ThinkProgress

Paul Ryan admits the GOP will gut Medicare and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts

GOP lawmakers are driving up the deficit, then claiming the deficit’s too high to support safety net programs for poor people.

Credit: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite

Zack Ford    December 7, 2017

Republicans in Congress are openly admitting they plan to use their tax reform bill to justify slashing funding for essential social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

The bill — which is expected to balloon the national deficit by at least $1 trillion, and which only benefits the country’s wealthiest in the long-term — has not yet been reconciled or signed. But Republicans aren’t wasting any time laying out what they see as the next step.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) laid out the plan in an interview Wednesday on Ross Kaminsky’s radio show. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said, adding that health care entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid are “the big drivers of our debt.”

He defended this by claiming the bill would generate $1 trillion dollars in revenues, which is a common talking point in support of the legislation. But a recent analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation found that the nearly $1.5 trillion tax plan will only generate around $400 billion dollars in growth, meaning it’ll actually fall $1 trillion short of breaking even. In other words, it’ll grow the deficit, not shrink it.

Now, Republicans in Congress are admitting they’ll use the deficit they’re working to create to justify cutting some of the most important programs in the country.

Ryan is not alone in admitting this. Rep. Rod Blum (R-IA) claimed that to achieve the growth the tax plan forecasts, “we have to have welfare reform.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) said, “If we pass tax reform, we have to have welfare reform.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) directly admitted that the plan all along has been “to do two things,” because “the driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.”

Cuts to social welfare programs would be far more unpopular than the tax bill already is. A recent Pew Survey found that 94 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans oppose cutting Medicare. President Trump has also repeatedly promised not to cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid — though Ryan said, “We’re working with the President on the entitlements that he wants to reform, that he’s supportive of.”

What’s perhaps most insidious about these admissions is that the Republican lawmakers are also blaming poor people for their own failure as they prepare to cut programs that help the people who need it the most. Ryan suggested that the programs are “paying people not to work.” Higgins referred to Americans who “suffer on welfare.” Blum went so far as to say, “Sometimes we need to force people to go to work.”

These remarks are akin to the more candid comments some other lawmakers have recently made. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) claimed during debate on the tax bill last week that entitlements “help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger, and expect the federal government to do everything.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) defended repealing the estate tax — a move that almost exclusively benefits the wealthy — by bemoaning “those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

But as the Washington Post notes, the programs Republican lawmakers want to cut actually help people who are struggling get back to work. For example, nearly 90 percent of working-age parents who receive food stamps are back to work within a year. But two thirds of the people who receive those benefits are children, people who have disabilities, or people too old to return to work.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders — US Senator for Vermont

Occupy Democrats

HuffPost

This Church Banner Perfectly Captures How Progressive Christians Feel Right Now

Carol Kuruvilla, HuffPost      December 7, 2017

An Episcopal church is causing a stir in Washington, D.C., after putting up banners that attempt to capture the mood of many progressive Christians in the nation’s capital.

The signs from St. Thomas’ Parish express frustration over some of the political positions taken by conservative Christians on topics such as gun rights and science. The banners feature an image of Jesus holding a hand to his face, a gesture that some are calling “faithpalming.”

One sign, which went viral on Twitter last week, illustrates the congregation’s feelings about President Donald Trump. Trump is a Presbyterian (though faith doesn’t appear to play a large role in his life), and has continued to enjoy the support of many conservative Christians in the country.

The Rev. Alex Dyer, the priest in charge of the 126-year-old parish, is the one who designed the banner campaign. He told HuffPost that his congregation saw the signs as an “opportunity to give voice to a side of Christianity that many people may not associate with Christianity.”

“There are many people who think Christians are close-minded, judgmental, and oppose science,” he said. “This is not the people in the congregation or many congregations around the country.”

He believes the signs capture the feelings of a lot of people in D.C. about the state of American politics.

“We are a very progressive church in a very progressive city,” he said. (The District of Columbia has voted Democratic in every presidential election it’s participated in, and went overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.)

The signs were placed around the construction site of St. Thomas’ Parish new church building in the city’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.

Dyer said his congregation has been troubled by what he called a “constant attack” on their core Christian values.

He described his church as a spiritual home for people who’ve had bad experiences with other churches, or have been discriminated against based on gender, sexuality or race. The church has a long history of welcoming queer Christians. In the past, it’s also expressed support for refugees and immigrants.

“Jesus reached out to those on the margins of society,” Dyer said. “He did not build walls. Rather, he broke down the walls that divide us as people.”

In response to the president’s policies targeting marginalized groups, Dyer said his congregation has participated in marches, protests and vigils.

Avoiding politics is not really an option for a progressive Christian church in Washington, D.C., he said.

“The hope is that people will walk by and think about things a little differently,” Dyer said of his banners. “It will remind people of a God who loves them and feels their frustration.”

The Seattle Times

A union body blow in what was once an organized-labor bastion

Cho Tak Wong, chairman of the Fuyao Group, speaks during the grand opening of the Fuyao Glass America plant, Friday, Oct. 7, 2016, in Moraine, Ohio. The Chinese company’s completed automotive glass-making plant serves as its North American hub for recycled glass manufacturing. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

A critical loss for organized labor shows the economic angst of the Heartland is more complicated.

By Jon Talton, Special to The Seatle Times     December 7, 2017

One of the tropes of the 2016 election was that the white working class felt slighted by globalization and voted heavily for the “populism” of Donald Trump. And perhaps that — instead of white-identity and culture-war issues — drove at least some. But in the Heartland, where Trumpism gained heavily, the messages are mixed.

Last month, employees at Fuyao Glass America in suburban Dayton, Ohio, voted by a wide margin to reject joining the United Auto Workers. The factory, which makes auto glass, is located in the shell of the former General Motors Moraine Assembly (and the reader should know I was the business editor at the Dayton Daily News from 1986-1990). The “no” vote represents a stunning turnaround for organized labor.

From 1951 to 1979, this factory made appliances for Frigidaire, a GM subsidiary. When the appliance manufacturing operation was shut down, the plant was saved by a collaboration among state and local government, GM, and the union. With big tax breaks and an adaptable local union, it was transformed into an auto assembly plant, turning out the popular small S-10 Blazer SUV. It was the only GM assembly represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a holdover from Frigidaire days.

This is part of the Rust Belt story that’s rarely told: How the region reinvented itself after catastrophic losses in the late 1970s and early 1980. Dayton was no stranger to this: When NCR ended manufacturing of mechanical cash registers, it cost some 30,000 good local jobs and left a swath south of downtown empty as former factories were torn down. But often places were able to adapt, even with the headwinds of ’80s-style vulture capitalism.

Moraine was one of the success stories. And the union was essential. Often its members had the best ideas to improve productivity and innovation — the bottleneck was then-CEO Roger Smith’s bureaucracy. Unions were still popular — people understood that, even with their flaws, they had been essential to building the middle class and spreading benefits across workplaces everywhere. In 1989, more than 21 percent of Ohio workers were union members. By 2016, it was 12.4 percent. Nationally, only 6.4 percent of the private-sector workforce was unionized last year, compared to more than one-third in the 1950s.

The Moraine Assembly was shut down by GM in 2008. Automation, moves to non-union plants in the South, and China’s rise in the world economy have cost Ohio 376,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990. Fuyao, paradoxically, is a Chinese company, one of a small number that have opened factories in the United States. In the New York Times, Cao Dewang, the company’s founder, blamed “excessive union power for American industrial decline” and said, “To be brutally honest, up to this moment, my investment in the U.S. has brought no good to Fuyao.”

Don’t be a sore winner.

In reality, the decline of unions goes far beyond their sometime corruption or overreaching (and that never happens with businesses, right?). Blame the savaging of key industries by decades of “rip, strip and flip” capitalism, weak antitrust enforcement, deregulation and anti-worker bias on the National Labor Relations Board and elsewhere in the federal government. Globalization played a role, but unions are strong in Germany. America’s story is more complicated.

One of the chapters is about workers voting against their self-interest. How many at Fuyao voted for Trump? They got the wealthiest cabinet in history, more deregulation and hostility to workers, and soon tax legislation that will cause lasting damage to the middle class. “Great Again,” in the minds of Trump voters, was the Nifty Fifties. But apparently without the strong unions.

Politico

VA cuts program for homeless vets after touting Trump’s commitment

The VA says it is essentially ending a special $460 million program that has dramatically reduced homelessness among chronically sick and vulnerable veterans. VA Secretary David Shulkin is pictured. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

By Arthur Allen and Lorraine Woellert   December 6, 2017

Four days after Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin held a big Washington event to tout the Trump administration’s promise to house all homeless vets, the agency did an about-face, telling advocates it was pulling resources from a major housing program.

The VA said it was essentially ending a special $460 million program that has dramatically reduced homelessness among chronically sick and vulnerable veterans. Instead, the money would go to local VA hospitals that can use it as they like, as long as they show evidence of dealing with homelessness.

Anger exploded on a Dec. 1 call that was arranged by Shulkin’s Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans to explain the move. Advocates for veterans, state officials and even officials from HUD, which co-sponsors the program, attacked the decision, according to five people who were on the call.

“I don’t understand why you are pulling the rug out,” Elisha Harig-Blaine, a National League of Cities housing official who was on the call, said in an interview afterward. “You’re putting at risk the lives of men and women who’ve served this country.”

“The VA is taking its foot off the pedal,” said Leon Winston, an executive at Swords to Plowshares, which helps homeless vets in San Francisco, where he said the VA decision is already having an impact. HUD recently put up 100 housing vouchers for veterans in the program, but the local VA hospital said it could only provide support for 50.

The agency’s move came as HUD on Wednesday released its annual survey showing a 1.5 percent increase in veteran homelessness over 2016 — the first rise since 2010. Most of the jump occurred in Los Angeles, where housing costs are skyrocketing.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who sits on a veterans’ affairs subcommittee, called the VA decision “a new low” for the Trump administration that was “especially callous and perplexing” in view of the latest data on homelessness.

In a statement late Wednesday, Shulkin insisted that overall funding for veteran homelessness was not being cut, and seemed to suggest he might reverse the decision. He promised to get input from local VA leaders and others “on how best to target our funding to the geographical areas that need it most.”

HUD data show there were nearly 40,000 homeless veterans in 2016, and even those with housing still need assistance. The program has reduced the number of displaced service members, serving 138,000 since 2010 and cut the number without housing on a given day by almost half. More than half the veterans housed are chronically ill, mentally ill or have substance abuse problems.

They can easily lose their housing again and need VA case managers to mediate with landlords, pay bills, and help them access the agency’s services and jobs, said Matt Leslie, who runs the housing program for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services.

“The people in this program are the most vulnerable individuals,” Leslie said. “If someone’s going to die on the streets, they are the ones.”

VA officials briefed congressional staff on Tuesday about the decision — which was buried in a September circular without prior consultation with HUD or veterans’ groups, according to advocates.

Agency spokesman Curtis Cashour said the move gives VA medical centers more flexibility. “VA has a responsibility to ensure resources go where they best align with veterans’ needs,” he said. “This move gives control and management of resources to local VA facilities, [which] know their communities and the veterans they serve better than anyone else.”

The decision affects $265 million immediately and would divert $195 million more under the VA’s 2018 budget. Under the program, HUD offers housing vouchers for veterans, and the VA provides case management — finding them apartments and making sure they stay there. Officials said it was possible that some of the vouchers could still be assigned, with the help of city or federal housing officials.

Carolyn Clancy, acting undersecretary for health, said the VA was moving forward to distribute money from the program to medical centers.

The Dec. 1 call came four days after Shulkin, appearing at a Washington shelter with HUD Secretary Ben Carson, announced that President Donald Trump was committed to continued reductions in veterans’ homelessness and was increasing funding in the area.

Shulkin and Carson promised to help every veteran find a home.

When asked about the administration’s budget, which includes no additional vouchers for the hard-case veterans, Carson said HUD had “excess vouchers. When we use those, we’ll look for more,” he said.

“The old paradigm of dumping money on problems doesn’t work,” Carson added.

Some communities have excess vouchers, but many more don’t have enough, said Harig-Blaine, who is also a member of Shulkin’s advisory committee. Even in cities where there are excess vouchers, they exist only because the voucher community can’t compete with private market rents, he said — not because there aren’t homeless veterans there.

All 14 members of the Senate Appropriations Military Construction-VA Subcommittee, including Murray, asked the VA to reconsider its decision, but apparently the letter had no effect.

“It will take a congressional fix at this point,” Harig-Blaine said.

Advocates said cuts to the program were doubly foolish because the chronically homeless veterans it serves typically cost cities and the health care system hundreds of thousands of dollars for emergency room visits, ambulance runs and jailings that could be avoided if the veterans were reasonably sheltered.

“These are the kinds of veterans it deals with,” said Kathryn Monet, CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

Renuka Rayasam contributed to this report.