If you’re like me, you move in liberal-ish circles online, and as a consequence, you have probably seen lots of stories about the GOP’s threat to Medicaid, food stamps and other forms of federal assistance.
The congressional Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations (what I call the very obscenely rich), but to do that, they have to get around the filibuster, the Senate rule requiring 60 votes. To do that, their bill must be “budget-neutral” – hence, all the talk of taking lunch money from hungry kids and giving it to the .001 percent.
The threat has gotten local attention. “Opponents said those mandates mean Republicans would reduce or eliminate health coverage for more than 800,000 low-income Connecticut residents, 5,600 children in early education programs for those under five years old and nearly 400,000 SNAP recipients,” the New Haven Registerreported last week.
Emily Byrne is the director of Connecticut Voices for Children, the state’s leading advocacy group for poor kids and families. She told the newspaper: “The House budget blueprint takes us down a path of increased family economic insecurity and child poverty as well as increased costs for household basics and debt — all in service of tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and large corporate interests … This is the wrong direction ... and antithetical to Connecticut values.”
The same thing is playing out across the country. City and state media are reporting on what happens if the GOP takes one and a half trillion dollars over ten years away from people who need it and puts it in the hands of people who want it. (What happens is real people, and real communities, suffer.) This pattern is the way it should be. Politics is not a meaningless game. Someone is doing something to someone. If the Washington press corps won’t report on it, then local news should.
As good as it is, however, it could be better, as the focus on the needs of the needy should be paired with the appetites of the greedy, which is to say, with this question: Why do people who have more money than their children’s children’s children could spend want more?
To my knowledge, no reporter or commentator has asked that question. Though I can’t say I know for sure, the reason is probably because we’re all so accustomed to billionaires perverting our politics. Or because we’re accustomed to the Republicans doing everything possible to serve their donors. Or because the rest of us are so focused on what will happen to Donald Trump’s supporters who are, after all, the majority of people enrolled in these safety-net programs.
In any case, we limit ourselves, morally. It is wrong to take assistance away from people who need it. It is wrong to want more money than you could hope to spend in one lifetime. No billionaire ever earned his billions, because no human being can work that much. Only the blessing of a government can deliver superhuman wealth like that.
But neither should we limit ourselves politically. Here, I’m thinking about one of my senators. In recent comments, Chris Murphy described the effect of “the billionaire mindset” on democracy.
“Billionaires do not need public schools,” he said. “The billionaires that are in charge of our government right now [that is, Elon Musk] send their kids to the most elite private schools. If every public school disappeared in this country, they will still get their kids an education.”
Murphy said: “Billionaires don’t need Medicaid. To them, it doesn’t matter if Medicaid disappears and rural hospitals close and addiction treatment centers shutter their doors, because the billionaires will still get their healthcare. They talk about Social Security being a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ … They don’t need Social Security. They’re billionaires. The billionaire mindset is different from average, ordinary Americans.”
Finally: “All that matters now [to the president and the congressional Republicans] is the billionaire and corporate tax cut. All that matters now is hoarding as much money, stealing as much money, from middle class and poor families in this country, so they can pass that money to the billionaires and the millionaires and the corporations.”
Here, Murphy does not explicitly link “the billionaire mindset” to criminal conduct. (He says that the Republicans are focused on hoarding and stealing, but stops short of saying that billionaires are.)
But in remarks made last week on MSNBC, he did.
“Everyone who signs up to work for Donald Trump is signing up for one single project,” Murphy said. “That is the transition of American democracy to a kind of kleptocratic oligarchy in which the billionaires rule, in which they get to steal from regular Americans. If that’s the domestic project, then the way you normalize that kind of government is to associate with similar governments abroad, like the Kremlin.”
As it stands right now, most of us are focused on what’s going to happen to people who need Medicaid and food stamps and other programs, especially what’s going to happen to the president’s supporters. Will Trump betray his own to deliver to billionaires?
But let’s not miss the forest through the trees. Normal Americans need a safety net. They need public education. They need Medicaid and Social Security. They need the rule of law. They need democracy.
But “the billionaire mindset is different,” Murphy said.
It doesn’t need any of that.
What it needs victims for its crimes.