Then explain how the poor are having food and medical help taken from them if they didn't have it to be taken.
4 Ways Trump and GOP Have Launched a Full Out Assault on America Poorest
4 Ways Trump and GOP Have Launched a Full-Out Assault on America's Poorest
Perhaps no issue is more indicative of this Congress’s hostility toward poor Americans than the slew of legislation introduced to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. After the House’s passage of the
American Health Care Act (AHCA), Senate Republicans took their own stab at dismantling the ACA, culminating in the
Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). Like their counterparts in the House,
Senate Republicans suggested repealing the ACA’s taxes, restructuring its subsidies, eventually ending the Medicaid expansion and empowering states to opt out of some of the ACA’s mandated insurance features. BCRA tied the distribution of subsidies back to income, but in a reversal of the ACA, capped eligibility at 350 percent of the poverty line rather than 400 percent beginning in 2020.
To add insult to injury, subsidies would be much
smaller—premiums for a mid-level plan for a 64-year-old who earned $26,500 a year could have skyrocketed by 2026 to $6,500. And that’s after the subsidies kicked in.
Between the lower subsidy limit and the
less generous benchmark plan, poor Americans would have ended up
paying more for lower quality insurance plans with premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs so high they might have foregone a plan altogether. That’s especially true for patients with pre-existing conditions. Without mandates to cover “essential health benefits,” the BCRA,
like the AHCA, empowered insurance companies to offer
skimpy plans covering only the bare minimum, rendering them useless to those with serious health issues.
Suggested cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development
totaling $6 billion threatened housing assistance programs with services critical to poor families. The Community Development Block Grant Program, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program and the Housing Choice Vouchers program were to be
completely eliminated. Furthermore, direct rental assistance payments (like Section 8 Housing) were to be cut by $300 million; housing for the elderly (including the Section 202 program) was to lose $42 million in funding; and Section 811 housing for Americans with disabilities was slated to lose $29 million.
Most infamously, the Trump administration proposed cuts to
Meals on Wheels, a beloved program that provides millions of meals each year to poor Americans.
Even children weren’t spared; funding cuts were proposed for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, better known as
WIC, which provides nutrition education, breastfeeding education, and most critically, food vouchers for poor children and their mothers. The administration recommended completely eliminating the
21st Century Community Learning Centers program, a partnership between the federal government and schools, churches and nonprofits that services 1.6 million children across the country, most of whom are poor.
Congress declined to accept the Trump administration’s specific budget, which also
included $193 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $21 billion in cuts to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and $877 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years. But it offered an equally hostile alternative vision. In October, Congress passed a
budget resolution that, though unlikely to ever become law, loosely codifies its budget and policy priorities in ways that starve the social safety net.
