Another Round of Modest Policy Changes From the Second of America’s Two Interchangeable Neoliberal Parties
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Finally, those freeloading geezers getting Cadillac and T-Bone steak deliveries from the Meals on Wheels racket will get theirs:
“Just to follow-up on that, you were talking about the steel worker in Ohio, coal worker in Pennsylvania, but they may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program or who may have kids in Head Start,” Acosta said. “Yesterday, or the day before, you described this as a hard-power budget. Is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mulvaney replied. “I think it’s probably one of the most compassionate things we can do.”
“To cut programs that help the elderly and kids?” Acosta asked, incredulously.
“You’re only focusing on half of the equation, right? You’re focusing on the recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place,” Mulvaney explained. “And I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say, ‘Look, we’re not gonna ask you for your hard-earned money, anymore, single mother of two in Detroit … unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually being used in a proper function.’”
This is obscene. In addition to the cuts already mentioned, Trump’s budget slashes rental assistance and home-energy aid to low-income families. His plan would almost certainly increase the rate of homeless and malnutrition experienced by the children of single mothers in Detroit.
Mulvaney’s argument doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. By itself, this budget has no impact on taxes — it just transfers federal spending from programs that directly benefit working families to ones that don’t. And the Trump administration has expressed no interest in significantly cutting payroll or sales taxes, which make up the bulk of many a Detroit resident’s tax burden.
Really, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Mick Mulvaney and, say, Heather Boushey.