinct essay the benefits of feeding the hungry go far beyond the obvious immediate economic ones When children eat adequately they perform better in school When working families don t choose between food and rent they maintain stable housing and employment When seniors afford proper nutrition they face fewer healthcare crises These human outcomes have economic dimensions but they matter first because they re the right thing to do In the aftermath of the murder of -year-old Iryna Zarutska by a homeless and mentally ill man in Charlotte North Carolina Fox Friends host Brian Kilmeade mused that mentally ill unhoused people should be euthanized if they refuse therapy He apologized but faced on consequences either at Fox News or in society How about the Republicans cuts to Medicaid amounting trillion over the next decade Medicaid is the federal-state wellness insurance plan for specific million Americans The defunding will consequence in hundreds of rural hospitals and clinics closing hurting everyone including Trump supporters The Republican budget also ties Medicaid benefits to harsher work requirements and does not extend the tax credits for people purchasing vitality insurance through the Affordable Care Act The longest ruling body shutdown in history with Trump refusing any negotiations with Democrats essentially happened so Republicans could ensure that millions of Americans would no longer be able to afford fitness insurance We ought to call those Medicare cuts the Unaffordable Care Act We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to patronage Salon s progressive journalism Should I list a meager more examples of Trump policies that will hurt poor and lower-income Americans How about cutting housing assistance to low- and moderate-income families And eliminating federal help for pre-schools after-school programs and literacy programs Killing the jobs created mostly in rural areas by the Biden administration s Infrastructure Act Gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which was created to protect people like you and me from the predatory practices of banks and other financial facility companies If Trump really thought he might have a chance to get into heaven he should just read that paragraph again Truly the only question he might legitimately have about his fate after shuffling off this mortal coil is which of Dante s circles of hell he has rightfully earned The same flint-hearted philosophies that underwrote the English Poor Law are at work in this country under the Trump administration That takes us back to John Dickens financially ruined by lack of work who ended up with his family at Marshalsea debtors prison while his -year-old son Charles was forced to work in a rat-infested boot-blacking warehouse an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life What would Dickens have made of Trump s modern Gatsby themed party at Mar-a-Lago while million Americans were cut off from food assistance Or his announcement earlier this month that he didn t want to hear about the affordability Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Republicans love Christmas more than well seemingly anything They ve been howling about people saying Happy holidays and Season s greetings for decades Well perhaps that saying inside a phony gold encrusted White House Christmas card this year ought to have a Dickensian touch Don t Talk to Me About Affordability You re All Bob Cratchit to Me As Adam Serwer famously wrote in the Atlantic during Trump s first interminable term the organizing principle behind the entire MAGA movement is cruelty and hatred of others There have been numerous variations on the cruelty is the point since then but Serwer s take remains the original We can t afford to forget the recently-concluded regime shutdown amid an onslaught of other news nor can we forget who played politics with hunger and air traffic safety in America or who continues working overtime to subvert the rule of law and to crush all economic classes below their multi-millionaire and billionaire bros This is indeed a war on the poor but with Trump s endless bullying of our historic allies and his illogical contract wars it s also a war on the future of all Americans for generations to come Autocrats don t want healthy educated citizens who can stand up to them They want illiterate groveling serfs who live in fear and don t stick around too long Dickens knew all about that kind of Christian Read more from Kirk Swearingen Journalists can be heroes I still believe in the enemies of the people Who are the real Americans Resistance to ICE is showing us true patriotism In sports as in politics Americans want a fair playing field The post Happy holidays MAGA Trump s war on the poor is hurting everyone appeared first on Salon com