Let us all give thanks for the miracle of Republican ineptitude.
Long before Donald Trump’s second-place finish somehow landed him in the White House, Republicans in Congress promised a package of benefit cuts, privatization, and tax cuts for the wealthy that were so cruel, American voters literally refused to believe they were real. In 2012, a Democratic super PAC decided not to campaign against future Speaker Paul Ryan’s package of Medicare vouchers and upper income tax cuts after participants in a focus group “simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”
Under the Republican Party’s Medicare plan, seniors’ out-of-pocket health costs would literally double. Some of their plans cut Medicaid spending on poor people’s health care in half — and then slashed even deeper in later years. The GOP would have even kicked 1.5 million people off of food stamps, leaving many families hungry while the wealthiest Americans suckle at the teat of Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
Two years later, the Trump administration remains cruel, racist, and deeply corrupt. Yet its saving grace — and that of its Republican allies in Congress — is that it is so bumblingly incompetent, the GOP’s toxic legislative agenda never really got off the ground. Rich people got their tax cuts (a gimme during any period when Republicans control Congress and the White House), but the wholesale overhaul of the welfare state that Ryan’s dreamed about since he was “drinking at a keg” never manifested.
View the complete January 3 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress.org website here.