GOP Budget Takeaways and Giveaways (Takeaway: Your Healthcare. Giveaway: Tax Breaks to Billionaires)

Yesterday, by a narrow 216-212 vote margin, the House approved a radical budget which will allow Republicans to move forward on passing $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the struggling billionaires. President Trump was stoked:

Big news - Budget just passed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2017

Despite the fact that the 2018 GOP budget plan promises major cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs that he pledged to keep during the campaign.

I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2015

The GOP Budget calls for these draconian cuts over the next decade:

-          $473 billion from Medicare.

-          $1.3 trillion from Medicaid and insurance subsidies to ACA marketplace programs.

-          $653 billion in cuts to income security programs which includes programs for low-income children.

-          $250 billion in unspecified entitlement cuts.

-          $800 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending (public services and investments).

The GOP budget also calls for a change in the Senate rules that require a CBO cost estimate 28 hours before voting on any piece of legislation. Because who needs to know the cost of something before voting on it?

All of this is necessary in order to pass $1.5 trillion in tax cuts with just 51 votes in the Senate.

And who is to receive these tax cuts, you might ask? According to the framework present by President Trump and the Republicans last week:

-          The top 1% of Americans would receive 80% of the tax cuts. That is the same top 1% that has received 99% of all new income generated by the economy since the year 2000.

-          The top 0.1% of Americans would receive 40% of the tax cuts. An annual average tax cut of $1 million.

-          The bottom 80 percent of Americans would receive 13% of the tax cuts.

-          The bottom 115 million households would receive an average of 190 bucks.

The budget also assumes the typical, yet provably false, notion that the tax cuts will increase Federal revenues by growing the economy. The idea that tax cuts can or will pay for themselves might be convenient to imagine, but it has been 100% demonstrably false.

Buckle up.