GOP Budget Cuts Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, More

(Cartoon image is by Clay Bennett at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.)

A few months ago, the Republicans accomplished their biggest goal -- tax cuts for the rich. They tried to call it a "middle class tax cut", but that was soon exposed as a lie since the richest Americans got over 80% of those cuts.

But the worst part of those tax cuts for the rich was that it is adding about a trillion dollars a year to the deficit and national debt. That's a problem for the GOP, since they have always called themselves the "fiscally responsible" party. They are now trying to lower their self-imposed deficit with their new budget -- and naturally, the burden of their new budget cuts will be put on seniors, the poor, and hard-working Americans. Once again they reward the rich and hurt regular American.

Here is how Erica Werner describes the new GOP budget in The Washington Post:

House Republicans released a proposal Tuesday that would balance the budget in nine years — but only by making large cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare, that President Trump vowed not to touch. . . .

The House Republican budget, titled “A Brighter American Future,” would remake Medicare by giving seniors the option of enrolling in private plans that compete with traditional Medicare, a system of competition designed to keep costs down but dismissed by critics as an effort to privatize the program. Along with other changes, the budget proposes to squeeze $537 billion out of Medicare over the next decade.

The budget would transform Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor, by limiting per capita payments or allowing states to turn it into a block-grant program — the same approach House Republicans took in their legislation that passed last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act (the repeal effort died in the Senate, but the GOP budget assumes that the repeal takes place).  It also proposes adding work requirements for certain adults enrolled in Medicaid. Changes to Medicaid and other health programs would account for $1.5 trillion in savings.

Social Security comes in for more modest cuts of $4 billion over the decade, which the budget projects could be reached by eliminating concurrent receipt of unemployment benefits and Social Security disability insurance.

The budget also proposes a number of other cost-saving measures, some of which could prove unpopular if implemented, such as adding more work requirements for food-stamp and welfare recipients and requiring federal employees — including members of Congress — to contribute more to their retirement plans. It assumes repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act that regulated banks after the financial crisis 10 years ago, something Congress recently rejected in passing a banking bill into law that softened some of the key provisions of Dodd-Frank but left its overall structures intact. And the budget proposes $230 billion in cuts from education and training programs, including consolidating student loan programs and reducing Pell Grant awards.

The budget also relies on rosy economic-growth projections and proposes using a budgetary mechanism to require other congressional committees to come up with a combined $302 billion in unspecified deficit reduction.