Following the news this week that under President Donald Trump, the federal deficit exploded to $779 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, the president said Wednesday that he would demand a five percent budget cut from each of his cabinet secretaries.
Stressing that the administration would “continue with the tax cuts, because we have other tax cuts planned,” Trump suggested the deficit was the result of spending on various programs at the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and other government agencies.
“It’s not as tough as you think, and frankly there’s a lot of fat in there,” Trump told reporters.
The president’s comments echoed those of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who explicitly blamed the rising deficit on social safety net spending on Tuesday.
The pro-Social Security group Social Security Works took Trump’s remarks as a direct attack on the program as well as Medicare and Medicaid.
Translation: Gut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security https://t.co/P2ML9tXsQ8
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) October 17, 2018
As radio host Thom Hartmann warned Wednesday, “The billionaire fascists are coming for your Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And they’re openly bragging about it.”
The newest threat to safety net programs comes less than a year after the Republican Party pushed through their $1.5 trillion tax plan, which offered an average $33,000 tax break to each of the wealthiest Americans and just $40 to the poorest, according to analysis by the Tax Policy Center.
Social Security Works President Nancy Altman seized on the GOP’s attacks on programs that millions of people rely on as a call to arms for voters who care about protecting healthcare and incomes for the most vulnerable Americans.
“The shocking part of McConnell’s statement, and those made by other powerful Republicans, is not the…