Today In MAGA Ghoulishness

 

Sociopathic Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was at the Minnesota Farm Fest yesterday, sadistically bragging about cutting millions of Americans off of food stamps:

"Speaking at the Minnesota Farmfest, the three-day agricultural trade show and exhibition, Rollins boasted about booting 5 million Americans – including children – off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

'I know the Democrats don’t love (this), but for those of us that love work and celebrate work and want people to work and not be on food stamps, it’s a pretty big win when we move 5 million people off of food stamps, ya’ll,' Rollins said. 'I think that’s a huge accomplishment!'

Around 45 million Americans received food assistance through SNAP last year, but after federal policy changes enacted by the Trump administration last year, that number had plummeted by 13 percent over a period of 12 months. Americans enrolled in SNAP received around $190 in food assistance a month."

Cutting families off of SNAP benefits in order to help pay for tax cuts for the top 1% and for weapons used in the reckless Malignant Fascist's war on Iran and Netanyahu's continued bombing of Gaza are all part of the fascist and deliberately cruel policies of the MF and his Project 2025 agenda. Vile ghouls. 

(photo: Rollins and the MF using the wrong finger to send their message. Rollins' X account)

 

The House Republican Budget Plan: Punch Down

 

The far- right MAGA Republican caucus unveiled its 10- year "budget blueprint" yesterday, which once again reveals who they are:  small- bore fascists who enjoy punching down on everyone not a corporate CEO:

House Republicans unveiled a budget blueprint on Tuesday that proposes trillions of dollars in federal spending reductions over the next decade, specifically targeting Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance for steep cuts.

House Budget Committee Republicans' new resolution also calls for the establishment of a "bipartisan debt commission" to examine and propose changes to "the drivers of U.S. debt... such as Social Security and Medicare." (Social Security does not, in fact, contribute to long-term federal deficits.)  [snip]

The Republican proposal, which has no chance of becoming law given Democratic control of the Senate, would cut federal discretionary spending by nearly $5 trillion over the next decade, Roll Call reported Tuesday. The plan would cut mandatory spending—a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—by nearly $9 trillion over a 10-year period.

The proposal would gash federal Medicaid spending by close to $2 trillion and SNAP by $800 billion. The resolution also calls for punitive new work requirements for the two programs.  [snip]

The budget blueprint comes a day after House Republicans put forth a short-term government funding plan that would impose steep cuts to nondefense discretionary spending. With a government shutdown less than two weeks away, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "punted plans to tee up a vote" on the widely criticized government funding proposal, Politico reported Tuesday...  (our emphasis)

Nothing illustrates the principles and priorities of a party more than the budget it puts forth.  What does this budget blueprint tell you?  That they value the marginalized?  The poor?  Women?  Children?  The elderly?  Not if you're seeing what we're seeing. 

In the coming days and weeks, we'll see more analysis of this dead- on- arrival plan, of its cruelty and gimmicks.  But, it has the great benefit of once again validating the unofficial Republican theme that we've repeated many times: "afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable."  What poor excuses for human beings these hypocritical Christofascists are.

Trump Budget Slashes Medicaid, Social Safety Net Programs

"Populist" hero and world- class con man Donald "Rump" Trump is proposing a cut of $800 billion in Medicaid as well as other social safety net programs over the next 10 years ($1.7 trillion in all). His 2018 budget proposal lays the basis for using cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to balance nearly $1 trillion in tax cuts mostly benefitting the wealthiest Americans (i.e., via the TrumpCare abomination). But these proposals are just the beginning of the income redistribution upward:

The proposed changes to Medicaid and SNAP will be just some of several anti-poverty programs that the White House will look to change. In March, the White House signaled that it wanted to eliminate money for a range of other programs that are funded each year by Congress. This included federal funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies.

This, as part and parcel of the longstanding effort by Republicans to destroy affordable health care and the social safety net in this country, must be a petard on which their heads should be hoisted, hopefully starting in Montana on Thursday (where Democrat Rob Quist is hammering on affordable health care), then on to Georgia on June 20 (where Democrat Jon Ossoff is hanging Rump around his opponent's neck).

Voters who support Republicans might want to think about this:

I wonder how many Trump voters plan on taking in their elderly parents when these cuts go through? https://t.co/67NXe5qXNh

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) May 21, 2017

Shopping Fool's Warehouse

Among the most entitled, soulless Congressmen of the Rethuglican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party (and Lord, there are so many) is NRA stooge  Rep. Steve "My Gun is My Manhood" Stockman (Guns!- TX).  But Stockman isn't a one trick pony, no suh!  Responding to a demonstration by House Democrats that cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's (SNAP) budget by $21 billion over 10 years would cause people already subsisting on a tight food budget to suffer even more, Stockman sent his communications buttboy Dim Donny Ferguson out to the stupidmarket to buy some food and show them liebruls!  Here's what Dim Donny bought for his allowance (via Stockman's office - no link):

For $21.55 Ferguson purchased at Dollar Tree:
Two boxes of Honeycomb cereal
Three cans of red beans and rice
Jar of peanut butter
Bottle of grape jelly
Loaf of whole wheat bread
Two cans of refried beans
Box of spaghetti
Large can of pasta sauce
Two liters of root beer
Large box of popsicles
24 servings of Wyler’s fruit drink mix
Eight cups of applesauce
Bag of pinto beans
Bag of rice
Bag of cookies
For $6.03 at the Shoppers Food Warehouse next door Ferguson bought a gallon of milk and a box of maple and brown sugar oatmeal.

Mmmm. Yum!  We never realized the poors had it so good... or as Laura Clawson points out:

So he's got a lot of cereal for breakfast, and he can have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, along with maybe some applesauce and fruit drink. For dinner, it looks like he's eating spaghetti for a couple nights and otherwise eating beans and rice. Also popsicles and cookies. Healthy diet, there! And such a varied menu at dinner. Perhaps Ferguson isn't aware that the definition of low food security is "reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake." Exactly the diet he's reporting, in other words: fruits and vegetables only in the form of grape jelly, pasta sauce, and applesauce, heavily dependent on root beer and cookies and sugary cereal for calories, and beans and rice night after night for dinner. Not to mention the increased health care costs we can expect to see as a result of people living on diets like this and developing diabetes, hypertension, and a series of other health problems. 

Right.  Not surprisingly, Stockman whiffed on the point of the Democrats' demonstration, i.e., that you can't have a healthy diet on the subsistence-level assistance, much less if it's pared back over the next 10 years.  Sure, you can eat (and it looks like Stockman does quite well by himself in that category), but you're loading up on sugars and other empty calories.  But "not starving" isn't supposed to be the yardstick we use in this country, is it?