As he prepares to vacation at his luxury resort, Trump kicks poor people on his way out of town.
Trump has been whipping his supporters into a frenzy at his recent rallies, but if he has his way, many of them will be whipped where it hurts by his latest suggestion to Congress.
On Thursday afternoon, as he prepared to leave Washington, DC for a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump tweeted that "When the House and Senate meet on the very important Farm Bill... hopefully they will be able to leave the WORK REQUIREMENTS FOR FOOD STAMPS PROVISION that the House approved. Senate should go to 51 votes!"
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House bill will result in 1.2 million fewer Americans receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by 2028, and that 62 percent of those losing benefits would be parents caring for children.
And the Americans who will lose benefits under the House bill also include 400,000 households that would no longer meet income requirements, regardless of employment status.
But the fact is that many people who receive SNAP benefits already work at low-wage jobs, and many who don't work are unable to for a variety of reasons — caregiving responsibilities and school, among others — that don't count as disabilities.
The Republicans' cruel plan only figures to reduce food stamp spending by two billion dollars a year over 10 years. As Common Dreams points out, that's just a fraction of the almost two trillion dollar tax cut that Trump gifted to his wealthy supporters.
Gutting food stamps has been a long-term goal of Republicans, and the Trump administration has fairly drooled at the prospect. That's because welfare reform, particularly food stamps, has long been a staple of racist Republican dog-whistle politics, which have particular appeal to Trump's supporters.
It is a cruel irony for them, then, that according to an independent analysis of the GOP plan to gut food stamps, it is voters in Republican districts who will be hurt the most by this plan. If they still won't wise up, the rest of America surely will.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
