Aside from relying on fake math, the Trump budget is an assault every American who isn’t in Trump’s tax bracket.
As a statement of values, this budget, if enacted, would be as Jason Easley said, a “nightmare scenario for people who are barely scraping by as it is, but it gets worse for people with disabilities.”
It also gets worse for women generally, also women who live and work in poverty while raising families. It’s horrific in that this budget ensures that there will be fewer survivors of domestic violence.
As a statement of “values” the budget tells women we don’t matter in Trump’s universe. If, as they promised, Melania and Ivanka Trump advocated for women while Trump came up with this monstrosity, either he did as always and ignored them. It’s just as plausible that their idea of advocating for women is limited to giving tax breaks to women who might not have jobs but definitely have nannies
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Of course, we already knew that with Trump’s so called health care plan. The combination of the budget and Trumpcare make the Republican Party’s previous incarnation of a war on women look like a love in.
First, the big picture. In its gender-based analysis of the Trump budget, the NYT found gender bias in Trump’s savage cuts to programs designed to benefit people who didn’t have the luck of being born with a trust fund.
The general conclusion was programs that were more likely to benefit women were cut by 8% compared to the programs that are more likely to benefit men.
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The NYT identified the following programs as those which predominantly benefit women. Housing Assistance – cut by 16%; TANF cut by 13%; SNAP cut by 24%, Medicaid cut by 16%; and Supplemental Security Income cut by 2%.
Compare that with the proposals for programs that the NYT deemed to predominantly benefit men namely: federal government retirement cut by 6%, military retirement no change; unemployment insurance increase by 4% and a 1% cut to SSDI.
Even by this analysis, you don’t have to an economist to see that Trump’s budget is sadistic beyond the imagination of anyone with a moral compass. It says to women, once again, you are not valued by this president.
This budget makes another statement. It amounts to putting a dollar value on defending violence against women.
Buried deep in the budget and getting little attention in the media are savage cuts to programs to aid survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse. One can understand that something falls through the cracks when there is so much to criticize.
However, we cannot and must not allow that to happen to woman. It’s bad enough that Republicans in Congress regularly designate decision-making about our health to a group of out of touch and bitter old white men.
We can’t accept when the media ignores or understates the misogyny inherent in policy that comes from this misogynistic group of neanderathals.
In its article on this aspect of the barbarity inherent in Trump’s budget, Pro Publica wrote:
The 93 percent cut appeared to confirm the worst fears of survivor advocates and women’s activists. They’d been hearing reports that the Trump administration might slash federal funding for counseling services, shelter, legal help and other programs under the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act.
Even the politically moronic Trump Administration recognized these cuts won’t go over well and tried to deny their existence.
The big FU to victims of domestic violence came during Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney’s lecture on compassion.
See, they think that after mostly men beating the crap out of mostly women, cutting these programs will teach survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse to “be more independent.” Rather than helping survivors of domestic abuse, we should feel compassion for the abusers. Who are they kidding? We know how this works. It means more women simply won’t be able to get out of domestic abuse situations and many more won’t be survivors.
It isn’t difficult to see how this caters to what passes as “conservative” Republicans these days.
Combine that with Trumpcare’s assault on women’s health in general, and especially on women’s reproductive health, it’s pretty clear we don’t need whatever role Ivanka and Melania Trump’s “advocacy for women” had in this.
That isn’t where the budget’s anti-women tone ends because aside from taking a sledgehammer to programs that benefit Americans, during the roll out of this budget, we were lectured about who we ought to feel compassion for.
It’s not the single mother who, in fact works and may have two or three jobs, but for the mother who desperately needs that tax cut to pay her nanny. It isn‘t for the woman who survived domestic abuse, it’s for her husband, a wealthy man who was her abuser. It isn ‘t for the children who were born into poverty, but for those who are strolled in golden carriages. It isn’t for the children with ability to make something of their lives, but for children who have the time on their hands to hunt endangered animals.
Image: Twitter
Former contributor.
