Trump's Admin Unveils Plans to Slash the Social Safety Net

While Trump's administration was imprisoning children, giving concessions to North Korea, and relishing a Muslim Ban, his White House laid out plans to crush social programs.

Trump, spurred on by conservatives who want him to slash safety net programs, unveiled on Thursday [June 21, 2018] a plan to overhaul the federal government that could have a profound effect on millions of poor and working-class Americans.

Produced over the last year by Mr. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, it would reshuffle social welfare programs in a way that would make them easier to cut, scale back or restructure.....

Typing or reading Mick Mulvaney makes my blood boil. Read more about him here, here, here, here, and here.

....shift the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a subsistence benefit that provides aid to 42 million poor and working Americans, from the Agriculture Department to a new mega-agency that would have “welfare” in its title — a term Mr. Trump uses as a pejorative catchall for most government benefit programs.... merge the Education and Labor Departments to consolidate work force programs.... changes to federal personnel management and State Department overseas aid programs, can be accomplished through executive action alone.

 

THIS IS HAPPENING QUIETLY WHILE TRUMP MAKES HEADLINES DAILY WITH MORE SEXY DISASTERS.

....being boring in an all-too-exciting White House has provided cover for a small army of conservatives and think tank veterans who have been quietly churning out dozens of initiatives like the proposal to reshuffle the cabinet, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the American social welfare system from the inside out.... operatives aligned with Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and the sprawling Koch brothers network have been on the inside making policy.

“Our guys have been in there since the start, grinding it out, and basically no one is noticing it except the smart liberals like Rachel Maddow,” said Steve Bannon who believes the attack on social programs will be one of Mr. Trump’s most enduring policy achievements.

Philip G. Alston, a New York University professor and the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, agreed with Mr. Bannon’s assessment. “My sense is they are making very considerable progress, even though no one is paying much attention,” he said.  “There is a contempt for the poor that seems to permeate the president’s inner circle that seems very worrying.  It’s done under the banner of providing opportunity and seeking long-term solutions but it all seems designed to increase misery.”

Supposedly our awful Republican Congress will stop some of this from going forward because, you know, it greatly hurts the United States.  But let's not count on Congress much.  What the anti-government forces controlling Trump are doing is setting the stage for all sorts of changes.

....is not likely to gain the congressional approval needed to make the changes, Mr. Mulvaney’s aides conceded.... But the rollout has a bigger long-term purpose.... a rallying cry for “small government” and said the audacity of the plan proved “why many Americans voted for this president.”

“It’s a war on the poor, pure and simple,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The core of Mr. Trump’s safety net policy is an expansion of work requirements to foster self-sufficiency among recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and housing subsidies to reduce dependence on the government. “Our goal is to get people on the path to self-sufficiency,” Mr. Bremberg said.

Its real purpose, advocates for poor people claim, is to kick hundreds of thousands of the needy off the federal rolls, to cut taxes for the rich.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/trump-government-overhaul-safety-net.html