Putin stole over $1 trillion from his own people. Trump’s about to outdo him. His “big, beautiful budget” would more accurately be called “How to transfer money from middle and low income earners to Trump and his oligarchs.” Start with his $5.6 trillion tax cuts. Trump intends to cover some of the lost tax revenues by cutting food assistance programs, $715 billion from Medicaid and $500 billion from Medicare, breaking his promise not to cut either. Astoundingly, Republican House member Nathaniel Moran boasted “this bill is our opportunity to deliver on the promises we made.” Are American voters that stupid?
Trump should thank the 83 million low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid and the 67 million who rely on Medicare for giving much of their health benefits to Trump and his oligarchs (Try not to think about the $400 million plane that Trump accepted from the Saudis that will cost $1billion to convert).
Trump has a sneakier way of enriching his executive branch acolytes. They sell stock right before Trump announces economy-crippling tariffs. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media stock; that same day, after the market closed, Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, plummeting the stock market. The Justice Department, of course, remains silent.
Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, sold shares in almost three dozen companies two days before Trump announced his wide-ranging “reciprocal tariffs.”
66% of the benefits from Trump’s tax cuts go to the top 10% of earners, while the lowest three quintiles of earners get only 16% of the benefits. Perversely, the top 20% of earners own $31 trillion of the country’s wealth while the bottom 80% own only $4.7 trillion.
To cover more of the lost tax revenues Trump is cutting financial assistance for farmers, education, health care, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, disaster relief, medical research, environmental organizations, animal cruelty prevention.
But all his tax cuts aren’t enough to cover all the lost tax revenues. To do that, Trump’s budget bill raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion so he can borrow more, which will drive our debt to a record $40.2 trillion.
These tax cuts are pernicious. There’s reason to worry that Trump let the country default on its debt. He said: “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” He’s very familiar with defaults. He’s stiffed workers and creditors across America and elsewhere and filed six of his projects into bankruptcy. The interest cost of borrowing is already climbing. A default would send interest rates surging and we’d tumble into a recession which Trump is likely to mismanage into a depression.
Americans attribute these lethal decisions to Trump being “incompetent,” “an idiot,” “ignorant,” unfit for office” and “idiotic.” All these descriptions, however, can apply to rational people. That’s why they’re inapplicable to Trump.
To understand this errant president, we need to accept that Donald Trump is not a normal person, and that America is ruled by a President who is psychologically, emotionally and uncontrollably [emphasis added] fixated on enriching and empowering himself and unable [emphasis added] to relate to, understand or consider anything else, including what’s best for America.
He is set free by his inability to feel guilt, shame, remorse, or empathy and unable to consider the consequences , as demonstrated by cancelling most of our foreign medical aid, risking hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious diseases worldwide, and when he paused all domestic assistance for education, health care, anti-poverty programs, disaster relief, medical research, and prevention of animal cruelty.
Only upon accepting this, will Republicans find the courage and will the Supreme Court grasp the urgency to remove him from power.
