Marble Falls The devastation embedded in the Trump-Republicans big bad budget bill for lower income families has been a drum that I’ve been beating for weeks now, but as it nears the finish line additional impacts are becoming clear. This bill has become a “whose on first, what’s on second” house of horrors. Like many other initiatives of this administration, most of its consequences are intended when it comes to its war on the poor, minorities, women, and others, but some are even surprising its fanboys, like the former Trump BBF Elon Musk, and not at all because of deficits. Ideology, not common sense or basic prudence, is now running the government.
Of course, there’s the problem of the Republicans own identity crisis. They’ve gone from a reputation as budget hawks to one of budget busters. Their traditional base among the upper classes has deserted them as they curry favor with lower middle income and working-class voters, but they are still legislating for the rich with their tax cuts. Many features of this bill are punishing for their new found base, as the Wall Street Journal points out:
About 15 years ago, in 2009, Republicans represented 26 of the 100 lowest-income House districts, according to Census data. By 2023, they represented 56—more than half. At the same time, Democrats came to dominate the wealthiest House districts, representing 69 of the 100 where incomes are highest.
Trump won’t be around to confuse the public with his mendacity and word fog forever. What is the Republican Party anymore? Who are these people?
Republicans once were the party of business, but now, not so much. Cutting subsidies for alternative fuels may choke the emerging solar industry to death and cede production completely to China. Cutting research grants and incentives within the federal government and at big universities are sending many top scientists along with the coming generation of researchers to Canada and Europe. Public schools are being starved of support in program and student services. Talk about unintended consequences, I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that an offshoot of their attack on Harvard’s endowment and call to have the SEC investigate whether it was being truthful to bondholders in the way it was evaluating its private equity investments could lead to the whole private equity house of cards falling because of their self-certified financial estimates.
The attack on immigrants is starving whole industries of workers and lowering the amount of total filled jobs in the United States, as many are afraid to go to work. Meanwhile, pushing out immigrants from one country after another that had received temporary protected status to work will also create employment crises in many industries and workplaces after. Our union received a notice required by our contract of two workers being laid off within weeks because their TPS was being canceled. Are the raids on or off, who knows? Is this any way to run any railroad?
The mess and mayhem created by Musk and Trump’s DOGE effort, now under more scrutiny as the months go by, indicates that this effort didn’t save much money, and, in fact, may end up costing even more than the little savings it still claims. Trump had wanted Musk to save enough to justify his tax cuts in the budget bill, but that was a mirage. People lost their jobs for sure, and they raced to slash and burn anything that might remotely be seen as diversity, equity, and inclusion, but otherwise there was no reform, just anarchy.
It’s with dread that we have to recognize the terrible cost of all of this to the country and its people, as well as the fact that with each day we are coming close to a full reckoning of what Trump and his sycophants have wrought. When the full impact of the budget bill hits, like a bomb dropping in a crowded marketplace, we have to wonder what will be left of his base and what will survive?