So, would it surprise you at all to learn that the GOP's "big beautiful bill" ultimately designed to give American billionaires massive permanent tax cuts, literally rips food out of the mouths of struggling American families to do so? In addition to over $715B in cuts to Medicaid, the Republican budget bill also features $290B worth of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/republicans-cutting-snap

'Catastrophic': GOP Pushes Largest-Ever Cuts to Food Aid to Fund Tax Breaks for the Rich

"The proposal, which is part of the GOP's sprawling reconciliation package, would shift some SNAP costs onto states and expand the program's work requirements, adding procedural hurdles that advocates say will make it harder for families in need to obtain benefits.

One recent analysis estimated that imposing harsher work requirements on SNAP enrollees would cause millions to lose benefits at a time of elevated food costs and rising hunger.

The new bill would also freeze updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to determine SNAP benefit amounts. Freezing the plan would effectively cut SNAP benefits for all recipients, analysts said.

"Bottom line: This bill would worsen hunger and hardship," said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "If enacted, it would be the largest cut to SNAP in history—taking food from struggling families to give tax cuts to the wealthy. Our leaders can and must do better."

While the Dickensian prospect of starving poor people so Elon Musk can buy more horses to improve his sex life is obscene in its own right, don't sleep on the fact that this bill consistently says the quiet part out loud - if you can't work, the government doesn't give a fuck if you die. It goes without saying that these changes to the highly-effective SNAP program would be disastrous for American families, but pretending poor people (including the working poor) and children aren't actually going to starve has long been a staple in GOP policy arguments, and now that Trump has given them the green light to literally fucking kill labor class people for billionaire tax cuts, Republicans want to fulfill their longstanding desire to eviscerate the SNAP program.

Of course, for this bill to pass, GOP representatives in Congress and the Senate have to actually vote for it; which is why its so important to speak with clear and honest language about what this budgetary policy means. The Republican Party is actively trying to kill poor people to enrich their billionaire donors and corporate CEOs and before they vote to do so, it might be a good idea to force them to explain to the media, their political opposition, and their own constituents why they think that's an acceptable trade off.

#USPol #GOP #Medicaid #Budget #ClassWar #Trump #SocialMurder #Cruelty #Food #Oligarchy #Theft #RepublicanParty #SNAP #Hunger

I'm sure it's technically possible for the GOP's "big beautiful" budget bill to be worse than it is, but damn would they have to try. In addition to slashing healthcare and fucking food stamps for the poorest people in America, it turns out the bill also contains the NGO-killer sidecar that aged out in the then Democrat controlled Senate last year. Under the provision, the Treasury Secretary will be able to strip the tax-exempt status of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that the regime deems a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Who oversees that decision? Nobody who doesn't work for Trump. And what evidence do they have to produce to enact it? Absolutely nothing, just vibes.

https://theintercept.com/2025/05/12/trump-nonprofit-killer-tax-cuts/

Republicans Sneak Nonprofit Killer Bill Into the Tail End of Trump’s 389-Page Tax Plan

"The House Ways and Means Committee will meet Tuesday for a mark-up session of the 389-page draft plan, a massive bundle of draft amendments central to the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that aims to cut trillions of dollars in government spending.

Among those amendments, buried on page 380 of the draft, is a section that would enable Trump’s secretary of the Treasury to denounce any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip it of its tax-exempt status.

“This seems to just give the president a tool to go after his political enemies and fulfill some of the darker elements of the Project 2025 agenda,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council."

Readers with a good memory will recall that this exact same bill was passed in the House with resounding bipartisan support after the election, but before Trump was inaugurated, because Bidenite "Blue Dog" Democrats were very interested in punishing NGOs that spoke out against US. support for Israel and its ongoing US-backed genocide in Gaza. When it was (loudly) pointed out by numerous civil rights groups and activists that this meant giving the then-incoming President Trump the power to effectively censor NGOs by threatening their ability to operate and all he'd have to do is say the magic word "terrorism" to do so, cooler heads in the Senate prevailed and the bill didn't make it to a vote before Trump actually took office. All of which is to say that while the Democrats ultimately share in the responsibility for this idea even existing, even the most bloodthirsty pro-Zionist conservatives in the Dem Party, folks up to their eyeballs in AIPAC money, realized there is no way on this green earth a man like Trump should have that power because he will abuse it to violate civil rights, and target his enemies; now the GOP is trying to sneak that power onto the tail end of a class war budget bill that will literally murder disadvantaged Americans of all stripes to pay for obscene tax cuts for a wealthy ruling class that has more money than they can actually spend before they die.

Folks, I know you're tired of hearing me say it, but it is fundamentally impossible for you to understand how we got here, without factoring the unhinged security state authoritarianism the entire US political apparatus adopted to "keep us safe" from "terrorists" after 9/11. Without the War on Terror, we don't get to a place where Donald Trump and the GOP are trying to grant themselves the power to destroy aid organizations simply because they point out that bombing hospitals and refugee camps to murder children for the establishment of a Greater Israel is monstrous genocidal fuckery; which is to say nothing of the fact that Trump is absolutely going to use this power to target far more than pro-Palestinian NGOs, if it is granted to him. It may sound to you like I'm being hyperbolic when I say the state (and thus Trump) isn't required to prove anyone is an actual terrorist, before applying the terrorist label that allows them to unlock vast police state powers, but that is literally how it works and Americans were lead to believe this was necessary to protect us from "radical Islamic terrorism." Advocates warned that this was a grave threat to our civil liberties and would usher in an era of overt American fascism on a long enough timeline, and now here we are; with a fascist regime hinging its entire mass deportation program on a fake "invasion" that's only (legally) credible because Trump declared a gang with less than 1,000 members in the US a narco-terrorist organization working for the government of Venezuela. The US State department is using the word "terrorist" to revoke visas for student protestors, kidnap foreign students for exercising their free speech rights, and attempted deportations on behalf of Israel. Looking at the wreckage these policies have created in the hands of a government determined to abuse them, how can anyone at all think it's a good idea to expand those powers here in the Trump era? It's not; this bill must not pass.

#Fascism #Trump #Budget #Terrorism #911 #WarOnTerror #NGOs #GOP #Censorship #PoliceState

As a general rule I avoid all discussions about governmental deficit spending because I don't want to have to teach a two year course on economics before I can get ignorant people to understand government spending is not at all like the way they balance their own personal checkbook. Given that every time they're asked why they want to starve children and seniors to fund massive tax cuts for billionaires, Trump and the larger GOP start fearmongering about the federal deficit however, the shocking financial details of the budgetary bill the fascists are trying to pass becomes a story about propaganda and openly lying to the American people. So how much would this spending bill, which according to the ruling party is absolutely necessary to prevent debt-induced economic collapse, going to shave off the US deficit? Turns out, nothing; in fact, current estimates say it's going to add $3.8 trillion (with a t) dollars to said deficit.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-reconciliation-package

Congressional Analysis: GOP Tax Gifts to Rich Would Explode Deficit They Always Complain About

"While Republicans on Capitol Hill—including the leaders of both chambers of Congress—have long argued for reducing the national debt, the GOP is now pushing a tax bill that would not only fund giveaways to the rich by gutting programs that serve the working class, but also add $3.8 trillion to the U.S. deficit."

Speaking honestly, one of the things I absolutely detest about American politics under the capitalist duopoly is the way liberals will adopt false Republican talking points as a sort of gotcha or "hypocrisy" argument; I have little patience for deficit hawks at the best of times, and this isn't the best of times. I don't care about the US federal deficit, you shouldn't care about the US federal deficit, and the US economy isn't being cratered by America's national debt, it's being cratered by pro-oligarch economic policy that's allowing more and more to be extracted from US labor in the short term, at the cost of investment that might benefit us all on a long enough timeline. We know from our other discussions that this is because nazi billionaires think it's the end of the world and they're cashing out now to prepare for dystopian fascist police states in an ongoing climate apocalypse; none of this has sweet fuck all to do with US federal debt.

So, if we can agree to set aside the absurdity of the argument that this is bad because the GOP is increasing the national debt, we can then focus on the real, and extremely obscene reality we're looking at. Specifically that no matter what they say, no matter what lies they disseminate, no matter what excuses they offer up, the GOP is slashing billions of dollars in spending that benefits everyday Americans across the entire political spectrum, to give the ultra-wealthy and US corporations tax massive tax breaks that will only rapidly magnify the wealth inequality that's driving our collective social decline. This isn't economic policy, this isn't about managing the long term financial interests of the American people, this is fucking murder and theft. Full stop.

#Fascism #Trump #Budget #Deficit #Economics #USPol #GOP #RepublicanParty #Oligarchy #Theft #Murder

So, do you remember how I pointed out that the Republican Party might have a problem passing its own nightmare class war budgetary bill even through reconciliation? At the time I theorized that because the deep cuts to Medicaid, and particularly SNAP would break the budgets of and disproportionally kill poor people in GOP-controlled states, it would be hard to clear the hurdles presented by slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate; even fascist GOP minions like Josh Hawley pointed that out during the opening salvos of public discussion about the bill. Well, it turns out I was right, sort of, but my thought process for getting there was all wrong.

As you may have heard, Trump and the GOP suffered a devastating humiliation as Majority Speaker Mike Johnson failed to get Trump's "big beautiful bill" through even a House budget committee hearing that's part of the process of bringing the bill to an actual floor vote. What you might not have heard, is why the bill, which includes $715B in Medicaid cuts and $290B in SNAP cuts, both of which will literally result in the state murder of thousands and thousands of poor people, including poor people who vote for Republicans, failed to pass this early hurdle. Namely, four members of the GOP's ultra-"conservative" Freedom Caucus refused to support the bill because it doesn't cut *enough* spending.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/16/house-republicans-block-trump-spending-bill

House Republicans block Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ in major setback

"The party has spent weeks negotiating a measure dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill” that would extend tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, fund mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and temporarily make good on his campaign promise to end the taxation of tips and overtime. To offset its costs, Republicans have proposed cuts to the federal safety net, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

At a House budget committee hearing today intended to advance the measure one step closer to a floor vote, four Republican members of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined with the Democratic minority to block it from proceeding, arguing the legislation does not make deep enough cuts to federal spending and to programs they dislike.

"This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does, with respect to deficits,” said Chip Roy, a Texas representative who opposed the bill alongside fellow Freedom Caucus members Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Pennsylvania’s Lloyd Smucker initially voted to advance the bill, then changed his vote to no at the last minute, which he said was a procedural maneuver to allow the bill to be reconsidered in the future."

So, let's be clear about what folks like Chip Roy here are saying. They're fine with the billionaire tax cuts, they're fine with giving the President the power to destroy non-profits he loathes, they're fine with nightmare class war social cuts that will kill their own constituents; the problem is that Trump's "big beautiful bill" won't kill *enough* poor people to balance the budget; even tho as we discussed the other day, that isn't a relevant goal for a nation that prints its own money. Um, thanks Chip, I guess?

Like most of you reading this, I genuinely don't care why the GOP is unable to pass this nightmare class war budget bill, merely that they do not pass it. Given however the Freedom Caucus's rationale behind voting no, as well as Downmarket Mussolini's renewed pressure campaign to reign in "grandstanders" in his own party, I don't think we're at "relax and order mimosas" yet. The obvious reality here is Republican Party is going to pass a tax bill via reconciliation, because the alternative is shutting down the government by imploding its revenue streams. Furthermore, given the rhetoric and stated policy intentions of the GOP as a whole, I think it's safe to say that any tax bill these fascist chucklefucks try to pass again is going to look a whole lot like this "big beautiful bill" does right now. In short, this fight is not nearly over, and even this specific reconciliation bill isn't dead; in fact it might get worse for the American people before Republicans finally drag it across the finish line. The fact is, the Democratic Party doesn't have the votes to actually stop this, which means as soon as these nazis figure out how to stop ratfucking each other, this murderous bullshit is going to walk; unless public pressure stops them from voting for it in the first place.

The good news here is that any delay, even for monstrous reasons, gives us more time to assemble and enact that pressure; GOP politicians need to know that voting to literally murder their own constituents will be every bit as career ending as annoying Elon Musk, and fast. The clock is ticking, and millions of lives hang in the balance.

#Fascism #RepublicanParty #GOP #Trump #Budget #ClassWar #Medicaid #SNAP #USPol #FreedomCaucus #Muder #Theft