Now that Donald Trump will be the next president, Republicans are eyeing overhauls to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps.
The Washington Post reports that Trump’s advisers are speaking with Republicans in Congress about making big changes to federal assistance programs to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. These changes include new work requirements and spending caps, according to anonymous sources familiar with the discussions.
Some Republicans have misgivings about how such changes will go over with the public, the Post reports, noting that these programs support at least 70 million low-income and disabled Americans.
“I don’t think that passing just an extension of tax cuts that shows on paper an increase in the deficit [is] going to be challenging,” one Republican tax adviser told the Post. “But the other side of the coin is, you start to add things to reduce the deficit, and that gets politically more challenging.”
Parts of the bill are set to expire in 2025, and extending those provisions will add over $4 trillion to the national debt, which is already high at $36 trillion. Trump’s campaign promises of cutting taxes on tips and overtime will only add to that total. While Republicans say they support Trump’s further cuts, they don’t want more government borrowing, so they are looking for places to save money.
Social welfare programs have long been in Republican crosshairs. For example, Republicans could revive their efforts to cut food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, especially because the benefit automatically increases with inflation. They could also try to impose more limits on what food products can be bought under the program. But Republicans have taken heat in the past for merely floating cuts to these programs, and Democrats would likely seize on further attempts.
Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, and companies used that savings to buy back their own stock instead of doing things that would actually benefit the economy, for instance creating jobs. Extending those provisions would likely lead to more of the same, with the added cruelty of cutting government assistance to the most vulnerable of Americans.