Far too many GOP politicians care far more about having power than the welfare of our country. They are willing to vilify and lie outrageously to stupefy and isolate their base into having no choice but to support them. Their ideal of America is straight, white, fundamentalist, idolizes the rich and capitalism and is nothing like what our multi-ethnic/multi-cultural country is actually like. Is it that they will do anything to stay in power because they are power-hungry or that they fear they are losing the America they prize or that if they are not in power they can't serve their oligarchic masters as well and will be abandoned by them? Some combination of all of these and I'm even more suspect.

Nevertheless, too much of our press/media is failing us in their essential role as a pillar of our democracy. Some work for wealthy people who care more about owning media to control the narrative and the populace for their own advantage and oligarchic ideal of America. Others aren't taking their role as defenders and enablers of democracy seriously, aren't up for the task at hand or maybe are just conflict-averse.

Still, they have to do much better than bothsidesism and instead actually explain and contextualize the news so as to inform Americans about what is actually happening and how they are being consistently lied to and manipulated by the GOP and why. It's not easy, I'm sure, but working for the common good is much better than being part of the problem trying to undermine it.

Why Biden also pays a price for Republican extremism - The Washington Post No Paywall link
https://wapo.st/3qbOB6q

#GOPLies
#GOPIsOwnedByTheRich
#MediaMatters
#GOPIsPowerHungry
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"Republicans might be damaging their long-term prospects with extremist tactics, but Democrats must confront an unhappy reality: The GOP’s merciless personal and ideological warfare, particularly in the House, is making it much harder for President Biden to sell his achievements.

The poisonous nature of our politics nurtures a sense of exhaustion with public life that works against any incumbent, especially one trying to convince voters that the government is making their lives better. As members of the party that believes in public action, Democrats are especially hurt by a mood of frustration and cynicism.

The ferocity of the GOP’s attacks on Biden also fuels public doubts about the president and affects media coverage, even when journalists carefully fact-check Republicans’ claims. A two-minute report on a congressional hearing will inevitably air whatever charges some right-wing committee chair makes. They lodge in memories no matter what might be said during those 120 seconds to debunk them.

Then there’s Biden’s signature promise to bring the parties together and end the chaos of the Trump years. The president’s problem: Bipartisanship is inherently a two-way street. One party can destroy the other side’s ability to achieve it simply by saying no. “The party in power pays a higher price for the other side’s obstructionism,” said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, though she added that the GOP suffered from its extremism in the three elections since 2018 and would likely do so again next year.

One party can also sow chaos if it wishes. “Biden wants to be known as, and is, a force for stability,” said Geoff Garin, another Democratic pollster. “But when the news is dominated by nuttiness, it’s hard to see stability.”

Nothing would do more to throw Washington into turmoil than an impeachment fight against Biden. So it should surprise no one that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is floating the idea. Notice all the innuendo packed into two sentences he offered to reporters last week: “We continue to gather more information. We’re finding more and more.”

What information? McCarthy didn’t say. But he’ll be happy if voters imagine there must be something behind this assertion beyond pandering to his caucus’s most extreme members.

Biden has been struggling to boost his approval ratings ever since his polling numbers suffered a one-two punch from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 and the inflation spike of 2022. Some polls early this year found most Democrats preferring he not seek reelection.

The GOP’s efforts to insert often unsupported accusations into the news cycle muddle Biden’s comeback campaign. “If you’re Biden, you have a really good story to tell,” Garin told me, “but it’s almost impossible to communicate effectively in this media environment.”

Congress just cut IRS funding. It costs even more than we thought. - Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs-enforcement-costs-congress-funding/

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPIsTheBitchOfTheRich

"The White House and Congress recently agreed to claw back more than $20 billion earmarked for the Internal Revenue Service. This deal was, ostensibly, part of a grand bargain to reduce budget deficits.

Unfortunately, it’s likely to have the opposite effect. Every dollar available for auditing taxpayers generates many times that amount for government coffers — and the rate of return is especially astonishing for audits of the wealthiest Americans, according to new research shared exclusively with The Post.
...
This means that while the upfront costs of auditing the wealthy are usually higher — perhaps suggesting these taxpayers aren’t worth going after — the average return on investment is much better.

Another way to think about this: On average, the direct revenue collected from audits exceed costs by a factor of 2 to 1. But, that payoff varies by income. For money spent auditing the bottom half of taxpayers, the IRS only roughly broke even.

Meanwhile, the agency pulled in $3.18 for each dollar spent auditing the top 1 percent, and $6.29 for the top 0.1 percent.
...
In the years after a taxpayer gets audited, they start paying much more in taxes voluntarily. Maybe, post-audit, they stop taking some dodgy deductions (counting a personal car as a business expense, for example). Or they start reporting income they had previously accepted off the books.
...
These additional taxes equal about three times the revenue raised from the initial audit, on average, over the 14 years of data the researchers had access to. So in other words, the biggest returns from doing more audits come from deterrence effects.
...
That multiplier — three times as much revenue from deterrence effects as from the initial audit — is relatively consistent across the income distribution, with both rich and poor adjusting their post-audit tax habits significantly. Which still means that in raw dollar terms auditing the rich has bigger payoffs.
...
Consequences of the deal to claw back money from the IRS
So what do these numbers tell us about Congress’s decision to claw back money from the IRS? They suggest that existing projections for long-term costs likely underestimate the massive hole this policy will blow into federal budgets.
...
Again, the authors instead find the opposite, that the long-term deterrence effects are huge, much larger than the upfront bounty that comes from the audits themselves.
...
For every additional dollar spent auditing people in the top decile of the income distribution, the government can expect to get 12 times that amount back.

Twelve! As any tax-dodging billionaire can attest: It’s pretty hard to beat that return on investment.

In other words: If the IRS spends more money on audits, and those resources actually target high earners, the payoff could be enormous — far greater than has usually been assumed.
...
Audits of millionaires (and megacorporations) have dramatically declined in recent years, according to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Certainly Republicans have fearmongered that the IRS will devote all its new money to deploying “armies” of gun-toting IRS agents to hound honest, middle-class taxpayers. So what evidence do we have that the agency will pursue higher-earning, higher-ROI tax-shirkers instead?

For one, President Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and others have pledged to raise audit rates only on households earning more than $400,000 (which is close to the top percentile, in this study’s data). Two, the agency is now equipped with better information about how to spend its dollars most efficiently, thanks to this new research.

“The evidence suggests going after higher-income taxpayers has higher returns, and that’s reassuring given the recent policy focus on auditing wealthy individuals,” says Ben Sprung-Keyser, one of the study’s co-authors
...
In any case, the revenue Congress just agreed to leave on the table by rescinding $20 billion from IRS’s long-term budget could be substantial. Based on that 12 to 1 multiplier found in this study for marginal returns from auditing high earners, that could mean Congress just gave up about $240 billion in revenue, for a net cost to the budget of $220 billion ($240 billion - $20 billion cut from IRS budget = $220 billion).

So much for trying to reduce deficits."

The media's misinforming the public about the GOP hostage-taking over the debt ceiling is dangerously close to disinformation and propaganda! The changes the GOP wants are only conducted within the budget process, yet they lack the votes to enact their dream list that way, so they are using the relic that is the debt ceiling to try extortion instead of democracy. They are threatening the livelihood and financial well-being of America and Americans to get their donor's wishlists enacted. Only the Democrats care about and are being motivated by America and American's well-being in this manufactured crisis, and the GOP is leveraging the Dems caring to enact concessions.

The hostage-takers don't care about the hostages, and the public ought to be aware of that! Yet the media is pulling their lame bothsidesism again and willfully misrepresenting this situation to the detriment of us and our country. This is yet another example of how most of the mainstream media is used by their wealthy owners to mislead Americans so they can achieve objectives that the rest of us don't want.

The rich have needs and goals that are not in the interests of America or average Americans. When the wealthy own media, our democracy is missing it's fourth pillar!!

The debt ceiling debacle is NOT a "partisan standoff"
"It was completely manufactured by Kevin McCarthy and his House Republicans"
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-debt-ceiling-debacle-is-not-a?publication_id=365422&post_id=123808361&isFreemail=true

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TheRichOwnTheMedia
#TheRichHateAvgAmericans
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"This morning, the credit-rating agency Fitch put the nation’s AAA rating on a watch list, citing “increased political partisanship” over the debt ceiling. I just heard ABC attribute the standoff on the debt ceiling to “polarization” in Congress. NPR blames the fight on “hyper-partisanship” in American politics. Reuters blames the stalemate on lawmakers “digging in on partisan positions.”

“Partisan standoff” is the way most of the media is now characterizing the fight.

Hello?

Enough with the “both sides” reporting on the debt ceiling.

The current fight over raising the debt ceiling — and the growing possibility the United States might default on its debts — is not because of partisanship. It’s not due to political polarization. It’s not because lawmakers are “digging in” to “partisan positions.”

Republicans alone manufactured this looming disaster.

In order to become speaker, Kevin McCarthy made a deal with right-wing MAGA House Republicans to use the debt ceiling as a way to hold America hostage and force the Biden administration to come begging.

McCarthy and his band of MAGA crazies don’t give a fig about the national debt. Hell, they had no problem raising the debt ceiling three times under Trump — while providing trillions in tax cuts for the rich.

This current fight is entirely theirs.

The “both sides” reporting is misleading the public and giving a free pass to McCarthy and his extremists.

I admire Joe Biden, but he should not have allowed the media to so badly mischaracterize what’s happening. He never should have begun negotiating with McCarthy. Biden has the bully pulpit; he should have addressed the nation by now, pointing out that this fight is manufactured entirely by House Republicans.

The media’s reporting is inexcusable.

The GOP couldn't care less about average Americans. They say they want to fix the debt, but really just want to stop any programs that don't benefit the wealthiest. Who has benefitted the most in the U.S. over the last few decades, the wealthiest. They can most afford additional taxes. Yet the GOP is not interested in even thinking about that.

Nothing could make it clearer that they are the party of the rich and don't govern for the country as a whole, but only for their obscenely wealthy donors. The obscenely wealthy and their puppets, the GOP, are all so selfish, no society could function for long if they were in charge or the majority. They are parasites who aren't even remotely interested in what is good for the majority of the country.

Republicans Literally Laugh Off Idea of Taxing the Rich to Fix Budget | The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/post/172782/republicans-literally-laugh-off-idea-taxing-rich-fix-budget

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPIsTheBitchOfTheRich

"Republicans have said they want to reduce government spending and increase U.S. revenue—but not if it inconveniences rich people, apparently.

When a reporter asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy if he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, he answered with a short “No” before the question was even finished. Republicans standing around him groaned and shook their heads. They then began laughing when McCarthy asked where the reporter was earlier.

McCarthy explained that wealth taxes weren’t necessary because the United States has a revenue of 20 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to 17 percent in previous years. Instead, inflation was due to the Democrats spending $6 trillion after winning the presidential election in 2020.

McCarthy’s statement about revenue is technically true: The U.S. revenues in 2022 totaled 19.6 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office, compared to the annual average of 17.4 percent in the five decades prior. Most of that revenue comes from income taxes.

But raising taxes on the wealthy, even by a little bit, would produce huge amounts of revenue. In 2021, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders proposed charging billionaires a 3 percent wealth tax, and households and trusts worth between $50 million and $1 billion a tax of just 2 percent per year.

This would only apply to a tiny fraction of Americans, but it could produce about $3 trillion in revenue over the next decade, University of Berkeley economists predicted.

In his budget, President Joe Biden proposed increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations and using the revenue to expand health care, childcare assistance, and housing aid. Not only have Republicans fought this plan, but their own budget proposes punishing lower-income Americans to benefit the wealthy.

Republicans’ solution to the debt ceiling crisis is focused on mere pennies in comparison to what a wealth tax would do. The bill calls for work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps, and cash assistance programs—which would barely make a dent in U.S. debt. Work requirements would save the government only about $1 billion per year, according to the CBO, nowhere near how much actually needs to be recouped. And that’s assuming, of course, that such requirements actually work.

The U.S. is just weeks away from defaulting on its debt, but Republicans and Democrats remain at a logjam over how to solve the problem. The GOP seems ready to take it out on the backs of people who can least afford it."

Do Billionaires Really Give a Rat's Ass about "Woke" Issues? https://hartmannreport.com/p/do-billionaires-really-give-a-rats

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedKills

"American billionaires and the corporations that made them rich share a couple of big concerns that are well-served by the GOP’s ongoing culture wars and their embrace of fascist behavior and ideology.

In fact, there’s an entire field of academic scholarship examining this dynamic: it’s called “Diversionary Warfare.”

Examples litter history, both ancient and modern.
...
Viewing the massive funding of the GOP by fossil fuel and other billionaires through this lens of diversionary warfare brings a lot of seemingly disparate actions by these wealthy individuals and their corporations into clearer focus.

By funding the culture wars to keep their wholly-owned politicians in power, they’re running out an ancient playbook.

Americans fight with each other over homosexuality and religion while the morbidly rich continue to rob the middle class by foisting the burden of income taxes on us (as they pay an average 3% income tax rate) and persist in polluting the planet with CO2 and cancer-causing chemicals.

Fossil-fuel industry support for Republicans’ campaigns, for example, have gone up around 800 percent since 1990 but stayed relatively flat for Democrats.

Why?

Because Republicans have been doing their job of keeping the American public distracted from the issues billionaires care about: not paying their taxes while continuing to poison our children and the planet.
...
Even today, as global warming-fueled tornadoes wipe out huge swaths of Red-state America, those stories about billionaire and corporate abuse of Americans rarely last more than a day before being eclipsed by news about the latest new anti-abortion, anti-education, book banning, or anti-voting law.

Fascist regimes have always been attractive to the morbidly rich and the industries they control.
...
But even without America turning fully fascist — a goal that’s already been partly achieved in multiple Red states, but is still out of reach for all of America without another Republican presidency — big business and the morbidly rich benefit tremendously when Americans are at each other’s throats.

And ever since 5 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized the outright purchase of politicians by these same groups with Citizens United, each election comes to most closely resemble an auction rather than an exercise of the genuine will of the people.

America today stands on a precipice.

— Will we allow global warming to continue to kill our citizens and cost us taxpayers hundreds of billions in cleanup and repairs every year?

— Will we continue to let our teachers and government workers be intimidated by a small minority of bigots, nazis, and haters?

— Will we perpetuate the slaughter of our children in the face of the highest civilian gun ownership rates in the world?

— Will we keep young people chained to the debt they incurred just trying to get an education just so they, too, can partake in the American Dream?

— Will we let corporations block even more workers from the right to form and join unions?

— Will we force all American women, both Red- and Blue-state, into second-class status under the thumbs of male judges, legislators, bounty-hunting neighbors, and family members?

— Will we maintain policing systems that routinely murder people of color and protestors with only rare consequences?

— Will we look the other way while Republicans (and a handful of bought-off Democrats) work to gut Social Security, further privatize Medicare, and put onerous work and byzantine paperwork requirements on Medicaid?

— Will we go along with the construction of more for-profit prisons, for-profit schools, and the expansion of child labor?

Or will we work together to create a nation — and a world — that works for all?

Thanks to Republicans on the Supreme Court, billionaires and giant corporations can buy politicians and judges as often as they like. They can pour billions into campaigns and ballot initiatives. They can wine and dine Supreme Court justices on their mega-yachts while funding campaigns to replace public schools with vouchers for all-white Christian “academies.”

But they can’t yet buy your vote.

It’s still possible to push back against this fascistic takeover of America and reclaim the values that animated the creation of this nation: that all people are created with equal opportunity and equal status before the law."

The GOP is always ready to undermine the fiscal integrity of government in order to give "needy" wealthy people more tax breaks and money, yet they become so fiscally "responsible and conservative" when it comes to helping average Americans in any way. It's clear, the cruelty is the point. It certainly isn't fiscal responsibility, as they have a huge surplus and this attempt to screw the poor is going to cost them much more to implement than they spend on SNAP every year. This legislation, like so many of these bills, originates in out-of-state, right-wing bill mills that are funded by obscenely wealthy, greedy, nutjobs who want more handouts for themselves and less for anyone else. These GOP lovers of the rich and haters of the poor, mirror their greedy "socialism for me but not thee" donors totally. And they call themselves Christians?!

Iowa's bill on limiting SNAP benefits is a bold attack, experts say - The Washington Post Free Article--GiftLink https://wapo.st/40fj5jZ

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#Socialism4MeNotThee

"The state legislature, with the support of the Republican supermajority, was poised to approve some of the nation’s harshest restrictions on SNAP...By the state’s own estimate, Iowa will need to spend nearly $18 million in administrative costs during the first three years — to take in less federal money. The bill’s backers argue the steps would save the state money long term and cut down on “SNAP fraud.”

The measure is part of a broader national crackdown on SNAP, the federal program at the heart of the nation’s welfare system. The proposed legislation was not a homegrown effort but the product of a network of conservative think tanks pushing similar SNAP restrictions in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and other states. But experts say Iowa’s represents the boldest attack yet on SNAP, and Republicans in Congress have signaled a similar readiness to impose limits on federal food assistance.
...
When the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020, the federal government temporarily raised its allotment of SNAP dollars for the 41 million Americans in the program. Then in April 2022, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) decided to end those emergency SNAP benefits a year early, leaving the 286,874 Iowans with less money each month for food.
...
Spending money to reject money

Iowa ended 2022 with a general-fund budget surplus of $1.91 billion. But at the start of the 2023 legislative session, Republicans made clear that limiting access to SNAP was a priority because of cost concerns.

“It’s these entitlement programs,” House Speaker Pat Grassley (R), grandson of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), told reporters in January. “They’re the ones that are growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities. And so I think it’s time for us to take a serious look at what they are.”
...
The proposal’s backers argued that SNAP assistance de-incentivized families from working or from taking on more hours at the jobs they already had. They also pressed the case that the current program would eliminate “SNAP fraud.”
...
Enacting the bill is expected to cost Iowa more than $17 million in the first three years, far more than the $2.2 million the state spends each year to administer SNAP. (The federal government funds SNAP and splits administrative costs 50-50 with the state. Last year, Iowa received $60.4 million in federal SNAP funds).
...
A Florida think tank
...
Its biggest proponent was the Opportunity Solutions Project, a Florida think tank that has successfully shepherded similar bills through other statehouses.

The OSP is the lobbying arm of the Foundation for Government Accountability. Both groups are run by Maine state legislator Tarren Bragdon, who started the FGA in 2011 with three employees and less than $60,000 in the group’s bank account. According to tax records, that money was a grant from the State Policy Network, a major funder for right-wing think tanks and organizations that has been linked to conservative superdonors such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family. OSP did not respond to calls for comment.

As of 2021, the organization has grown to more than 40 staff members, 40 contractors, and a $12.5 million annual budget. Although the group has expanded into pushing for election integrity laws in battleground states, the bulk of its mission seems to the aimed at cutting welfare programs to “free individuals from the trap of government dependence.”
...
“This bill makes poor use of state resources, ramping up administration costs in order to take federal resources out of Iowa’s economy,” said Rep. Jeff Cooling (D).
...
“It is a continuation of the myth that persons on aid programs are cheats gaming the system,” said Rep. Monica Kurth (D). “This is another way this body is blaming the victim by passing bad legislation.”

Raskin takes the GOP to task for whitewashing Trump's actions and inactions that led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary covid deaths. If they had their way, we would be putting Trump up on a pedestal right next to Reagan, who also was a disaster for our country. How can the GOP ever learn from their mistakes when they re-write history and practice partisan amnesia? They don't want to learn, they just want to paper it over so they can win more elections and get more power.

'Magical thinking': Jamie Raskin wrecks GOP's Covid hearing by scorching Trump - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/magical-thinking-jamie-raskin-wrecks-gop-s-hearing-by-scorching-trump-2659558336/

#GOPLies
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TrumpKilledAMillion
#TrumpLovesAuthoritarians

"Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) blasted a House Select Committee on Covid-19 by noting that former President Donald Trump had refused for months to investigate the virus's origins but praised China President Xi Jinping instead.

At a hearing to determine the origins of Covid on Wednesday, Raskin wondered why Republicans were not more upset with Trump's mishandling of the pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic came to America in 2020, of course, when Donald Trump was president," Raskin told the committee. "And that president's policy failures, magical thinking, and total recklessness caused, according to his own special advisor on COVID, Deborah Birx, the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Raskin said that answers "must come from objective, fact-based investigations informed by doctors, scientists, and public health experts."

"Whatever the origins of COVID-19, whether it is bats or bureaucrats, no finding will ever exonerate or rehabilitate Donald Trump for his lethal recklessness in mismanaging the crisis in America, which cost us more than a million lives," he continued. "Indeed, if COVID was actually the product of a lab leak, or the worst bioweapon of mass destruction ever invented, as some have argued, and obviously we don't have the scientific evidence to say any of this yet, it would not only not remove Donald Trump's culpability, it would only deepen his culpability in the most profound way."

The congressman offered a list of tweets in which Donald Trump praised Xi in the early days of the pandemic.

"I'm just giving the committee a tiny taste of Donald Trump's fawning, star-struck, sycophantic embrace of everything the Chinese government was telling him in 2020," he explained. "He could have directed the intelligence community to lead a COVID-19 origins investigation back in March of 2020, three years ago. He did not. He wasted precious time minimizing the risk of the virus and lavishing his praise on President Xi."

Raskin concluded: "He could have pushed back against the CCP for interfering with the WHO's investigation into its origins, and he could have asked our intelligence community to intervene. He did none of those things. And everyone should remember that. Let's take the politics out of it, and let's get to the bottom of what happened.""

The GOP doesn't care about average Americans or the poor, they only care about their wealthy donors. They don't care about the deficit either unless they can use it to cut programs for average Americans so they can give more tax breaks and less regulations to the obscenely wealthy. The GOP don't create economic conditions that generate wealth for most Americans, just for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The GOP gives their base culture war issues but little else, yet the base doesn't seem to mind. Crazy!

GOP’s Deficit Plan: Spoil the Rich, Starve the Kids https://www.thedailybeast.com/gops-deficit-plan-spoil-the-rich-starve-the-kids

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPRTheToolsOfTheRich
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"Republicans are super-serious about fiscal responsibility. So they’re gutting food stamps and giving the ultra-rich more tax cuts.

I often criticize the modern GOP for its radicalized and weaponized cruelty. In the interest of being fair and balanced, let me pay them a rare pseudo-compliment. I grudgingly admire their relentless consistency around one issue which has the ability to unite both RINOs and MAGAs: They will never miss an opportunity to starve the poor in order to fatten and butter up the rich.
...
Cosplaying as deficit hawks, the GOP seeks to gut SNAP, along with other popular government programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, under the guise of reducing America’s $31 trillion debt they helped create (and which they only show concern over when they’re out of the White House). It doesn’t take much to see through the GOP’s cheap spandex and mask to reveal they’re economic terrorists currently hijacking the debt ceiling, and thereby potentially harming the global economy, just so they can cut popular welfare programs to give tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent.
...
Enter poor families and their children. They have always served as reliable tributes, rarely missed and easily forgotten. The expansion of SNAP benefits, one of the last standing COVID relief programs, serves as a lifeboat for these impoverished Americans who are barely surviving in a difficult economy with low wages, inflation, the lingering damages wrought by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

According to a report from the nonprofit research group, the Urban Institute, SNAP benefits kept 4.2 million people out of poverty and reduced poverty rates for children by 14 percent in the final quarter of 2021. The expanded benefits have already ended in 18 states, negatively affecting nine million people.

In an email to Axios, Moody’s economist Mark Zandi wrote that SNAP benefits have an overall positive impact on the economy, because they give money to families to buy groceries, and cutting them will have only a marginal impact on inflation. Specifically, “every $1 spent on SNAP currently generates about $1.42 in GDP.
...
Surely, the GOP can find something else to trim so our children can eat bread?

Perhaps a small little tuck from the defense budget is in order, considering the U.S. has the world’s most awesome and expansive military? Nope. Last year, Congress passed an $858 billion bill and increased the defense budget by 8 percent.

The “pro-life-as-long-as-you’re-in-the womb” GOP cares little for child poverty and homelessness, insisting that poor kids should pull themselves from their BabyBjorn bootstraps and stop whining and asking for “handouts,” such as the Child Tax Credit, which temporarily helped reduce the child poverty rate by 12 percent until it was iced by Republicans and moderate (obstructionist) Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

These supposed GOP “deficit hawks,” under the leadership of the spineless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are allegedly so zealous about “balancing the budget” that they have no problem adding $3 trillion to the deficit to reward their gilded and privileged donor base—whose wealth has, historically, never “trickled down” but instead stayed at the top for the 1 percent.
...
This utter contempt for the poor is a feature, not a bug, of the GOP which also proclaims itself to be the party of God and uses Jesus as a gun-toting, white nationalist mascot instead of actually following his example of feeding the poor and helping the sick."

Everybody hates junk fees except the companies who impose them and their servants/tools: the GOP. The GOP will be forced to fight the elimination of junk fees-- which will reveal who they really are, the tools of the wealthy. Or, they will splinter, with those in swing districts supporting the elimination of these fees, and those in safe districts, continuing to serve their overlords. The GOP base will encounter the cognitive dissonance of being torn between hating junk fees because they hurt them financially, and caring more about sticking it to Biden and the Dems while ignoring the parasitic companies and the wealthy gnawing on their financial well-being. Watching fox news will zap their brains with a faux reality that numbs them to the cost they are bearing. While the tools of the wealthy, will continue to stab their country and countrymen in the back so they can get more crumbs from their masters. Who is more pitiful in this scenario, the base, the tools or the wealthy who sell their souls for more money?

Joe Biden Has Found the Perfect Enemy https://newrepublic.com/article/170613/biden-junk-fees-popular-polling

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TheRichAreParasites
#TheGOPBaseHurtThemselves
#TheGOPIsInBedWithTheRich
#TheGOPAreTheToolsOfTheRich

"For the last week, Republicans have been fuming about Joe Biden’s claim in the State of the Union that they—or at least many of them—are committed to gutting Medicare and Social Security. Naturally, this was an uncontroversial statement in a multitude of ways: Republicans have been committed to undoing the New Deal since its inception. Just last year, Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (and therefore the guy who serves as a policy pacesetter for the party), said the GOP would put these programs to the sword if it retook both chambers of Congress by “sunsetting” them alongside any other measures that have been around for five years or more. Cutting social welfare programs is at the heart of the Republican Party—it is its nucleic idea, the one thing that has stayed consistently true about the GOP for nearly a century. Those suddenly protesting otherwise have been serving up a distinct “I am not owned!” vibe.

...GOP leadership has, for now, taken cuts “off the table” even as they continue to hold the debt ceiling hostage. But this will likely prove to be a temporary respite. There’s no reason to expect that anything Biden said during the State of the Union has warned them off their dream of gutting these programs long term; certainly they won’t be convinced to lend a hand in preserving them.
...
But Biden has broken ground on a new economic policy commitment, which targets a new enemy: the Junk Fee Prevention Act. On a long enough timeline, everyone is going to encounter a plethora of junk fees. Everyone hates them—they’re the random charges added on to transactions for everything from concert tickets to rental cars to hotels to flights.

They are typically given Orwellian names—“convenience fees” is a particular favorite, given the fact that it’s money you spend to circumvent an inconvenience that the seller should simply not impose. These fees are omnipresent and regressive; they are, for all intents and purposes, a tax.
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“Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most folks in homes like the one I grew up in. They add up to hundreds of dollars a month. They make it harder for you to pay the bills or afford that family trip,” Biden said during State of the Union address last week. “I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it. Not anymore.” The Biden administration has, over the last several months, pushed a variety of policies aimed at reducing bogus charges. The Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Transportation have all been tasked with taking down junk fees.

The war on junk fees cleverly poaches a page from Elizabeth Warren’s economic playbook, boosting competition by targeting the most insidious examples of malfeasance around. Junk fees are something to which just about everyone can relate, they offer the administration an easy and simple way to make things cheaper, and they take aim at the multitude of actors who have free rein to nickel-and-dime ordinary people...According to a new survey by Morning Consult, “About 3 in 4 Americans” are supportive of the plan. It’s a slam dunk.
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But the biggest reason to target junk fees is the especially strong nonpartisan support for the policy...“Biden’s proposals have bipartisan support, with clear majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents saying Congress should pass laws to limit” these fees...But the junk fees fight is one bipartisan angle that will allow Biden to do battle with a group that is hated even more by the public than politicians: corporate profiteers."