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Dear John,
House Republicans are seeking to establish a “bipartisan” commission to meet behind closed doors and cut literally trillions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and nutrition assistance programs -- with zero consideration for making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
It’s an extremist one-sided deal, with $5.4 trillion proposed in cuts to major programs, with nothing bipartisan about it. President Biden called the closed-door commission a “death panel” for Social Security. Democrats should not grant this shadowy commission any legitimacy with their presence.
The budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington includes $400 billion in cuts to Medicare; $2 trillion in cuts to health spending (mainly Medicaid); and $1 trillion in cuts to economic relief and food assistance, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The bill also calls for work requirements for Medicaid -- which would add a very tough barrier to access for those who need health care due to being laid off!
Send your message to Congress today, and demand no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or SNAP, with or without the fig leaf of a secret commission to hide their work.
It’s a cowardly lack of leadership, kowtowing to the demands of the far-right MAGA wing of the party yet again, but trying to hide their fingerprints by doing their work in secret so they can share the blame with Democrats. But Democrats want nothing to do with these draconian cuts.
In 2021, corporations made profits of $2.8 trillion, but thanks to an unconscionably low corporate income tax rate, corporate taxes yield only 10% of federal revenues. The Treasury Department estimates that the top 1% of income earners illegally evade $160 billion in taxes each year.
Just eliminating tax breaks on capital gains for multi-millionaires could bring in hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
To let billionaires skate away with billions of dollars of unpaid taxes and to place the entire burden, not on the wealthy, but on those segments of society that can least afford to pay, is a blatant economic injustice. And this injustice, though endemic, is not built into our system; it is a result of choices made by the rich and powerful to ensure that the flow of resources continues unimpeded into the wealthiest of pockets.
Meanwhile the Republicans want to cut the budgets of health, nutrition, and financial assistance programs such as WIC, SNAP, and TANF so that millions of children go hungry and millions of families will go without adequate child care or health coverage.
Increasing the share of taxes paid by the wealthy could even go toward cutting the deficit, which ballooned under the Bush- and Trump-era tax cuts -- huge tax cuts made without any regard to their impact on the budget deficit, even though hard-core Republican budget hawks claim this to be their top priority in the first place!
It is a scandal that, given the combination of critical human needs and the excessive billions of dollars hoarded by the uber-wealthy and multi-billion dollar corporations, the proposed House budget contains not one line toward increasing revenues from the wealthy.
The Republicans only know how to give to the rich and take from the poor. Perhaps they are not utterly shameless -- after all, they do want to do it in secret.
Send your letter today and let Congress know: We will not put up with a secret Debt Commission that puts human needs last in order to further pad the pockets of the wealthy.
Thank you for your attention to economic justice and the greater good.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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