I’m not going to waste a gift link to it, but today the New York Times is running an op ed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner headlined “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must.” A sample:
America’s welfare programs were created with a noble purpose: to help those who needed them most — our seniors, individuals with disabilities, pregnant women and low-income families with children.
In recent years, though, these welfare programs have deviated from their original mission both by drift and by design. Millions of able-bodied adults have been added to the rolls in the past decade, primarily as a result of Medicaid expansion. Many of these recipients are working-age individuals without children who might remain on welfare for years. Some of them do not work at all or they work inconsistently throughout the year.
The increased share of welfare spending dedicated to able-bodied working-age adults distracts from what should be the focus of these programs: the truly needy.
The great right-wing fantasy that has lived at least since LBJ initiated the Great Society program is there are vast numbers of deadbeats who are living off “welfare” instead of working. And if we got rid of welfare, they’d go out and get jobs and be perfectly fine. There is all kinds of authoritative data easily found via web search saying otherwise, of course.
By the numbers: There’s little evidence that people are somehow free-riding on Medicaid.
64% of adults with Medicaid work full time or part time, according to an analysis of census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. [That would be 44 percent full time, 20 percent part time]
Another 32% are taking care of home or family, are ill or disabled, attend school, or are retired.
2% could not find work. And there’s another 2% in an “other” category.
You can’t live on Medicaid. The beneficiary doesn’t see a dime of it. It just pays for medical care already received. Nobody is sitting around watching teevee all day and living off the Medicaid checks. According to the American Hospital Association, “Approximately 42% of Medicaid beneficiaries are adults, 36% are children, 10% are disabled, and 10% are age 65 or older.” So more than half of Medicaid recipients are children, seniors, or disabled.
The House “big, beautiful budget bill” now includes work requirements for receiving Medicaid. Axios reports that “The bill would require Medicaid recipients who are under 65 years old, without dependents, to confirm they are working at least 80 hours a month. Another provision requires some to certify twice a year that they qualify for insurance.” A few states have tried this, and I understand the administrative costs of checking up on the work requirements are prohibitive. In Georgia, Axios says, the state spent $13,000 per enrollee just to sign them up. It’s probably more cost-effective to let a few deadbeats slip through. And a lot of people who should be able to qualify aren’t able to navigate the system.
Regarding Georgia, do read He Became the Face of Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement. Now He’s Fed Up With It. by Margaret Coker at ProPublica. A real Georgia Medicaid recipient who runs a small business was featured on state-sponsored video ads about what a great medical benefits program Georgia had. Since the ads aired the guy has lost his benefits twice because of bureaucratic red tape, and he’s fed up with it. You really need to read this. It appears the state is perpetually changing the work hour reporting procedures so that people make reporting mistakes and their benefits can be canceled.
And on that note, see Paul Krugman, Republicans Hate You.
Allow me to elaborate. If you struggle to pay your bills, if you have anxiety about your economic future, if the cost of housing and college and just ordinary living weigh on you all the time? There is nothing more important for you to understand than this: Republicans hate you. They think you’re lazy, they think you’re stupid, they think you don’t deserve anything better than to be a wage slave working your ass off so they and their billionaire buddies can have more servants and vacation houses and private jets, while they sit around laughing about what a sucker they think you are. They hate you.
I’ll go into detail on what this message accomplishes and why it’s so important, but first let’s consider this in context of what is probably the most abhorrent part of the budget bill: enormous cuts to Medicaid that would lead to millions of Americans losing their health coverage — as many as 14.7 million, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The primary way they will do this is through “work requirements,” i.e. forcing recipients to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course to prove, over and over again, that they are working and therefore deserving of health coverage.
Work requirements are terrible policy, but what matters is why Republicans want to use them to kick all those people off their insurance. It’s because they hate people who need Medicaid. The same goes for those who might need food stamps or student loans, workers who want to bargain collectively, and pretty much anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be rich. They hate you.
I bolded that last paragraph because I think it’s true. They hate people who need benefits. Those people are a drag on the ability of rich people to not pay taxes.
Remember back during the depths of the covid pandemic, when the Senate had to debate relief checks? This is from Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, March 2020:
At some point on Wednesday, the Senate is expected to vote on a desperately needed $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. When that will happen is unclear, though, because a number of leading Republicans are demanding changes to the legislation, worried that it provides perverse incentives that could ultimately hurt the country. Do their concerns have to do with huge multinational corporations using the funds on buybacks? Insufficient aid to hospitals or low-wage workers unsure of how they’ll be able to afford food in a week? Not exactly! Rather, Senators Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott are sick with fear that the legislation will make unemployment so enticing that low-wage workers will decide to lay themselves off.
In the minds of these, um, people, those low-wage workers had better get their asses into the workplace, covid or no covid, and if some of them die that’s okay, but they can’t be allowed to not work!
Claiming the relief package will encourage people to stay out of the workforce, Graham told reporters that the bill “pays you more not to work than if you were working,” noting that it would provide the equivalent of $24.07 an hour in South Carolina versus the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. “If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families’ tables,” Graham, Sasse, and Scott said in a statement. Yes, it takes a real parody of a Republican to worry—at a time when a deadly pandemic is sweeping the nation and doctors are discussing the prospect of having to pick which patients get to live—about the possibility of being too generous to people making 1/1000000th of their annual salary.
See also Greg Sargent at The New Republic, Mike Johnson Just Wrecked Trump’s Ugly “Working-Class GOP” Scam. The current GOP bill creates a whole new benefit for wealthy investors. Greg Sargent explains it better than I can. The Tax Foundation analysis of the bill says that one effect of the bill will be to limit wage growth.
American incomes measured by Gross National Product (GNP) would increase by less than 0.05 percent because the deficit impact of the bill drives a wedge between the increase in economic output and the increase in American incomes. The tax provisions would increase the budget deficit by $3.3 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a dynamic basis, and that higher budget deficit would require the US government to borrow more. As interest payments on the debt made to foreigners increase, American incomes decrease.
So it’s a terrible bill. At least I am also reading that a lot of Senate Republicans have some real issues with it, so there’s some hope it will be modified, I suppose. Josh Hawley, of all people, published another NY Times op-ed a couple of days ago headlined Don’t Cut Medicaid. Hawley dishonestly pretends that Trump wants Medicaid left alone —
Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.
Trump has promised a lot of things, but it’s obvious the one promise he wants to keep is cutting taxes for the rich. If the little people have to suffer, too bad.
This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.
Hawley isn’t stupid.
Now some 21 percent of Missourians benefit from Medicaid or CHIP, the companion insurance program for lower-income children. And many of our rural hospitals and health providers depend on the funding from these programs to keep their doors open.
That percentage would probably be a lot harder if the state didn’t make signing up so difficult. I swear the application form is endless.
All of which means this: If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple. And that pattern will be replicated in states across the country.
One of my constituents, a married mother of five, contacted me to explain why Medicaid is vital to her 8-year-old daughter, who depends on a feeding tube to survive. Formula, pump rentals, feeding extensions and other treatments cost $1,500 a month; prescriptions nearly double that cost. These expenses aren’t covered by private insurance. The mother wrote to me, “Without Medicaid, we would lose everything — our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.”
If Hawley puts up a meaningful fight to stop the Medicaid cuts, I might take back some of the bad things I’ve said about him. Not all of them, though.
Recommended read: Jamelle Bouie, They Were Waiting for Trump All Along.
I read something years ago in response to empathy for the unemployed, the under-employed be it by low hours, low wages, of both that stranded them at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. The conservative response to the misery of the poor worker was, "I never had a poor man give me a job."
The statement is explosive for the contempt it shows to the poor and the fealty expressed to the rich employer, source of all benefits. Take a closer look. I agree with the philosopher who countered, "No rich man ever 'gave' me a job – he hired me as a last resort when the alternative would be to pass on income the owner could not earn without my labor." And when things slow down, the employer will shed no tears cutting my hours or laying me off to preserve HIS income even if it leaves me destitute. So much for the benevolence of the rich man.
Poor people are far more numerous than rich employers. Through Limbaugh and Fox and the right-wing propaganda machine, people who work have been conditioned to despise and hold in contempt the working (and unemployed) poor.
To pass this bill, that drumbeat of contempt for the people using Medicare or enrolled in CHIP will get louder. The propaganda machine will go in overdrive promising the rubes too lazy to check facts that *they* won't be affected because the bill only targets people of dark skin or the millions of career deadbeats dragging the country down. (Ignore the unemployment rate under Biden.) All you people who work so hard are supporting these mythical people who will not work. Until the bill passes and the cuts go into effect.
The New York Times reported:
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is more popular now than it ever has been – 60% approval in a Feb poll this year. It's used by 40 million, so the cuts would eliminate coverage for over 20%. But the effects could be much more sweeping if rural clinics close.
The effects will hit red states more than blue states. I accept the fact but I do not understand the strategy. People are not going to be inconvenienced – they will die. The media will connect the dots between lost coverage and people in pine boxes. Shortly after the you-know-what hits the fan, the GOP is in the midterms with a bare three-seat margin. How do they expect to remain in power? (Possible answers to that question have me drinking after a long pause.)
The whole point of government is to provide essential services to the population. If you are doing something else, you aren’t governing. You are a parasite.
I'm watching "The Hunger Games" for the first time. I met Jennifer Lawrence once at an awards ceremony nine years ago. She's active in the movement to get big money out of politics. But I digress.
The theme of the ultra-rich soak up the benefits of what the working poor produce is a perfect description of what Project 2025 is designed to do. The "love" that the aristocrats claim for everyone in a "utopia" for them feels like DJT and Musk.
And there's the "reality show" aspect of "The Hunger Games" that dovetails exactly with Trump's theatrical self-promotion at the taxpayer's expense. Can we bring back the three-finger salute of solidarity and rebellion?
I'd argue that "hate" is too strong a word, but then, I'd say "you see, they figure you to be like an animal in the road, one where they won't slow down to avoid hitting you, but, they will feel a bit bad for you, as they feel their vehicle tires killing or wounding you, and will say 'oh, what a shame!' before driving on, without a look back."
Now, if (generic-)you are so callous, about human beings, that you would run them down in the road, and think nothing more than "oh, what a shame!" you're evil as hell, don't get me wrong, but, you're not particularly hateful. You wouldn't run a person down *just for fun*. You'd only run them down *if they were in your way*, you see? So hate is a stronger word, but, damn, wouldn't you almost rather be hated, than to find you were just in someone's way one day, so *splat*?
Indifference is more dangerous than hate, in my opinion. And it's far more insidious.
Capitalism requires illusion, at least a plausible dream of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the vast majority of people, or for many at least that outcome for their children. Capitalism also requires a form of Socialism, as many of the dreamers fall victim to illness, layoffs, failed relationships, or just poor judgement or bad fortune. The future may favor the bold, but only a minority of them. The rest of us find ourselves trying to just hang on, hoping that the few winners will allow us to fade away with at least a bit of dignity. We are fine without a tricked up giant jet plane and even quite a bit less than that. We are fine until the top of the ruling class think they are entitled to such a luxury while we are expected to fade away with less. Then the political tide tends to turn.
Those of us that are not frequent fliers might do well to note those who have been in the past and changes in their tune. Laura Loomer was a frequent flier during the campaign. Then she sang with high praise and in harmony. Frank Berni writes in the Times of her change.
Well at the moment we are seeing quite the display of governmental micromanagement. Some even see a looming, if not Loomer guided, dictatorship.
What is not to like about the phrase "He looks not at the quality of their ideas, but…" How good is that?
A commenter to Bruni by the handle of Don'tSellYourSoul responded with this jewel.
Shame to the image of MAGA, what a notion. There went all MAGA dignity. To even imagine such an image defies one's sense of horror. You just thought you were in the cellar until you heard the knock on the floor. (I owe a credit or more for this line) Freek show.
Really, capitalism doesn't demand a pot of gold – it just demands a decent living wage. One of the problems is, there are two types of economists.
One says "some people choose leisure, over work." This is the school of "don't give people WELFARE… er, Medicaid for not working."
The other says "people choose to do whatever they need to for basic necessities, then, choose leisure or additional work."
The first type – dear god, they can be so logical sounding, until you realize how stupid their assumptions are.
One thing that I notice is how a newspaper let that editorial become Republican propaganda. Notice how they keep saying "welfare," which brings to mind cash payments (AFDC, or whatever they call it now), when they really mean "a public welfare program, Medicaid."
"Welfare" is a good thing – a parent looks out for a child's "welfare," which has nothing to do with a government program! And a "public welfare" program is a good thing to have. For example, the interstate highway system – that's a good public welfare program, the country is better off for having it, and, it's sexier than "health care," so Republicans don't call it welfare. But Medicaid is probably just as important, and maybe more so, to the country's overall welfare, especially in rural areas where hospitals are barely afloat, and need more paying (as opposed to "uninsured") customers.
yes…. and not to mention that one of the purposes of establishing our constitutional government, is (as stated in the first sentence of the Constitution) to "promote the general Welfare…"
I volunteer at a food shelf and do intake.
People are scared. They are not gaming the system, there is no system for them.
I also live in Elise Stefanik's district.
55,000 people on Medicaid will be cut if the Republican budget passes.
The GOP is good at bamboozling the poorly educated real Americans, and why not? They've been listening to nothing but Fox for decades now, which practically hypnotizes them into alternate realities with nonstop lies. Even before Trump, they were quick to complain about democrats not listening to them, even as the democratic party has been the only firewall preventing reality from completely collapsing in on them from the policies of republicans they can't stop voting for. If it were up to the GOP, they wouldn't have Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, SNAP, CHIP and other social programs that literally keep them alive and their communities afloat. They vote republican and then hope they will do for them whatever they said just to get elected. And when it doesn't happen as republicans knew it wouldn't because they were lying to them all along (no tax on tips, social security, overtime!) they know all they need to do is call them patriots, say there's a trans or black person coming for them (“DEI”!) and they vote them in again. And each time this cycle has repeated over the years they lose more and more, and now to the point where Trump's "big, beautiful bill" will leave them completely azz out this time.
This works because these people have staked so much on being “white” and superior, as LBJ infamously said decades ago, that as long as you give them someone to look down on they’ll empty their pockets for you. The GOP knows and has built their entire political strategy using this on how to get their votes while doing absolutely nothing for them, to focus on their real constituency, wealth. I cannot think of any republican policy in the last 40 years that actually materially helped working class/poor/rural white folk. From welfare queens to transgenders, “illegal immigrants,” the GOP has maintained a stable of boogeymen and lesser to keep them in line. I almost feel sorry for them, but just knowing they think they’re voting for people who will bring pain upon those they’ve been taught to hate and fear, makes me lose all empathy for them.
The work requirement is very similar to the BS about voter fraud. The idea is to create more hurdles for people to get Medicaid or vote, reducing the populations of those who do so. There is about the same amount of voter fraud as there is Medicaid fraud, effectively so little it's not worth discussing. It's a red herring.
The bill is engineered so the tax increases don't hit until 2029, long after this president and his sycophants are gone.
You want to talk about government medical fraud? Can we first question Rick Scott under oath, under penalty of perjury? That's too old an example for you – statute of limitations kind of thing?
CNN today –
"And then The Wall Street Journal dropped the hammer, revealing that UnitedHealth is under federal criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud.
The developments have stunned investors, triggering a dramatic loss of confidence. UnitedHealth’s (UNH) stock has lost half its value – a staggering $288 billion – in the span of a month. Its share price plunged on Thursday to its lowest level since April 2020, during the height of the pandemic."
Yeah, THAT United Health Care, the one who lost an executive to a bullet in a citizen hit of resentment of their murderous policies. The feds are asking for the death penalty against the shooter. If the jury hangs, Wall Street will unravel.
The committee vote failed. The cuts don't cut DEEP enough for the hardliners. Deeper cuts will put Republicans in swing districts even more at risk. It's not over but the GOP lost the committee vote by a greater margin (five votes) than they have to spare in a full vote on the floor.
This pushes the bill further into the summer when the voters will feel the bite of inflation from tariffs. This will further drive down Trump's popularity, making many Republicans feel more vulnerable in the next election. They will want a bill that does not offend voters at home, not to the point they will turn out in anger at the GOP.
Something's got to give. Either Medicaid, and/pr chip… OR cut the depth of the tax cuts for the rich…OR cut defense spending… (Sorry, must have been an acid flashback.)
Johnson put this up for a vote knowing it would fail. He's telling Trump, "I told you it will not work." What Johnson wants Trump to get behind is not clear but (IMO) Johnson followed orders like a good soldier and he's gonna lay the defeat on Trump. Johnson knows what sacrifices will have to be made to pass this. (I think.) The price is higher than Trump wanted to pay. (I think.) Johnson is saying to Trump,, "OK. Now what do you want to do? I tried it your way and I told you what would happen."