Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › White House calls cutting Meals on Wheels 'compassionate'
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Zooey.
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March 17, 2017 at 12:05 am #66362
nittany ramModeratorMarch 17, 2017 at 12:40 am #66365
znModerator“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 homelessness 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.
March 17, 2017 at 8:33 am #66370
Billy_TParticipantMulvaney is a lying asshole, working for a lying asshole. I should stop doing this to myself, but when I turn on the tube and watch Trump, his team, or the GOP leaders feed us this endless stream of rationalized sadism, I just want to explode.
Going on and on about not wanting poor people to have to pay for programs that benefit them? Programs they couldn’t possibly afford on their own, if they got to keep every single tax dollar they’ve ever paid into the Treasury?
The Mulvaney’s of this world are flat out monsters. He, Trump, and the whole bloody crew of billionaires want nothing more than to slash their own taxes and prop up their own bank accounts. If they actually cared one iota for the poor, not only would they never, ever consider cuts, they’d actually increase spending for them by trillions, literally.
Another thing that drives me crazy about these discussions in the media: It seems like the pundits have all been given the memo that they can’t talk about tax increases on rich people to pay for these things. It’s as if they’ve been told never, ever discuss such a thing. Instead, occasionally condemn the heartlessness of the most egregious cuts, but then say “We should cut entitlements instead.”
No. You could pay for all of these programs and add trillions over time if you just returned tax rates on the rich to where they were from FDR through Kennedy. You could pay for all of them and come close to that with a return to rates from Johnson through Carter.
It’s amazing that they get away with avoiding the revenue side so easily — and the poor and the working class die because they do.
March 17, 2017 at 9:27 am #66373
PA RamParticipantGood post, Billy. I agree.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick
March 17, 2017 at 10:20 am #66375
sdramParticipantIt’s like Don the Con and his team of sociopathic grifters spit balled scenarios where they’re the biggest villains ever in every type of executive or legislative agenda. Meals on Wheels – come on. My grandmother used this for a year or so before she went into the nursing home. For a couple of bucks a day she got a lunch meal as opposed to going into the nursing home where Medicaid would have had to pay 3, 4, 5000 a day for her total long term care. Someone needs to step up and shut these these assholes down once and for all.
Next, these asshats get to decide if we should provoke a war with North Korea because you know, that would be a good thing right? Since I don’t trust any of them or believe a word any of them spout, I have a hard time thinking anything they do or say isn’t for their own benefit in some way. It’s obvious that none – not one – has the American people or what’s best for people as their number one priority.
March 17, 2017 at 12:00 pm #66378
ZooeyParticipantThe Republican party is just unspeakable. Cutting Meals on Wheels. I mean they just completely lost their moral compass with Newt Gingrich, and the rise of the extremists. Why would Trump even propose this? The money saved by cutting the program is trivial, and furthermore – and more importantly – there is no way it’s going to get cut in the budget that ultimately passes anyway. As completely heartless as the Republicans are, they aren’t going to take the political hit on this for an amount of money that isn’t worth bending over to pick up off the sidewalk. The Freedom Caucus would, and the Rand Paul’s of the world, but this isn’t going to fly ultimately.
I love all the outrage over the proposed cut to Meals on Wheels, but am slightly perplexed at the lack of attention to all the other valuable programs that Trump has suggested eliminating, like the NEA, various grants, $9 billion out of education (13.5% of the fed budget), PBS…it goes on and on. Increases for the “decaying” military which isn’t really decaying as far as anyone can actually see.
And the the Republican health care plan which LITERALLY…LITERALLY…expresses Republican willingness to kill people in order to get yet another tax cut for the richest people on the planet.
WTF is going on? How can these people hold a single seat in government anywhere?
The Democrats are just terrible. Just awful, and incompetent.
Man, I just hate this.
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