The White House justifies its savage budget with a divisive lie

[DonViejo]

By Paul Waldman May 23 at 1:28 PM

As the Trump White House works to sell its budget proposal, which was released today, there’s a revealing ideological argument emerging to justify the absolutely brutal cuts to social programs that the budget includes. Americans, the administration is saying, come in two types: the deserving and the undeserving, the taxpayers and the moochers.

You don’t have to worry about the way we’re eviscerating so many programs, because we’re only going after those people. It’s based on a fundamental lie: that there are taxpayers and then there are people who use social programs, and the two are not only not the same people, the groups don’t even overlap. Here’s how White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney describes it:

“If I had sort of a subtitle for this budget, it would be the Taxpayer First Budget. This is I think the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes. So often in Washington I think we look only on the recipient side: How does the budget affect those who either receive or don’t receive benefits?…Can I ask somebody, a family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to pay tax money to the government so that I can do X?”

The whole point here is to set “taxpayers” against the supposedly undeserving whose scams and schemes can be stopped with only indiscriminate cuts to social programs. Watching Mulvaney answer questions from the press this morning, that idea came through again and again. Every time he’d get a question about a specific cut the administration proposes — to Social Security disability, to food stamps, to Medicaid — Mulvaney would say that the only people who would suffer would be those who don’t deserve to get the benefit in the first place. “We are not kicking anybody off of any program who really needs it,” he said. But if you paid close attention, you noticed a curious logical gap in his argument. See if you can spot it in this line of reasoning:

1. There are people on these programs who don’t deserve to be.

2. Therefore, we will slash the program.

3.Then, only the deserving will be receiving the benefit.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/05/23/the-white-house-justifies-its-savage-budget-with-a-divisive-lie/

[DBoon]

1. you forgot the last point

4. Nobody deserves these benefits

[safeinOhio]

2. All animals are equal,

But pigs are more equal.

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. MURDERERS

[muntrv]

4. Moochers? Like Trump International?

[Docreed2003]

5. Yet they can as that same family in Grand Rapids

To contribute to an unecessary obscene expansion of the defense budget?? Amazing how heartless and cruel the right has become.

[MiddleClass]

6. Monster Mulvaney says it all!

Seniors don't need Meals on Wheels,
The Disabled don't need Medicaid, Social Security,
the poor people don't need food stamps,

BUT billionaires deserve million-dollar tax cuts. let them eat cake! – Marie Antoinette guillotine French Revolution

Who the hell votes for these people?

[Hortensis]

8. This type of ultrawealthy resent a whiny, lazy, irresponsible populace

sponging off them. Deserving people like them take care of themselves and don't need these programs they have to pay into to support the rest of us leeches.

And a sizable number of ultra-wealthy conservatives do fully intend to put a stop to our parasitism. We'll learn to earn money to purchase our own insurance and have to support ourselves on our individual savings. Or not. Our choice.

(Savings not to include paying into the government-guaranteed Social Security fund they're getting rid of. That'll be privatized, with market ups and downs ultimately shifting most of it into the pockets of the deserving.)

Of course, we have a little to say about all this.

[MiddleClass]

9. Whats scary, is that this was all carefully planned out for the long-term

Mega-wealthy conservatives planned this out decades ago.

Ayn Rand, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, shrink government so small that it can be drowned in the bathtub,

it's amazing, how conservative mantra is that you're on your own. Despite the fact that their parents paid for everything until after they graduated college.

Trickle-down economics, the job creators versus the parasites.

Lower wealthy people's tax burdens by eliminating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obama Care, and everyone will do better.

What a crock. It's been proven not to work, over and over again

[Hortensis]

11. Yes. And how few have learned that even now.

They're wondering WHY when it all makes perfect sense--from the kochist point of view. Most do not get their fortunes from direct, retail sales, so many idiot billionaires, buying and selling numbers in financial instruments, don't care about our purchasing power. But all business starts with demand, no money, no demand.

Employers pay in 6.2% of wages -- which is ALL earned wages, employees the other 6.2, into Social Security so that every economic reverse no longer means tens of thousands of newly destitute people living in cars and packing boxes. 6.2% is 6.2% too much, conveniently ignoring that it's all earned, and they have intention of shifting it to the employees.

My answer will help those those who resent it so much: Turn them upside and shake them down, turn them loose with 40 acres and a promise to return when it's time to raise the barn, and raise wages so substantially that we can pay it all directly ourselves. We've basically done it before.

[Tanuki]

7. All the more reason for Donald to show his taxes.

[MiddleClass]

10. It's ironic, constitutionally, it's the people (voters) who were charged with enforcing that one.

If the midterms is a blowout, the requirement for presidential disclosure of taxes will be HR 1 (first law passed).

One problem, no law applies to current President, just the next one.

I believe with the appointment of a special prosecutor, might lead to some investigative body looking into it.

Robert Mueller, I would trust to not partake in a cover-Up.

I think Trump industries is riddled with Russian mob corruption money, a lot of shady, LLC's overpaid for Trump real estate. But that's just my opinion