Republican Policies Would Increase Poverty In U.S.

Aside from coddling dictators and alienating our best allies, Donald Trump has only accomplished one thing since assuming office. He cut taxes for corporations and the richest Americans. Those tax cuts were supposed to create many jobs and increase wages for workers (by an average of $4000 per year). Neither of those things happened.

The tax cuts were also supposed to pay for themselves. They didn't do that either. What happened was a ballooning of the deficit to over a trillion dollars a year. Now the Republicans are searching for a way to pay down the deficit. The sensible thing to do would be to raise taxes on the rich and corporations -- since they didn't perform as promised, and weren't needed in the first place. But they don't want to do that.

Instead, they want to cut all the programs that help Americans the most (including Social Security) -- programs that keep millions of Americans from a devastating poverty. In other words, they want to steal from the poorest Americans to pay for their tax cuts for the richest Americans. It's shameless and immoral, but shame and morality don't seem to be Republican virtues.

The chart above (from the Economic Policy Institute) lists some of those programs, along with the number of people each keeps out of poverty. If they are able to follow through on their policy goals (to cut funding for these programs), many thousands (if not millions) of people will be thrown back into poverty.