Marc Tucker: Trump’s Budget Takes from the Poor to Give to the Rich
Marc Tucker says that Trump’s budget will not make America great again.It is a reverse Robin Hood plan, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
“The first reaction is all gut. The budget, on its face, would represent a gigantic redistribution of resources from the poor to the rich. To say that that is morally bankrupt is to understate the case. There is no rational argument for such a policy.
“The administration makes three cases for its proposals. The first is that tax breaks for the rich while robbing the poor to pay for the tax cuts will generate so much growth that the taxes on the increased income will more than pay for the tax relief. That argument has been advanced again and again despite a continuing lack of evidence that it has ever actually worked out that way. If you want to see the most visible and colossal evidence for the failure of this theory, you have only to look at Kansas, which has been virtually bankrupted by Governor Sam Brownback’s determination to go down this rat hole.
“The second is that all the administration is doing is giving freeloaders an incentive to work. That may be a masterpiece of propaganda, but not a masterpiece of reasoning. Someone has to explain to me how taking away financial support to go to college from low-income high school graduates is going to give these “freeloaders” an incentive to work. I want to know how giant cuts to the National Institutes of Health research budget on life-saving drugs is giving freeloaders an incentive to work.
“The third and last argument this administration has advanced for this budget is that the evidence that the programs they plan to terminate work is either weak or nonexistent. Without conceding the strength of their evidence that they do not work—the evidence is at worst mixed—let’s just look at the logic of the argument. Almost all of these programs are intended to help vulnerable populations. Surely, if they do not work, the responsibility of government is to replace them with stronger programs Marc Tucker: Trump’s Budget Takes from the Poor to Give to the Rich | Diane Ravitch's blog: