The Rich Have Their Tax Cut, So Now It’s Time to Screw the Poor

A few months ago Republicans unanimously voted to pass a huge tax cut for corporations and the rich. This will increase the deficit over the next ten years by about $2 trillion, but today Republicans got that old-time religion again:

The group of senators were bombarded with more questions about family separation, until Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) stepped in to end the line of questioning. He admonished the group of journalists for focusing on the wrong story and suggested that family separation at the border is not a crisis. “I apologize, guys, we came here to talk about a crisis,” he said, visibly agitated….“God help us if we don’t solve this debt crisis. This is the No. 1 topic in America today, and we’ve got to solve it.”

Here’s how they plan to solve it:

First they add nearly a trillion dollars to a defense budget that’s already the biggest ever and by far the biggest on the planet. Then they slash spending on Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, SNAP, TANF, veterans affairs, retirement benefits, and anything else that doesn’t especially benefit the rich.

There’s all the usual drivel about how this won’t hurt anyone because the cuts come from clamping down on wastefraudandabuse. Plus spending cuts on the poor will hypercharge economic growth. And anyway, it’s tough love that will put the poor back to work and give them back their dignity.

In other words, the usual. And none of this will ever get a vote on the House floor, let alone the Senate. Still, this is their vision for America. In December we got their tax cuts for the rich, now we’re getting their spending cuts for the poor. That’s the Republican way.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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