\n<\/p>\n
L<\/span>ast November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: \u201cEvery citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.\u201d Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.<\/p>\n Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet \u2013 the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.<\/p>\n Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.<\/p>\n Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.<\/p>\n Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans\u2019 \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: \u201cWho\u2019s getting hit, who\u2019s bearing the cost? It\u2019s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Mike Johnson talks to reporters in Washington on Wednesday.<\/span> Photograph: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The budget bill would mean a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income \u2013 after factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits. The House bill would hit the lowest-earning 10% of Americans hardest: for them, it would mean a painful $1,600 cut in income on average (a 3.9% drop), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). At the same time, the Trump-backed bill would be a boon to wealthy households \u2013 it would mean a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10%, those earning above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% \u2013 those with income over $3.3m \u2013 would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average.<\/p>\n The CBO says the income of the bottom 10% tops off at $22,868 (before factoring in government transfers). The second lowest decile earns from $22,868 to $43,137; the third decile earns up to $55,628; and the fourth up to $68,601.<\/p>\n The Yale Budget Lab found that the bottom 20% of US households would see their incomes drop by 2.9% on average over the next decade, and the second lowest quintile \u2013 moderate-income households \u2013 would suffer a 0.4% loss of income on average. But the richest 20% would see their incomes rise by 2.3%. Those in the top 1% would see their incomes climb by $29,585 on average.<\/p>\n Trump is demanding these big tax cuts for the rich even though the CBO says the budget bill will increase the federal debt by $3.3tn \u2013 a move that will push up interest rates and make mortgages and home-buying more expensive.<\/p>\n According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning thinktank, the $121bn tax cuts that would go just to the richest 1% next year are significantly more than all the tax cuts that would go to the bottom 60% of Americans in terms of income.<\/p>\n The poorest 20% of Americans would receive just 1% of the bill\u2019s tax cuts next year, while the highest earning 5% would receive 44% of the cuts.<\/p>\n Last week, Trump urged lawmakers to enact the bill, saying: \u201cThere are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.\u201d At a news conference, the president said the more than $1tn in Medicaid and food assistance cuts wouldn\u2019t hurt anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt won\u2019t affect anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is just fraud, waste and abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n But Parrott took a sharply different view: \u201cThe bill stands alone historically for its unique upside-down mix of large tax cuts for the top, deep cuts that affect low- and middle-income people, and massive increases in deficits and debt.\u201d<\/p>\n John Ricco, the Yale Budget Lab\u2019s associate director of policy analysis, said: \u201cIt\u2019s unambiguous that low- and moderate-income Americans will be worse off on average under the budget bill, and that\u2019s principally because the cuts in Medicaid and Snap [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] would by definition fall most heavily on these groups,\u201d Ricco said.<\/p>\n Jeanne Lambrew, the Century Foundation\u2019s director of health policy reform, estimates that at least 16 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the budget bill \u2013 refuting White House claims that \u201cno one will lose coverage\u201d. Lambrew said the bill would cause a more than 50% increase in the number of uninsured nationwide, to nearly 45 million people.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, the Trump-backed plan sharply reduces Affordable Care Act subsidies, and that will force millions of Americans to either drop coverage or pay far more for coverage. Millions of Americans will find it harder to obtain healthcare, with many forced to take on far more medical debt.<\/p>\n While Trump and many Republicans say the Medicaid cuts are all about reducing \u201cwaste, fraud and abuse\u201d, Lambrew calculates that a mere 3.5% of the $1tn in healthcare cuts come from cutting waste and abuse. \u201cWhat Trump has been saying is, \u2018We\u2019re not cutting Medicaid. We\u2019re just cutting fraud.\u2019 That\u2019s gaslighting.\u201d Lambrew said.<\/p>\n Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter that harshly criticized the budget bill. \u201cAs Pope Leo XIV recently stated, it is the responsibility of politicians to promote and protect the common good, including by working to overcome great wealth inequality,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis bill does not answer this call. It takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n According to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 27% of registered voters support the GOP budget bill, while 53% oppose it. A Fox News poll found that 38% support the bill, while 59% oppose it.<\/p>\n The House bill\u2019s deep cuts in food benefits will cause 7 million people, including over 2 million children, to lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. The Trump-supported bill also makes sharp cuts in Pell grant awards. The Center for American Progress says this means 4.4 million students from low- and moderate-income families could lose some or all of their federal grant aid.<\/p>\n In another blow to Americans earning under $50,000, Trump pushed to have the budget bill eliminate the \u201cLow-Income Home Energy Assistance Program\u201d, which, as one website put it, \u201ckeeps poor people from freezing to death at home\u201d. Killing the program would end heating subsidies for 6 million Americans, but so far congressional Republicans have spared the program and not bowed to Trump on this.<\/p>\n <\/span>Donald Trump wears a USA hat as he steps off Air Force One in Amsterdam in June.<\/span> Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw\/Reuters<\/p>\n In another blow to blue-collar Americans, the bill would undo much of Joe Biden\u2019s efforts to speed the creation of clean-energy industries, and that could put hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at risk, many of them factory jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this bill, folks in Congress went out of their way not to give anything to low-income people,\u201d said Chuck Marr, vice-president for federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. He noted that in previous tax cut bills that favored the rich, GOP lawmakers made sure to include some sweeteners for low- and moderate-income Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in this bill,\u201d Marr said, \u201cfolks in Congress said: no, we\u2019re going to go after these people. They\u2019re going after healthcare and food, and these are the people who are also going to get hammered by Trump\u2019s tariffs.\u201d Lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on goods.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bill is a major shift,\u201d Marr added. \u201cThey\u2019re taking away from poor people and working-class people and channeling it to very high-income people. I think it\u2019s punitive. It\u2019s harsh. It\u2019s mean, brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s tariffs would also hit less affluent Americans hardest. One study found that Trump\u2019s planned tariffs would cause the bottom 20% of households to pay up to 5.5% of their income toward tariff-caused higher prices. That\u2019s more than two and a half times the percentage that those in the top 20% would pay (2.1% of income).<\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly boasted that the bill contains several provisions he championed to help working-class Americans. At a White House event to promote the bill, he pointed to a DoorDash driver from Wisconsin who was on hand to help make his case that the \u201cno tax on tips\u201d provision would help workers.<\/p>\n But tax experts say that provision will help only a tiny fraction of those earning under $50,000. Only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs. Moreover, nearly two-fifths of tipped workers are already earning so little that they don\u2019t pay federal income taxes.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven how the current income tax system works, this provision will provide little or no benefit to those workers,\u201d said Ricco. \u201cThose workers tend to have low incomes, and the US system doesn\u2019t basically tax their incomes, and this won\u2019t offer them any additional tax reduction.\u201d In other words, the server making $100,000 a year at a high-end restaurant will benefit substantially from no tax on tips, while the hotel housekeeper or 20-hour-a-week waiter at a diner making $25,000 a year will be helped little or not at all.<\/p>\n As for Trump\u2019s much-ballyhooed \u201cno tax on overtime\u201d provision, that, too, will do little for those earning under $50,000, Ricco said. \u201cThat provision is really geared to middle- and upper-middle groups,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople in the bottom 50% aren\u2019t paying much income tax, and so no tax on overtime wouldn\u2019t benefit them much. People in the bottom 40%, they\u2019re often in a precarious employment situation. They\u2019re generally not working 45 or 50 hours a week.\u201d<\/p>\n Ricco estimated that for Americans in the bottom 40% by income, the no tax on overtime provision will mean \u201cless than a $10 tax cut per year\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially a rounding error,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the harshest bill we\u2019ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issueChuck Marr<\/p>\n Republicans boast that increasing the child-tax credit will help millions of struggling families \u2013 the House bill would increase that credit, now $2,000, to $2,500, while the Senate raises it to $2,200. Under current law, one in four children \u2013 about 17 million \u2013 are ineligible to qualify for the full $2,000 credit because their family\u2019s income is too low to qualify for the full credit. A two-parent family with two children needs to earn over $48,000 to obtain the full credit.<\/p>\n Under the House bill, a single parent with two children who earns $16,000 a year would get no additional tax credit, while a married couple with two kids and a $400,000 income would see their tax credit jump by $1,000.<\/p>\n With their eagerness to cut the social safety net, Republicans seem to be treating millions of Americans who earn less than $50,000 as undeserving takers. \u201cPeople earning under $50,000 are major targets of the Republican agenda. Their health coverage is targeted. Their food security is targeted,\u201d said Marr. \u201cThey are left out of key provisions expanding tax cuts, like the child tax credit. They are most at risk from the Republican tariffs. They\u2019ll be hurt across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n Marr said the budget bill treats \u201cthese people very harshly\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the harshest bill we\u2019ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issue 40 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the first bill that simultaneously targets programs for poor people and working-class people to pay for it, and then takes that money to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy people. It makes poor and working-class people worse off. That\u2019s not been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: \u201cEvery citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.\u201d Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions. Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,1378,142,2007,2801,2581,1437,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-10046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-americas","10":"tag-bill","11":"tag-brutal","12":"tag-harm","13":"tag-harsh","14":"tag-poorest","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}