Welfare As Trump Knows It and Loves It

Just as news leaked out that Donald Trump's tax returns, a/k/a his corporate welfare award letters, are now locked up in a safe deep within the bowels of the IRS, he vowed that his next big Grab-A-Thon will be "reforming welfare as we know it." As a late Christmas gift to himself, he'll go after Medicaid, food assistance and disability benefits early in 2018. (Since Medicare and Social Security are insurance programs and not means-tested, his crusade to destroy them will be a separate front in the Class War.)

"Welfare for me, but not for thee," he as much as brayed to the nation last week, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Because his faux-nemesis Hillary Clinton bragged in her second memoir that by the time she and Bill left the White House, there were 60 percent fewer women on the welfare rolls, Trump can't leave bad enough alone. He would like to raise that pathetic D grade to a solid A+, or a 100 percent destruction rate, for himself. This will prove that he is both tougher and smarter than Hillary Clinton. He shows no sign of abandoning his insane quest to "win" against her even after he's already beaten her into a pulp. He's actually goading her to run against him in 2020.

(Given that Barack Obama earned a miserable F for his own "Grand Bargain" attempt to raise the Medicare eligibility age and to reduce Social Security benefits through the "chained CPI" gimmick, Trump can afford to ignore that part of the Obama legacy. It's not cruel enough to threaten him. Plus, the mere thought of one more bipartisan cat food commission probably makes him break out in hives.)

Even if he accomplishes nothing else, Trump has had the deplorable effect of making the Clintons seem like the kinder, gentler, more sympathetic and more pragmatic destroyers of poor people. Hillary's personal propaganda shtick during the 90s welfare reform campaign involved co-opting a poor, hardworking (possibly fictional) waitress and pitting her against lazy stay-at-home moms. The coddled poor, she implied, must be punished in order to placate the deserving and slaving poor.

As a result, direct federal cash aid to the poor stopped in the late 90s, and the program was block-granted to the states. It has resulted in a doubling of the extreme poverty rate in the two decades since its passage. 

Paradoxically, the mass punishment of mainly women and children has not saved the government any of the promised money. For one thing, the block grants ended up being used for other programs which had nothing to do with ameliorating poverty, or helping people kicked off the rolls to find work. Only 23 percent of poor families now receive help from TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families), the state-run programs which replaced the New Deal's Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

Millions of people are now living on less than $2 cash a day, with only the restricted balances on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program e-cards (food stamps) keeping body and soul together.

This state of affairs had Trump so riled up that when he finally got wind of it, he practically choked on his overdone Mar-a-Lago steak with the catered side of McDonalds fries.

"People are taking advantage of the system!" Trump sputtered between Tweets and mouthfuls last week. But as is usual with him, details are lacking on how he'd like to make people even more insecure than they already are. So the Heritage Foundation, an ultra-right think tank in Washington, is salivating at the chance to fill in all the Trumpian blanks. To deflect attention from the fact that Trump and his kin are epic kleptocratic corporate welfare cheats in their own right, they'll use the tried-and-truthy methods of scapegoating, gaslighting and the politics of resentment.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage, said he would like to see more work requirements for a range of anti-poverty programs and stronger marriage incentives, as well as strategies to improve results for social programs and to limit waste. He said while the administration could make some adjustments through executive order, legislation would be required for any major change.
“This is a good system,” he said. “We just need to make this system better.”
Administration officials have already suggested they are eyeing anti-poverty programs. Trump’s initial 2018 budget proposal, outlined in March, sought to sharply reduce spending for Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, among other programs.
Budget director Mick Mulvaney said this year, “If you are on food stamps and you are able-bodied, we need you to go to work.”

By sermonizing that the fraying American social safety net is already "a good system" which only needs improvement, Rector hides the ultra-right's real agenda. Far from mending it with stronger thread, the oligarch-controlled Congress will rip it to shreds and then call the remaining tatters the latest cool fashion for style-savvy poor people. Look on the bright side. You will no longer have to pay top dollar for Ivanka Trump's designer distressed jeans and pre-ripped tee shirts. You can get right back to basics, and let your nonexistent clothing budget take its own natural course. Be mindful that plutocrat-manufactured crises always seem beneficent whenever they're accompanied by some positive marketing spin and social solidarity.

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Evangelical Christians won't say a word, because starving people who die a lot quicker will go to heaven a lot quicker. Plus, it will force them to get married if they want to eat. The whole idea is that if they're working for food, they'll be too exhausted to have lots of extramarital sex.

And to help get you through your ordeal, always remember that Mick Mulvaney's needs are very important to you. He needs you to suffer as much as possible as he barges into his next gig of running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau... right into the ground. 

Meanwhile, the Trump Food Stamp Reform Bill reportedly already has a marketing motto: "Let them eat pictures of Trump Steaks!"

 As God is my witness, you'll be too nauseated to ever go hungry again.

Yum, Yum: "I Love the Uneducated"