GOP Debates How to Cook, Prepare America’s Poor

House GOP debates how much health care, food, and student loans to take from the poor

Feb. 13: House GOP starts work to find $1.5 trillion to cut from us … Hospitals and health care for poor people are in the crosshairs … House GOP lacks the votes because Americans fucking hate this … Buyout offer flat-out failed …

You can listen to the TFN podcast here.

---

Pres. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), because this is what happens when people don’t vote. (Uncredited photo / Johnson’s Facebook.)

House Republicans yesterday unveiled their skeleton proposal for a new federal budget that would reduce millions of Americans to skeletons.

At a House committee hearing today — to put some meat on the bones of how to take meat off our bones — they’ll publicly debate discuss what they’ve already privately debated.

The big, juicy target is Medicaid, which helps more than 72 million poor and low-income people afford health care. That’s more than one out of five people in this country.

So your bullshit-flagging TFN wants to flag some of the bullshit you may read today about all of this, because the Christians leading the charge against the nation’s poor perhaps shalt not lie but they definitely shalt fucking prevaricate.

For instance, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said with his lie-funnel that “Medicaid has never [sic] been on the chopping block,” claiming that, “If you eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid, you’ve got a huge amount of money that you can spend on real priorities [tax cuts] for the country.”

When they talk about “fraud, waste and abuse” in Medicaid, primarily they’re fantasizing about legions of unethical Americans sponging off the system, on both sides of the law. So let’s drill down.

First: When anyone — TFN included — uses the term “work requirements” for Medicaid or anything else, they’re lying. It’s a lie based on the (usually racist) premise that hordes of recipients get federal benefits only because it’s easier than getting a job.

This is how politicians tell you they hate America and think little of its people. “Work requirements” really means “paperwork requirements” — creating bureaucratic hurdles so onerous that a significant number of people can’t manage it and get pushed off the rolls.

There are some recipients who can’t work take a job: Because their wages would pay less, for instance, than what it would cost them to find reliable care for someone in their home who can’t care for themselves. In other words, they already fucking work, it’s just that no one’s paying them for it.

So, when they say “work requirements,” we should hear, “paperwork requirements.” And also, “Jesus I hate America.”

Second: When they talk about per-capita caps, that just means forcing states to decide who gets denied Medicaid. It’s just passing the buck on taking away the buck. Medicaid is administered through the states, so per-capita caps would ration whatever funding’s allocated based on state population. Or not allocated. Republicans would shrink the pot, then the states would have to figure out who to cut.

Second (because we don’t have the budget for an actual third): Fraud. When Johnson talks about Medicaid fraud, you’re supposed to imagine Cletus — who voted for Johnson — cashing Medicaid checks for treatment of a bad case of brucellosis¹ that he doesn’t actually have. And you’re supposed to want to cut Medicaid because fuck Cletus. (Actually, you’re really supposed to imagine a single Black mom. Because…y’know.)

But that’s not how Medicaid fraud works. Medicaid fraud is a business. White-collar crime. Phony businesses created to claim Medicaid reimbursements for non-existent care. Fraudsters like Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

And if you really care about that fraud, you beef up Medicaid budgets to stop it and you increase criminal punishment. Cutting Medicaid to stop Medicaid fraud is like Walmart stopping shoplifting by firing staff and selling less crap.

Oh, and also, when we talk about “savings,” that’s a prevarication lie. You don’t save anything by cutting aid to poor people. Definitely not lives, but not even money. You might “save” money in the budget line items you’re talking about. But not taking care of your people is really expensive in the long run because either you end up spending more on a pound of cure than you would’ve on an ounce of prevention, or the ravening hordes of sick, dying, and hungry tear down your civilization. Which is also expensive.

Okay, so here’s what’s happening.

The House Budget Committee today is taking up a blueprint from House leadership that directs the other committees to figure out how to cut federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion over a decade.

The blueprint is already in doubt, not because it’s monstrous, but because it’s insufficiently monstrous. House Republicans who hate America more than $1.5 trillion worth of hate want to end at least $2 trillion in funding for the Americans they hate.

And it’s not clear they’ll vote for this blueprint. But if the full House approves it or something like it, another committee — Energy and Commerce — would be tasked with accounting for most of those cuts, $880 billion.

And the only place that exists to even find that much money is Medicaid. Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) told Politico yesterday that he would “love per-capita allotments for Medicaid,” which would mean cutting $90 billion of health care for poor people every year (which Guthrie would love). But Guthrie doesn’t think per-capita caps have enough Republican votes to pass the House.

Committee member Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) told Politico that the most popular option for Republicans is work requirements. (Dammit: paperwork requirements.)

But stripping Medicaid from poor people who can’t prove they have a satisfactory job will only yield about $100 billion in savings. (“Savings.”)

So Guthrie is looking at rolling back recent Medicaid expansions by some states — which even some Republican governors have done because it helped people not lose their homes paying for medical care and/or die.

Cutting expansion funds would “save” an estimated $561 billion over a decade, which, to be clear, is $561 billion that poor people would have to come up with themselves if they want health insurance. More likely — because it’d be for-profit health insurance — America’s poor would have to come up with more than $561 billion to account for both the insurance-company profit margins and also the cost of all those Luigi Mangione ghost-guns.

Trump has said he loves Medicaid and won’t touch it, “unless we can find some abuse or waste.” Which simply means Republicans have to add up how much they wanna cut and then use their Dymo™ labelmaker to call it abuse and waste.

Actual Dymo™ labelmaker House Republicans will use to label their Medicaid cuts “some abuse or waste” so that Trump can approve them.

The ranking Democratic member on Guthrie’s committee, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said yesterday — even though it might hurt the feelings of sensitive centrist Democrats! — that the GOP blueprint is “a Republican Rip-Off and Democrats will do everything we can to defeat it.”

THE GOOD NEWS The last time Republicans even tried this it cost them the majority in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans keep delivering civics lessons, and voters just keep needing refreshers.

Also on the Menu: Cutting Food and Schooling

The American Prospect’s smart David Dayen smartly flags that the House GOP budget blueprint is signaling its priorities via how much it asks each committee to cut.

The Agriculture Committee, for instance, has been tasked with identifying $230 billion to cut. That, Dayen says, means cutting food stamps by 20%.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently helps 40 million of our poorest people eat food. Even before yesterday’s blueprint, Republicans were eyeing “work requirements” for food-eating.

But even that won’t produce all the “savings” Republicans want to squeeze from poor food-eaters. So they won’t just tighten access to SNAP, Politico reports, “some current food aid benefits for low-income Americans will likely be reduced, according to two GOP lawmakers.”

(In fairness, Trump and Department of Government Efficiency cosplayer Elon Musk have already signed off on starving people outside this country, so at least they see all of humanity as one global community to starve.)

The Education and Workforce Committee has to come up with $330 billion in “savings.” That’ll mean student loans and financial aid. Which will leave graduates with more debt who can’t afford to do the kinds of thing-purchasing things that generate tax revenues and it means fewer people going to college which makes America less competitive. All of which adds up to the nation and its people torpedoing quality of life and incurring financial costs that we call “savings.”

Also Fucked: Climate and Atmosphere

Pay close attention to House Republicans trying to dance around robbing their districts of money already signed into law for them.

Pres. Joe Biden’s multiple pieces of landmark legislation provided tens of billions of dollars for clean-energy tax breaks and other incentives. These were targeted not just at consumers broadly, but for specific, physical projects — alternative energy, electrical grid improvements, that kind of thing.

Any of that money not yet spent — which is a lot of it — is now on the GOP chopping block. Meaning they’ll be proposing how to take away those construction jobs that people who can’t afford college will need in order to qualify for Medicaid and food stamps. And it’ll also mean further fucking air quality (especially in poor and non-white areas) along with the already-enshittening climate.

The Side Dishes

Politico posted the House Ways and Means Committee list of proposed money “savers.” Your diligent but not necessarily exhaustive TFN is gonna spotlight just a few of them, reminding that the dollar figures are over a ten-year period.

$35 billion in “savings” by cutting health care for non-citizens. Health care for everyone benefits everyone. Sick people can afford not to show up at their job making your food. They can get vaccines to prevent breathing infectiousness on you.

But also, even if you (a) don’t give a shit about humanity or (b) are too stupid to understand the communal nature of health care², divvying up health care by citizenship also means that citizens have to prove they’re citizens to get that health care. Walls erected to keep out “the other” will inevitably be a hurdle for everyone.

Stripping hospitals of $42 billion. Right now, the feds help compensate hospitals that are unable to perform money-ectomies on their poor patients. Hospitals currently can get 65% of that bad debt reimbursed by Medicare. That would go away. Good luck, hospitals!

Also hospital-fucking $229 billion in “savings” by “reforming” (another word that should make you shudder) the current system for supporting hospitals that prioritize low-income patients. Is anyone else sensing a pattern?

Anyway, those examples are from page one. Turns out TFN won’t be highlighting all the most important ones, after all, because the whole list is fifty pages long.

What We’re Paying for With All This “Savings”

The reason Republicans are looking to make all of these politically disastrous cuts is not to pay down the U.S. debt. It’s not to invest in America’s future.

It’s to lower America’s already-low tax rates for rich people. (In fairness, even if the federal government had a surplus, some people would still want to cut federal aid because they hate it and/or people.)

Specifically, Republicans want to extend the disastrous tax cuts for the rich from Pres. Donald Trump’s first term, which supercharged America’s debt. The extension would mean that the American government over the next ten years would collect $4.5 trillion less in taxes — almost all of which would remain in the hands/offshore accounts of the obscenely wealthy and their token less-wealthy friends.

There are, however, two areas where Trump and the Republicans do want to increase spending. Neither of them will help you.

One is the border. The other is the military.

MORE GOOD NEWS Republicans don’t have the votes to pass this blueprint. In fact, they don’t have the votes to do anything.

That’s in large part because even with screwing poor people out of their remaining cash, the Trump tax cuts will force America to borrow even more money. So the House budget blueprint includes raising the legal cap on how much the U.S. can borrow — by $4 trillion.

Without raising that limit, the U.S. would be unable to borrow the money that it already needs … to pay off what’s due on its previous borrowing. If the U.S. stiffs any of its lenders, that would crash the global economy because the United States is was considered the most reliable, dependable debtor in the world until someone let Dipshit McFuckdoodle run things.

Quick Question

Okay, now do the two parties look the same?

Judge Upholds Trmumpsk Buyout Plan, Which Failed Anyway

We’ve literally grown by more than a thousand Newsfuckers since last week³, so some of you new Newsfuckers may have missed this, but last week, TFN newsfucked the buyout offer that Pres. Donald Trump and DOGE Commander-in-Whatever Elon Musk made to America’s 2+ million federal employees.

The goal, you may recall, was to get 5-10% of those workers to retire this year by accepting a buyout offer that included payment through September. Sounds like a lot, right?

Well, as we newsfucked last week, it’s not. It’s basically the same retirement rate as any average year. In fact, here’s what recent years have looked like, all of them, above the minimum target Delonald Trmumpsk were shooting for:

Well, yesterday, a judge ended the freeze that another judge had placed on the buyout offer. Meaning, the buyout offer was legal and the Trump administration can go ahead and honor its buyout offer for all those retirees.

How many retirees did they actually get, with all their frantic hype and dumbness? Reportedly, they got about 75,000 takers. So, even swinging the sword of future cuts and firings, Trmumpsk couldn’t even hit their own floor of 5%. In fact, they only got 3.75% to retire. Less than the lowest rate that retire normally.

And now Trmumpsk have to figure out where to get the money to pay for all those buyouts.

And, ideally, it means we’ll still have 96.25% of those awesome bureaucrats and civil servants on the front lines for us.

Kennedy News

Former environmental activist and occasional sane person turned recidivist emotional abuser and mindfucker of women and less-sane person Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is expected to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate today as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

I know. Take a minute.

Kennedy has promised not to destroy vaccines, but who knows. He used to be pro-choice, but who knows. He’s never had anything remotely like the experience required to oversee a massive, sprawling, multi-multi-billion-dollar health apparatus that includes research and epidemic-fighting. But who knows.

The point is, we never get to keep any Kennedy goodness. To wit:

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, better known as the Kennedy Center, America’s pre-eminent institution celebrating and elevating America’s performing arts, elected a new chair yesterday.

Previously, Pres. Donald Trump appointed new members to the Kennedy Center’s board, including Trump minstrel Lee Greenwood, Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump Senior Adviser Dan Scavino, and Trump Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance. Yesterday, the new board drew on all of its expertise about arts and culture and decided to elect Trump as the Kennedy Center chair.

Trump’s experience in arts and culture consists mostly of sexually assaulting people from both. He’s also had acting gigs of his own over the years, including 14 seasons on The Apprentice as “business person,” two terms as “president,” and occasional cameos portraying roles such as “book author” and “book reader.”

Future presentations from the center are expected to include The Kennedy Center Honors the Musical Oeuvre of Kid Rock, The Kennedy Center Honors the Groundbreaking Comedy of Rob Schneider, and The Kennedy Center Honors the Thespian Stylings of Kevin Sorbo, after which the center will be renamed The Trump Trumper for the Pertrumping Trarts.

Trumpflation Is Here!

OOPS I published another bonus story last night without reminding you Newsfuckers how to make sure you’re only getting the TFN newsfucking that you wanna get. We’re all about the consent, Newsfuckers! So just go to your TFN settings and check or uncheck the TFN stuff you do/don’t wanna get: The newsletter, bonus stories, podcast, and even new chat thread.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN As I mentioned above, TFN is really growing. Thank you and welcome! But the growth right now is lopsided. Until recently, an amazing 5% of you Newsfuckers were signed up as paid subscribers. That’s now dropping off — which I won’t care about once TFN is financially sustainable for me, but we’re not there yet.

So, if you can afford it, and if you value TFN challenging how corporate media talk about government and the people it’s supposed to serve, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!

Go get ‘em, kids. Folks won’t know what’s coming unless we tell ‘em!

1. Can’t resist a Zevon reference.

2. Not you, my caring, compassionate Newsfuckers. TFN knows you’re smart and you care.

3. #Humblebrag. #Sorry/not sorry.