There has been an unending stream of executive orders, policy pronouncements, racist, transphobic and anti-Semitic actions, unqualified cabinet appointments, Russians, thinly veiled self-dealing, press conference meltdowns, Mar-a-Lago junkets, and did I mention the Russians?
The president said that “The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.” But the news is not fake. Undocumented Mexicans are not the cause of crime and gangs, and children are safer in bathrooms with transgender people than with Republican politicians (last bathroom arrest count was transgender people 0, elected Republicans 3).
African-American reporters are not the correct conduit to reach the Congressional Black Caucus, and extermination of Jews was central to the Holocaust.
Trump has cost the country $10 million in travel expenses in his first month in office and attempted to manage an issue of national security from the terrace at Mar-a-Lago with club members looking on. Reince Priebus asked senior FBI officials, including Director James Comey, to publicly refute a report about Trump cronies’ contacts with Russian intelligence.
It’s hard to watch fundamental truths be denied by this administration every day. It’s tragic to watch Republicans in Congress sell their souls for a chance to finally take health insurance away from people who need it. It’s also tragic to watch Syrians and others unable to find refuge here and to watch deportation be the focus of this Republican government.
For some the tragedy is happening to their friends and families. For others of us, it is more remote because we are not first-generation Americans or we have health care.
But it will be hitting closer to home. Massachusetts relies on the federal government for about 25 percent of the total state budget. That’s $10,967,483,288 in the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2017.
In addition, the commonwealth receives $2.49 million in grants for services such as fuel assistance and Section 8 vouchers for veterans. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education alone gets close to a billion dollars in grants from the federal government.
Federal funds support the Soldiers Home ($11 million), sheriff’s departments ($22 million), attorney general’s office ($4.4 million) and the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind ($3.7 million). The Department of Children and Families gets $227 million and the Department of Developmental Services gets $761 million.
But most of the money goes to helping our seniors, the Children’s Health Insurance Plan and Medicaid. A total of 1.9 million of our family members, neighbors and friends receive health coverage through the MassHealth program, and 645,000 of those people are children. Medicaid supports community-based services for adults with disabilities. Medicaid allows 17,000 frail elders to live in their community. So does fuel assistance.
If Congress is able to repeal the Affordable Care Act and actually devise a replacement that they can agree on, almost $2 billion of our Medicaid funding could go away. That would mean cutting people off Medicaid, many of them children and adults working in low-wage jobs. Or, it could mean cutting other state agencies to fill the gap left by federal cuts.
The president wants to increase military spending, build a wall, hire 10,000 ICE agents and build new detention facilities. And he wants to cut taxes by $50 billion a year. He says that he doesn’t care about deficits – but the Republican Congress does.
So, states will lose federal aid that has been baked into their budgets for decades. Programs that benefit the poor will certainly be cut, but funds for education, law enforcement, environmental protection, and public health would also be jeopardized. Funding for the arts and PBS would certainly disappear.
This doesn’t seem like a formula to “Make America Great Again.” This is a plan to undermine and delegitimize government, just as the president and his cabal have worked to delegitimize the press and our election process.
Steve Bannon laid it out – “the deconstruction of the administrative state,” “economic nationalism” and “a nation with culture and a reason for being.” He (and his boss) want to tear down regulations, close our borders, and upend international relations. And, as Bannon said, it’s all in Trump’s speeches and they will keep every promise.
Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal and a Trump backer) said on Oct. 26, “… the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. … I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally …”
Now we know – we need to take Trump both seriously and literally. One month down and 47 to go.
Clare Higgins, of Northampton, a former mayor of the city, is executive director of the nonprofit Community Action! of the Franklin, Hampshire and North Quabbin Regions.