Team Trump Wants the Poor to Suffer to Fund His Tax Cuts for the Rich

President-elect Donald Trump is looking to grant massive tax breaks to America’s wealthiest individuals and corporations, beginning with an extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts, which primarily benefited the rich. In order to offset the loss of tax revenue, Trump’s economic advisers are considering a plan that would punish the poorest Americans by making it even harder to access Medicaid, food stamps, and other federal programs, according to a Tuesday report from The Washington Post.

According to seven sources who spoke to the Post, all of whom were familiar with the discussion taking place in Trumpworld, the president-elect’s advisers — including Republican lawmakers — are floating new work requirements and spending caps on social safety net programs. 

The proposals under discussion would likely increase inequality and hardship in America at a time when nearly 4 in 10 households are struggling to pay their bills. In this case, the cuts to America’s meager safety net would be used to finance an unusually direct transfer of wealth upward. A review of Trump’s 2024 campaign tax promises by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found his proposals, taken together, “would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.”

Among the options under consideration is imposing work requirements for Medicaid, which provides health insurance to 70 million low-income Americans. Medicaid enrollment is subject to strict income caps. The caps vary by state, but generally speaking, beneficiaries are not allowed to earn enough money to live. One state, Arkansas, previously enacted Medicaid work requirements, and quickly purged 18,000 residents’ health insurance coverage before a judge struck down the program.

Under federal rules, states are required to conduct eligibility checks once per year to determine whether Medicaid enrollees are poor enough to keep their health insurance. It’s well understood these checks often result in people being administratively purged from the program wrongfully, even though they qualify. Republicans are discussing having states do these eligibility checks multiple times per year.  

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Making any of these changes to Medicaid would likely cause millions of poor Americans to lose their health insurance plans without the ability to replace their coverage.

Capitol Hill sources who spoke to the Post say Republican lawmakers have been briefed by former Trump health official Brian Blase, who co-authored a paper that argued for cutting federal funding for enrollees who are covered thanks to Medicaid expansion under Democrats’ Affordable Care Act. Blase is the president of the Paragon Health Institute, a think tank heavily funded by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. 

The paper argues for “Medicaid reform that focuses states on maximizing value for those who truly need public assistance — and not just on maximizing the receipt of federal dollars,” and claims that the “the current financing structure [of Medicaid] discriminates against the more vulnerable Medicaid enrollees in favor of the able-bodied, working-age, generally childless adults, or Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion enrollees.” 

Several sources indicated to the Post that Republicans have discussed imposing new requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and stripping the president of the authority to adjust SNAP benefit levels without congressional authorization. 

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One tax adviser told the Post that lawmakers were interested in potentially tightening work requirements for SNAP recipients. As it stands, in 48 states a four-person household cannot make more than $3,380 in gross monthly income in order to be eligible for SNAP benefits. The already stringent income limits on the program. During his first term as president, Trump proposed eliminating rules that allow states to raise SNAP income limits so low-income families can build savings and manage costs without losing access to their benefits. 

“Some of them are looking at Medicaid and food stamps. When you talk about spending, that is the place they immediately go,” one Republican policy adviser told the Post. “But I’m not sure they want the headlines about paying for tax cuts by cutting those programs.”