I’m reading this article and cackling with glee. A certain person, who shall remain nameless until the next paragraph, got zinged by MSNBC, and it is *wonderful*. That’s what you get when you can’t make up your mind and try to use some random off-the-cuff remark to try and cover for your indecision. You finally got busted, and I am, yup, cackling.
Now, I’m betting you already know who this is from the rather blatant hints I gave you in the first paragraph, and I’ll also bet you’re right. That would be the Cheeto Prophet, aka tRump. Here is the headline that has me falling out! “Donald Trump can’t figure out how to lie about Medicaid cuts.” And the follow-up to that is “His inability to settle on a message perhaps reflects the difficulty of the sale.” H0 H0 H0.
See, whatever he says, *any* cuts are going to piss off a whole lotta people. He promised he wouldn’t cut Medicaid, but to get Agent Orange’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ to pass, cuts are inevitable, especially with wanting to continue the tax cuts that are good for no one but the gazillionaires. Plus, bonus, they would *increase* the deficit. A whole bunch of people will also be unhappy with that, starting with members of Congress. He’s got the proverbial ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ scenario going. Too bad.
This obsession with continuing the tax cuts borders on the ridiculous. I don’t recall that people were that happy with the originals, except the big, big corporations and gazillionaires, and he wants to continue them. And we all know that he will benefit, too! No matter if he says he divested from his businesses when he became president, we know that they’re still running in the background and are being kept “in the family”. The Peach Penguin damn well has everything under his fingertips. And don’t forget the crypto Ponzi scheme started shortly before he became president! But, okay, on to the fun parts from the article!
President Donald Trump may still style himself as a D.C. outsider, but since his first campaign, he has eagerly wielded the politician’s age-old cliché about wanting to root out “waste, fraud and abuse” to evade tough questions about his budget proposals.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has inserted the “waste, fraud, and abuse” phrase into the rhetoric around the most important bill of his second term so far: legislation that would extend 2017’s tax cuts and partially offset the lost revenue with at least $1.5 trillion in spending reductions. However, the “big, beautiful bill,” in Trump’s typically understated parlance, faces several big roadblocks, with House Republicans debating the cap on state and local taxes, cuts to food stamps, and more. If concern for the “most vulnerable” sounds distinctly un-Trumpian, that’s because the language comes from congressional Republicans.
Aw yea, first choice for the bs-ing he’s trying to pull. It gets better, though. Honestly, it does. You folks don’t *really* think I’d stop with just one, did you? Oh, good, because here ya go!
In February, he said Medicaid “isn’t going to be touched,” and then, the next day, endorsed the House bill that very much “touches” it. Since then, he’s mostly claimed that Republicans will target only “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But at an event in Michigan last week, the president sounded yet another note. “We want to preserve Medicaid for the most vulnerable, for our kids, our pregnant women, the poor and disabled,” he said.”
But Trump clearly wasn’t happy with his road test of that particular piece of rhetoric. When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Trump on “Meet the Press” if he’d veto a bill with Medicaid cuts, Trump returned to the cliché: “I would if they were cutting it, but they’re not cutting it. They’re looking at fraud, waste, and abuse.”
“Even if they pare the Medicaid cuts back to ‘only’ $500 billion,” says Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, “it would still be the largest Medicaid cuts ever. No matter which way you slice it, it’s millions of people kicked off their health insurance in the largest Medicaid cuts in U.S. history.” Spinning such a budget proposal as an attack on “waste, fraud and abuse” is a nigh impossible task. And the president’s opponents must not be shy about sharing the truth.”
I think they’re going to cut it. They’re going to walk on the backs of those who depend on Medicaid, to pass tRump’s “big, beautiful bill” to continue tax cuts and drive our country further into debt. I don’t see any way around it. That tells you about the state of this country. *That* makes me sad. Thanks for sticking with me!
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Zoomers, we are always in need of donations. It’s been an especially rough April, and my own health has not been great these past few weeks, which just adds to the frustration. Anything you can spare will be immensely appreciated. And thank you to all who have donated generously already. Ursula
