Donald Trump became President
because millions of Americans believed him when he promised to protect their financial
health. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid keep the budgets of most
Americans, especially the elderly, above water. Trump promised over and over
again not to cut them.
He did this loud and clear,
as a way of differentiating himself from other Republicans. Even before he
officially announced his candidacy, he told the conservative “Daily Signal” in May
2015: “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and
I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Every other Republican is going to
cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t
know where the money is. I do.” His announcement
that he was a candidate the next month included “Save Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security without cuts. Have to do it.” In July 2015, he said, “The
Republicans who want to cut SS & Medicaid are wrong.” In October
2015, he said, “I am going to save Medicare and Medicaid.” In February
2016, he said, “We're gonna save your Social Security without making any
cuts. Mark my words.”
Trump’s promise not to cut
Social Security included explicit statements that he would not raise the
retirement age, as he said in the Republican debate in March 2016. “And it’s my
absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age
and to leave it as is.”
In fact, that was never his
intention. In his book “The America We Deserve” in 2000, Trump compared Social
Security to a Ponzi scheme and suggested that the retirement age be raised
to 70. In a private conversation with Paul Ryan after he won the
nomination, Trump responded to Ryan’s plans to cut Social Security: “From a
moral standpoint, I believe in it.
But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to
beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social
Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you
more.’”
And that’s what happened.
Trump convinced voters he would protect government programs which insured that
average Americans would be able to get health care and retire with some
financial dignity. Once he was President, he returned to his “moral standpoint”,
the exact opposite of what he had promised.
As soon as he was elected, he
appointed former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert as his Social Security advisor.
Leppert is in favor of privatizing
Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney also favors privatization.
In May 2017, Trump’s budget
plan for 2018 proposed drastic
cuts in Medicaid. In June, he supported the Republican Senate health care
bill, which made big
cuts to Medicaid.
Now the White House has
released a new
Trump budget, which makes huge cuts in Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid. Under the heading “Reform disability programs”, Trump proposes cuts
in Social Security programs which support poor
and disabled Americans, totaling $9 billion over the next four years and
$72 billion over the next ten years. On the issue of how people will be
affected, nobody could be clearer than budget director Mulvaney. When asked in
the White House press room, “Will any of those individuals who receive SSDI
receive less from this budget?” Mulvaney replied, “I
hope so.”
Funding for Medicare will be
cut by $266 billion, mainly for patients who still need care after being
discharged from hospitals. Medicaid will be cut by $1.1 trillion over ten
years, by putting a cap on how much will be spent on individual patients.
Other cuts
in Trump’s budget: Meals on Wheels, home heating assistance, and teacher
training. He wants to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the
National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Every poll shows that most
Americans are opposed to cutting Medicaid, Social Security, and the other
welfare programs that Trump wants to cut or eliminate. So why is Trump ditching
his promises not to cut these programs?
A poll of voters before the
2016 election showed that Republicans, even more than Democrats, said they
wanted a leader
with honesty, and that was most true for voters with incomes under $50,000
a year. After the election, over 90% of Republican voters believed that Trump
was “a strong and decisive leader” who “keeps
his promises”.
It is hard to imagine a
leader who is less honest than Trump. He has broken his promises about issues
which hit Americans right in the wallet and pocketbook. It does take a “strong
and decisive” person to repeatedly promise Americans that he will protect their
interests in order to get elected, when he had no intention of doing so.
Will Trump’s so-called “base”
ever wake up? Does he have to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue before
his supporters recognize who he is? Or was he right that even that won’t hurt
him?
Steve Hochstadt
Berlin, Germany
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, February 20, 2018
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