Wednesday, May 24, 2017

President Trump’s budget kicks people when they’re down [feedly]

President Trump's budget kicks people when they're down
http://www.epi.org/blog/president-trumps-budget-kicks-people-when-theyre-down/

The president's budget was released today and a House budget resolution will follow in June. Though the two plans will undoubtedly differ in certain areas—the president's budget includes infrastructure and paid parental leave proposals that aren't guaranteed to be taken up by the House—both will seek deep cuts to programs helping vulnerable citizens while calling for immense tax cuts for the wealthy.

The proposed budget and tax cuts come on the heels of the House effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with their American Health Care Act (AHCA), which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted would be "the largest transfer in modern U.S. history from low- and moderate-income people to the very wealthy," should it become law. The White House is banking on this repeal passing, assuming $250 billion in supposed savings in the president's budget.

Voters who believed Trump's assurances that he opposed cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid may be surprised to learn that he wants to gut Medicaid (not just reversing the expansion embedded in the ACA, but essentially doubling the cuts in Medicaid called for in the House-passed AHCA), cut Social Security Disability Insurance, and hasten the exhaustion of the Medicare trust fund. Funding for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) would be slashed by $616 billion over the 10-year budget window, as Medicaid would be transformed from a coverage guarantee for low-income families and nursing home residents who have exhausted their savings into block grants or similar programs constrained by per capita spending limits at a time when Baby Boomers are aging into their peak Alzheimer's years. The Medicaid cuts would do nothing to restrain health cost inflation but would leave sick kids and frail seniors to fend for themselves.

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