How much do the economic royalists plan to steal from America's poor and middle class this time? $4.5 trillion. How is that "making America great again"?

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Today's word of the day is "again".

Remember all that talk around election day about "inflation"? It was all the corporate media could obsess about. (Well, that and Joe Biden's supposed "mental unfitness"). The talking heads in the for-profit billionaire-owned media industrial complex did not dare call inflation what it really was-- post-pandemic corporate greed-- lest it send shock waves through board rooms all across the business ecosystem.

The 34-count convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter promised to end the "inflation nightmare".

That same convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter promised tariffs would "drive prices down and make America affordable again".

He promised to pay off the national debt.

Millions of voters were-- again-- taken in. Despite adding $8.4 trillion to the national debt during his first term, millions believed the economy that was booming under former president Biden would be better under the tax cheat's purview-- again.

They, and all of us, are about to once again be played for suckers.

Yup. Again.

The only so-called "accomplishment" the mentally ill Russian stooge currently occupying the Oval Office can point to during his first term was the 2017 "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," the bill the congressional republican majority passed that handed $1.5 trillion in permanent tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.

It seems they're about to do it again-- and bigger.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, while most of the country was asleep, House republicans passed their "big, beautiful bill" (its actual name) the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office states will cut at least $715 billion in healthcare spending, $700 billion from Medicaid, and $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), imperiling more than 2.7 million food-insecure households.

That breaks down to 14 million people losing access to healthcare; seniors losing Medicare coverage; 11 million, including four million children, losing food assistance; four million students losing Pell grants or seeing them significantly reduced.

Because the increase to the debt is predicted to be so extreme, the bill automatically triggers a 2010 law requiring offsets to cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. It also imposes stringent Medicaid work requirements.

This latest tax giveaway to the morbidly rich makes the $1.5 trillion tax break in the 2017 law look generous. How much do the economic royalists plan to steal from America's poor and middle class this time?

$4.5 trillion.

As reported by 1440:

The House version renews and expands trillions of dollars in tax cuts first enacted in 2017 and boosts spending for defense, border security, and immigration enforcement while reducing the budget for food assistance and Medicaid programs. Medicaid recipients would see stricter eligibility criteria, including the first federal work requirement of 80 hours a month for able-bodied adults (92% of recipients currently meet the standard). The bill would also create $1,000 child savings accounts and increase the debt limit by $4T ahead of the July deadline.

Former labor secretary and economist Robert Reich broke down everything as follows:

How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it? (Nearly $390,000 per year.)

If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose? (They'll lose about $700 a year.)

How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000? (They'll lose more than $1,000 per year on average.)

How much will the bill add to the federal debt? ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)

Who will pay the interest on this extra debt? (All of us, in both our tax payments and higher interest rates for mortgages, car loans, and all other longer-term borrowing.)

Who collects this interest? (People who lend to the U.S. government, 70 percent of whom are American and most of whom are wealthy.)

President of Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Sharon Parrot, explained:

The quick math on the House budget shows a stark equation: The cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1%-- $1.1 trillion through 2034-- equals roughly the same amount as the proposed potential cuts for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

She continued:

Under what set of values does a budget target those who struggle to pay their bills for severe cuts, while giving an annual tax cut averaging $62,000 for those who make $743,000 or more a year? The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people-- 1 in 5 people in the U.S.-- who have health coverage through Medicaid.

GOP lawmakers are, of course, accusing Democrats of unnecessarily running around with their hair on fire because the bill doesn't even supposedly mention the word "Medicaid" once. While that may be true, sometimes it's what's omitted that speaks louder than what isn't.

Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said at a news conference on Tuesday:

Their resolution calls for at least, as a floor, $880 billion to be cut by what is under the purview of the Energy and Commerce Committee. If Energy and Commerce Committee said, "We don't want to cut Medicaid. Instead, we will cut literally everything else we possibly can, 100%." That only gets you about halfway to the $880 billion. So by definition, they have to, as a minimum, cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.

om/LeahVredenbregt/status/1894427867443814896

Out of sight, out of mind, right?

What's next?

The bill goes to the republican-controlled Senate, where its future is not certain save some revisions. But remember that republicans control both houses of Congress, and the vice president, eye-liner model JD Vance, will cast the tie-breaking vote if necessary. He's sure to break it in favor of the bill's passage.

With such a blatant sop to the morbidly rich, why aren't more Americans screaming about this? It should be our "Let them eat cake" moment. We should be repudiating the entire republican caucus (yes, republican; no Democrats voted for this) with every fiber of our being.

So why are so many of our friends, neighbors, family members, and co-workers still shrugging their shoulders and carrying on as if this is acceptable?

Again, we go to the inimitable Dr. Robert Reich:

Most Americans are strongly opposed to all of these things, according to polls. But if you knew the answers to these [aforementioned] questions [above], you're likely to be in a very tiny minority. That's because of (1) distortions and cover-ups emanating from Trump and magnified by Fox News and other rightwing outlets; (2) a public that's overwhelmed with the blitzkrieg of everything Trump is doing and can't focus on this; (3) outright silencing of many in the media who fear retaliation from the Trump regime if they reveal things that Trump doesn't want revealed.

This is what right-wing hate media is fixating on instead (actual headlines, with links):

"Former Journalist and "Mr. BLM" Accused of Being a Sexual Predator"

"Joe's Plight Shows Telltale Signs of Elder Abuse"

"Congress Must Use Every Tool to Expose DementiaGate"

"The Bidens Have a Long History of Lying About Health Issues"

"The Invisible Hand That Governed America During the Biden Years--

"The Real Reason Joe Biden 'Suddenly' Has Cancer"

While we're busy beating each other up over supposed Biden cancer cover-ups, we're not talking about how the current regime and obsequious republi-con lawmakers abdicating their constitutional article-one authority are picking our pockets-- again.

As former president Lyndon Johnson said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

While poor and middle-class whites will suffer under this law-- mostly, ironically, in states that tend to vote republican-- it is minorities that always get hurt the worst in precarious economic times.

As stated before, the convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter we put back in the White House instead of the female vice president/former prosecutor promised tariffs would "drive prices down and make America affordable again".

This bill won't do that.

He promised to pay off the national debt.

This bill will definitely not do that.

Republicans, through their right-wing hate media machine, and the so-called "liberal media," are going to keep us distracted so we continue pointing fingers at each other when we ought to be unified in our opposition to our return to the Gilded Age of the 1920s.

In 1932, we elected Franklin D. Roosevelt because we were tired of being exploited so the economic royalists could continue their pillaging of American democracy.

And we succeeded-- at least for fifty years, when Ronald Reagan sold the country on "trickle-down economics".

Here we are.

Where is today's FDR?

Where are we?

Authors Bio:

Ted Millar is a writer and teacher. His work has been in featured in myriad literary journals, including Straight Forward Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, the Broke Bohemian, Caesura, Circle Show, Cactus Heart, Third Wednesday, and The Voices Project. He is also a contributor to Liberal America as well as hosting the podcast "The Left Place", available on all major podcast outlets.