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Karen Dolan is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and an expert on poverty and the social safety net. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
By most measures, Donald Trump is inheriting a booming economy. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, we enjoyed historically low unemployment and added nearly 1 million manufacturing jobs. Real wage growth outpaced its rate under Trump’s previous administration. Gross domestic product growth is strong, and COVID-19-related inflation has fallen below 3 percent.
Yet corporations have taken advantage of many Americans, in the form of higher prices for housing, groceries and other necessities. In many ways, Trump rode people’s anger about this all the way back to the White House.
But Trump’s policies will leave Americans worse off. Economists fear his aggressive tariff schemes and mass deportations will lead to higher prices and unemployment.
Trump also wants to extend his expiring 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefited corporations and the wealthy, and which added $2 trillion to the deficit and failed to “trickle down” to the rest of us. Worse still, he plans to fund this massive giveaway to the rich by cutting programs for working people.
Here are six ways the incoming administration has signaled it will harm ordinary American families:
1. Slashing Medicaid
Medicaid is the largest health insurer in the nation, covering 90 million Americans. The GOP has proposed to drastically slash its funding and restrict eligibility by imposing unrealistic work requirements, even though most people on Medicaid already work.
Republicans also have proposed to end the Affordable Care Act’s (aka. Obamacare’s) Medicaid expansion and the ACA’s highly popular and effective premium tax credits, which saved enrollees $700 per year on average.
Under this plan, millions of Americans will lose their health coverage. It will also impact other programs, including home and community-based services, which allow older Americans and people with disabilities to get care in their own homes.
2. Cutting food assistance
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps more than 41 million Americans afford to eat. The GOP has plans to slash these benefits by $180 billion over the next 10 years and to restrict eligibility, forcing millions of Americans — including children — to go hungry so billionaires can enjoy more tax cuts.
3. Eliminating the Department of Education
Trump and his congressional allies have also said they want to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. This arm of the government contributes needed funds to public schools. It ensures quality education for students with disabilities, addresses inequalities between school districts with differing local tax bases, ensures gender equity and civil rights compliance, and provides student financial aid for higher education.
The GOP also has plans to revoke Biden’s student debt payback assistance, which has helped millions of low-income students afford higher education.
4. Restricting eligibility for the Child Tax Credit
The Child Tax Credit provides an average of $2,000 to 40 million families annually. When it was temporarily expanded in 2021 during the pandemic, it provided the families of 60 million children with up to $3,600 annually. This reduced child poverty by half. The continuation of that highly effective expansion was blocked by Republicans on Capitol Hill. Now, they want to deny the benefit to children who are U.S. citizens but who have a caretaker without a Social Security number.
5. Defunding the IRS
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for the IRS to pursue the wealthiest tax cheats — a small investment that yielded enormous returns for American taxpayers. The GOP plans to revoke nearly all of the act’s remaining allocated funding, which would cost $65 billion more than it saves by helping the wealthiest Americans dodge taxes.
6. Targeting Social Security and Medicare
Trump’s new non-governmental advisory outfit, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. It has pledged to slash $2 trillion in federal spending, which can’t be done without cutting Social Security and Medicare. Expect to see them on the chopping block.
No matter how you slice the pie, it’s clear no crumbs will be left for the rest of us once Trump has helped the wealthy gorge themselves. We must tell lawmakers this is unacceptable, and demand better.
