The following article by Robert Reich is widely believed and totally wrong with regard to how the government pays for things. I’ve commented on the errors,
How Trump is Paying for His War AND Giving a Huge Tax Cut to the Rich
By cutting Medicaid, food stamps, and other assistance people need Robert Reich, Mar 05, 2026
Wrong, He is cutting Medicaid, food stamps and other assistance. And he is giving tax cuts to the very rich. That is the Republican way.
But federal spending cuts do not finance anything. The federal government has infinite dollars to spend. It never can run short of dollars.
(Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Chairman: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. Alan Greenspan: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”)
Trump has launched us into what could be another costly and deadly forever war. It is costing the U.S. at least $1 billion a day.
Meanwhile, he and Republicans are slashing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
How are they doing both? By making devastating cuts to food assistance programs that help millions of people — and lying about what these programs actually do.
Those devastating cuts to food assistance do nothing to help the government slash taxes on the rich. The federal governmen has infinite dollars and can spend forever, while slashing taxes.
(Ben Bernanke, Former Federal Reserve Chairman: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”)
Trump’s “Big Ugly” bill is delivering $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent of Americans while cutting more than $1.1 tr illion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and other health programs used by the poorest Americans.
Trump could pay for his tax cuts to the rich without cutting SNAP, Medicaid, and health programs.
Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. The purpose of federal taxes is to:
- Assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring dollars be used to pay taxes, and,
- Control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward.
(Beardsley Ruml, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York . “The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. All federal taxes must meet the test of public policy and practical effect. The public purpose which is served should never be obscured in a tax program under the mask of raising revenue.”)
Remember: It’s not about what this country can or can’t afford. It’s about priorities.
That is correct. The federal government can afford any amount of spending.
(Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell: “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.”)
If Trump and the Republicans really cared about reducing the number of people who need SNAP (also called food stamps), there are many things they could do. For example, they could raise the federal minimum wage, which is still stuck where it was in 2009.
Or, more easily, the federal government simply could pay for SNAP.
(Statement from the St. Louis Fed: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”)
But they would rather fund endless wars and deliver tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans than invest in programs that actually help people.
This is not an either/or situation. The federal government has the financial ability to fund endless wars and to deliver tax cuts to everyone.
(Paul O’Neill, “I come to you as a managing trustee of Social Security. Today we have no assets in the trust fund. We have promises of the good faith and credit of the United States government that benefits will flow.”)
So the next time you hear Republicans spouting lies about SNAP or any other assistance that millions of Americans depend on, know the truth — and help spread it by sharing this video.
While the video is informative regarding the Republican tax cuts for the rich, it is dead wrong about benefit cuts “paying for” tax cuts. Benefit cuts pay for nothing.
(Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize–winning economist: “The U.S. government is not like a household. It literally prints money, and it can’t run out.” “The government can always finance its spending by creating money.”)
The next time you read an article by Robert Reich, keep in mind:
(Eric Tymoigne (Economist) “A sovereign government does not need to collect taxes or issue bonds to finance spending. It finances directly through money creation.”)
It’s truly sad that a prominent figure like Robert Reich promulgates such nonsense, but that’s the way of the economics world. I’ve been beating that drum for over 2 decades, and it’s getting close to quitting time.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
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MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;
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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
More believers that tax cuts need to be “paid for.”
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Democrat’s plan would eliminate federal income taxes for half of U.S. workers
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a potential 2028 contender, will unveil the measure as Democrats look to counter President Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy.
March 5, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. ESTYesterday at 5:00 a.m. EST
By Jeff Stein
A Democratic senator viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate will unveil a plan that he says would ensure roughly half of all U.S. workers pay no federal income taxes, according to details shared with The Washington Post.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is expected to release the measure next week as Democratic lawmakers search for a sharp economic message to counter last year’s Republican tax law.
Under Van Hollen’s proposal, workers making at or below a “living wage” — $46,000 for taxpayers filing individually, or $92,000 for married couples filing jointly — would not have to pay federal income taxes. Tens of millions of additional middle-class workers would also receive a tax cut under the proposal, but they would still have to pay taxes.
The measure would be paid for by a new surcharge on millionaires that would raise roughly $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
Fifteen Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring Van Hollen’s proposal, though it has no chance of passing in a Republican-controlled Congress.
This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) introduced legislation to enact a $4.4 trillion wealth tax on the United States’ approximately 1,000 billionaires to fund a Medicare expansion, universal child care and other social initiatives. Sanders’s plan calls for major growth in federal programs that would make the U.S. government more akin to the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden.
In any event, a federal tax on the rich does not fund anything.
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