Today's Cartoon And Reading - The Republican Budget "Tell"

(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

How can you tell Republicans are lying when they talk about easing income inequality?  Their lips are moving (heh - rimshot).

As noted the other day, the House Crackpot Caucus Republican produced a "slumlord budget" that promotes a plutocratic dystopia of winners (the 1 per centers) and losers (the rest of us), using "magical asterisks" and blatant dishonesty (surprise!) in  the process.

Today, E.J. Dionne, Jr., shows how Republicans are pushing policies and budget priorities that exacerbate income inequality rather than ease it:

The wholesale assault on efforts to provide lower-income Americans with health insurance is the clearest sign that Republicans don’t want to deal with inequality. The inability to get health insurance is one of the biggest burdens on low-income families, particularly those working for low wages and few or no benefits. 

Obamacare has helped 16.4 million Americans get health insurance. Where would they turn? And Republicans would compound the damage: The Senate proposes cutting an additional $400 billion from Medicaid over a decade, the House more than double that. Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that on other low-income programs, the Senate budget cuts even more than the House’s. The vagueness of these plans makes it hard to tally how much damage would be done to food stamps, Pell Grants for low-income college students and the like, but Greenstein estimates that about two-thirds of the cuts in both plans come “from programs for the less fortunate, thereby exacerbating poverty and inequality.” 

Greenstein concludes that under such proposals — here’s hoping President Obama is relentless in blocking them — “ours would be a coarser and less humane nation with higher levels of poverty and inequality, less opportunity” and an “inadequately prepared” workforce.  

The "tell" in all of this budget smoke and mirrors is what Republicans would do to affordable health care and other programs for low- and middle-class Americans if given the chance.  It's been there for all to see not just in this year's Republican budget proposals, but ever since St. Ronnie of Hollywood and his acolytes took over the party with their promises of "trickle down" prosperity, busting unions, shrinking government, tax cuts for the wealthy and "pain-free" cuts to social programs.  Every single one of the putative Republican candidates for president continue to bow down at the altar of this smiling sociopath, the former corporate pitchman.  They're not even trying hard to hide their true goals;  they know they won't be challenged by the "mainstream media," and they continue to hope that there are enough plutocrat bucks, gullible voters and fellow sociopaths* out there to keep them in power until they can finish America the job.

*UPDATE:  And let's not forget Supreme Court-abetted voter suppression.