Above, Assistant Treasury Secretary Monica Crowley (yeah) explains (to ten-million-a-year Stuart Varney) Trump's 2021 budget cuts to health care this way: "The president also understands that Washington's habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped."
How will announcing cuts to nursing home residents and the elderly work for Trump in an election year?
We're about to find out.
Trump released his "budget" for 2021, and it includes huge cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disability. It also includes money for his "wall," (the one that blew over into Mexico and also needs to have open gates several months a year for flood control.)
Most remarkable is that the cuts match almost dollar-for-dollar the tax cuts Trump has provided to the billioniare class.
Greg Sargeant in the Washington Post agrees that Trump isn't acting like it's an election year: "Trump just saddled himself with a major campaign liability".
“There’s no way to make cuts that deep to the Medicaid program without millions of people losing coverage and worsening access to care for many more,” Aviva Aron-Dine, vice president for health policy at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me.
It’s one of the stranger subplots of this presidency that Trump and Republicans keep gunning for health care, despite the deep unpopularity of those efforts. Perhaps this reflects a sense that Trump is untouchable. Or maybe they believe Trump’s structural advantages in the electoral college are so unassailable that public opinion just doesn’t matter.
Trump is at least a 50-50 shot for reelection, due to incumbency and the economy. But Trump is giving Democrats a big weapon to wield against him, and they should seize it, just as they did in 2018. Trump’s acquittal has reinforced a sense among some pundits that he’s invulnerable, but his health-care record is still a major liability — and there’s just no reason to think that’s changed.
UPDATE: Who cuts the EPA by 26% in an election year? This Orange Stable Genius:
