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He has persuaded the media and many voters that he’s different from earlier Republicans on economics—but he’s now doubled-down on the GOP’s plutocratic agenda.
For at least the last half-century in American politics, Republicans have employed three distinct scams to hide the deeply regressive nature of their priorities and agenda from the voters. Trumpism, in its idealized form, was supposed to represent a break with this way of doing politics and policy at a fundamental level. Yet now that Congress has passed President Trump’s big budget bill, all three cons are alive and well—and have even been supercharged into something more venal and deceptive.
To appropriate a phrase long used to describe the GOP coalition, it’s the “Three-Legged Stool” of Trump-GOP subterfuge. The three legs of the swindle—let’s call this the “Three-Legged Scam”—are as follows:
Deficits pose a civilizational threat to our country and the American experiment, but only when a Democrat is in the White House. Deficit concerns don’t constitute a case against tax cuts for the rich, because they will unleash massive growth and generate revenues that more than offset those lost to the tax cuts. But deficit concerns do require deep cuts to the social safety net, which won’t hurt the truly needy because they’re largely aimed at targeting the fraud that’s riddling the system and creating a massive class of welfare parasites.
https://newrepublic.com/article/197600/trump-republican-budget-bill-screwing-maga-voters
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