Big budget robs poor, feeds rich

May 26. The White House’s big bulls–t budget bill passed the House the morning of May 24 in a 215 to 214 vote and may pass the Senate this week, although there are reports some Republican senators fear the consequences. Trump is pushing to get it through fast. 

Let’s keep it simple: Trump’s “big beautiful budget” rips off hundreds of billions of dollars from the poorest members of the working class. It hands this stolen loot to a tiny number of the richest people in the United States.

This is the essence of Trump’s MAGA regime. It’s why billionaires backed Trump’s election with cash. They want to steal an even greater amount of the wealth that workers create than they steal already. 

We don’t even have to do the math ourselves. Opponents of the bill, like political economist Robert Reich, former labor secretary under former President Bill Clinton, has done the math already. In this particular case, we can believe him.

Trump lied when he said he wouldn’t touch Medicare. The bill will cut Medicare by $500 billion, says Reich. That’s a half-trillion dollars. Retired and disabled workers rely on Medicare to pay for medical costs.

The bill would, according to the Congressional Budget Office:

• impose work requirements for Medicaid starting at the end of 2026
• cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and food stamps
• spend $150 billion [more] on military programs
• limit judges’ power to hold the Trump administration in contempt
• phase out Biden-era energy tax credits sooner than planned 
• make trillions of dollars of income tax breaks for the rich permanent
• allocate $45 billion to build new immigration detention facilities

Robin Hood in reverse

Trump lied when he said he would go easy on Medicaid, which the lowest income earners rely on. At least 8.6 million people will lose Medicaid coverage.

The tax cut will benefit the rich. “Overwhelmingly,” says Reich. The top one-tenth of 1% of income “earners” will gain $390,000 per year. They don’t need that income. But they want it.

Workers who earn between $17,000 and $51,000 per year will lose about $700 a year. Workers who earn less than $17,000 a year will lose more than $1,000 a year on average. Reich did the math.

Anyone who knows anything about the unequal distribution of income in the United States knows that this means pain for the working class, and it will hurt people of color most, along with women and gender-oppressed people, LGBTQIA2S+ communities and workers who are disabled. It’s the act of a racist, misogynist bigot!

The “big, beautiful budget bill” is Robin Hood in reverse. It robs from the poor to give to the rich. It will impoverish millions of people, mostly the lowest earners. It will harm the entire working class. Only rich capitalists will gain.

Add to this the downgrading of medical care as hospitals and clinics close from the lack of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. Small farmers who count on SNAP payments for food to find markets will go bankrupt. 

Trump also said he would balance the budget. Another lie. The Congressional Budget Office said the bill’s combination of tax breaks for the rich and brutal budget cuts for the not-wealthy will increase the budget deficit by $3.8 trillion between 2026 – 2034.

The American Federation of Teachers, which has been following this bill closely since it has a lot of provisions which will be used to attack public education, summed up its impact: “This bill would make Americans — particularly children and older people — sicker and poorer through a direct transfer of wealth to the rich. Seventy percent of the benefits will go to the top 5 percent at the expense of the bottom 40 percent.”

Impulse truth

In the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove,” while it displays dangers of a military pushing nuclear war, the villain is a scientist responsible for a doomsday weapon. He impulsively makes Nazi salutes. He can’t stop himself. 

Trump’s buddy Elon Musk seems to have contracted a similar syndrome, and Trump himself seems to have caught a version of it. Speaking at a West Point graduation May 23, the president said: “The job of the U.S. Armed Forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, but to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun.” (Mother Jones, May 24, our emphasis) 

Along with his gratuitous attack on the trans community and his use of the word “democracy,” Trump did blurt out a partial truth. The U.S. Armed Forces’ job is to use the $1 trillion a year in the Pentagon budget to allow U.S. billionaires to pillage people around the globe, at gunpoint. 

An alternate budget

Bloomberg (May 5) reported that the so-called Golden Dome in Trump’s military budget could cost $542 billion, although Trump claimed $175 billion. He often lies. 

Press TV, a news agency based in Iran, did the math to explain what U.S. workers, who pay most of the taxes, are losing with that military budget. The $542 billion could: “Fund tuition-free public colleges for seven years; end homelessness many times over; fully implement universal pre-K and childcare for decades; provide $1,000 a month basic income to over 45 million [U.S.] Americans for a year.”

If Congress passes Trump’s cruel, vicious bill, the working class must reverse it. The ruling class, through the MAGA regime, has targeted all workers, who must mobilize to turn back this assault. Unlike the billionaires, the workers, who include nearly all of us, won’t be robbing anyone. They will simply be stopping a robbery and returning the wealth to those who produced it.