My dear friends, Gosh, we were having so much fun ruining the lives of immigrants, gays, and those who aren’t Christian; we forgot that cruelty knows no boundaries. If we elect leaders based on how cruel they can be, eventually, that meanness will bounce back to bite us.

We also seem to have forgotten that the American economy is the world’s largest business, and running a business so big takes level-headed talent and brains. It certainly doesn’t call for a many-times business bankrupt, morally bankrupt, proven con artist. Yet here we are, and here is what it will cost you. I’ll bet you never thought of these when you cast your ballot for the Party of Hatred.

Excerpts from an article that appeared in my daily MSN feed. With slight edits, it describes just a few of the costs you will pay for Trump’s meanness and mismanagement. 1. Homeownership Rising housing prices have already made buying a home difficult for many, but in the coming years, homeownership could become even more elusive. If large-scale deportations of undocumented workers occur, the construction industry will face higher labor costs, driving up the cost of building new homes. Increased tariffs on imported construction materials would also make housing more expensive, putting homeownership even further out of your reach. 2. College Education The cost of higher education has been climbing for decades. While deportation and tariffs don’t directly impact tuition, economic ripple effects could still play a role. Undocumented immigrants are taxpayers too and collectively contribute an estimated $11.74 billion to state and local coffers each year via a combination of sales and excise, personal income, and property taxes. 3. Healthcare Healthcare costs are expected to keep rising. If tariffs are applied to imported medical equipment and supplies, you’ll pay more for your healtcare. 4. Retirement Rising costs from tariffs on goods and services that affect everyday expenses may make it more difficult for you to set aside money for your future. 5. Quality Childcare Deporting undocumented workers, many of whom are employed in childcare roles, could reduce the availability of affordable options. This would increase demand and drive up prices, making quality care a luxury for you. 6. Groceries Food prices could climb even higher. The deportation of undocumented farmworkers, who make up a large part of the agricultural workforce, would lead to reduced food production, especially for labor-intensive crops like fruits and vegetables. Tariffs on imported food products and storage containers would further drive up prices, leaving you with fewer affordable, healthy food choices. 7. Travel and Vacations Travel has become more expensive due to rising fuel costs and accommodation prices. Tariffs on imported goods in the travel industry, like airplane parts and automotive components, could increase these prices. Additionally, labor shortages in the hospitality sector, if exacerbated by deportation, may lead to reduced services and higher costs, making your vacations a rare treat. 8. Cars The cost of new cars, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), rise as tariffs on imported car parts drive up manufacturing expenses, making it harder for you to afford a reliable vehicle. 9. Home Repairs and Maintenance The cost of maintaining your home is already high due to inflation and supply chain issues. Deporting undocumented workers, many of whom are employed in home repair and construction, could worsen labor shortages and drive up the prices you must pay. If tariffs are imposed on building materials, the expense of your necessary repairs would further increase, making home maintenance a serious financial burden on you. 10. Assisted Living and Elder Care The cost of elder care is expected to rise significantly as demand grows. Deporting undocumented caregivers would create labor shortages, driving up wages and the cost of caring for dad, mom, or you.  Tariffs on imported medical supplies and equipment could also make assisted living facilities more expensive, putting quality elder care further out of your reach.

While we’re on the subject of being cruel to all those whose income is less than seven figures, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Medicaid, the health insurance for people who cannot afford healthcare insurance.

In any contest to name the cruelest and most useless healthcare “reform” favored by Republicans and conservatives, it would be hard to beat the idea of applying work requirements to Medicaid. Yet, it’s back on the table, teed up by congressional Republicans as a deficit-cutting tool. In a rational world, this idea would have been consigned to the dumpster long ago, and forever. It’s billed as a way to reduce joblessness, but doesn’t. It’s billed as an answer to the purported complexity of Medicaid, but makes the system more complicated for enrollees and administrators.

It’s billed as a money-saving reform, but adds to Medicaid’s costs. Democrats view Medicaid as a health insurance program that helps people pay for health care…Republicans view Medicaid as a government welfare program. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) gave the game away last week when he told reporters that a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” for Medicaid would produce about $100 billion in savings over 10 years, or $10 billion a year.

Translation: “We want take $10 billion a year from our poorest Americans.”

That wouldn’t make much to defray the estimated $4-trillion 10-year cost of extending parts of the 2017 Republican tax cut for the rich, which is the ostensible reason for seeking out penny-ante savings in budget categories such as a social safety net. There are only two ways to extract even $10 billion in savings from Medicaid: Strip benefits from the program, or throw enrollees out.

This relies on the false assumption that Medicaid costs must be reduced. But, the U.S. federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of dollars. Even if it didn’t collect a penny in taxes, it could fund 100% of Medicaid, forever. Yes, the states pay a small share, and that too, is unnecessary and costly to taxpayers. While state taxpayers pay for state spending, federal taxpayers pay for nothing. All federal spending is funded by new dollars created by the Treasury. Not a penny of your taxes goes to fund the federal government. My guess: Not one of you Republican voters knew that.

One other thing about imposing work requirements on Medicaid: It’s illegal. That’s the conclusion of federal judges who reviewed the idea the last time it was implemented, during the first Trump term. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that  work requirements didn’t serve the program’s objectives, specifically the goal of bringing health coverage to low-income Americans. Medicaid work requirements remain a beloved hobby horse of conservatives. The idea is a component of Project 2025, the right-wing road map to federal policy changes in a second Trump administration. Conservatives have an historic disdain for Medicaid. This derives, as Drew Altman of the health policy think tank KFF astutely observed, in part from the divergent partisan views of the program: Thinking of Medicaid as welfare serves another aspect of the conservative program, in that it makes Medicaid politically easier to cut, like all “welfare” programs. Ordinary Americans don’t normally see these programs as serving themselves, unlike Social Security and Medicare, which they think of as entitlements (after all, they pay for them with every paycheck).

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the creator of Social Security, also created FICA, not to fund Social Security (or later, Medicare), but to make people feel they are “entitled” to the benefit. That way, as Roosevelt said, “No damn politician could cancel my Social Security.” Sadly, the damn politicians have found ways to cut SS payments by taxing them, and are trying to cut Medicaid. Notice the commonality: The cuts always hurt the poor. Never the rich. The rich reap billions from tax shelters unavailable to you, but those shelters just keep growing.

From the concept of Medicaid as welfare it’s a short step to loading it with eligibility standards and administrative hoops to jump through; Republicans tend to picture Medicaid recipients as members of the undeserving poor, which aligns with their view of poverty as something of a moral failing. Work requirements, then, become both a punitive element and a goad toward “personal responsibility,” a term that appears in Project 2025’s chapter on Medicaid. The idea that work requirements for Medicaid can have a measurable effect on joblessness is the product of another misconception, which is that most Medicaid recipients are the employable unemployed. As is often the case with right-wing tropes, this is completely false. The Trump administration had approved Medicaid work requirements for 13 states and had approvals pending in nine others — all were under the control of Republican governors or legislatures or both — before the waivers ran into the court blockade and ultimately into the accession of the Biden administration. Enrollees who didn’t meet the requirement for three months were summarily excised from Medicaid and couldn’t reenroll until the following year. Evidence compiled by healthcare advocates suggested that administrative snafus largely prevented even employed enrollees from submitting evidence of employment. Work hour reports had to be made online, even though the reporting website was out of order for long stretches and many enrollees didn’t have adequate internet access. The effect of the policy on health coverage in Arkansas was calamitous. Medicaid enrollment fell by a stunning 12 percentage points. The percentage of uninsured respondents in the 30-49 age cohort, which was the first group targeted in a stepwise introduction of the requirement, rose to 14.5% in 2018 from 10.5% in 2016. Project 2025’s Medicaid chapter falsely states that the ACA “mandates that states must expand their Medicaid eligibility standards” to include all individuals with income at or below 138% of the federal poverty level.” The truth is that this was originally part of the ACA, but it was invalidated by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the federal government must give states the choice of whether to accept the expansion. That’s the state of affairs to this day. The Supreme Court decision came down in 2012, so the Project 2025 authors don’t have much of an excuse for their ignorance of the facts. Anyway, 10 states, most of them deep red, still haven’t accepted the expansion.

If you live in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, or Wyoming, your state has chosen not to expand Medicaid. This has left many low-income individuals in a “coverage gap” where they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. There’s no financial reason for it. The federal government pays 90% of the cost, and those dollars actually would enrich your state. It’s just right wing cruelty. Did you vote Republican in the last election? You get what you voted for.

Don’t be fooled. The Project 2025 folks and their adherents in the coming Trump White House don’t want to make Medicaid more efficient, as they claim. They want to make it less relevant and less effective — and cheaper, the better to preserve those tax cuts for the rich. Those 72 million enrollees? They’ll just be collateral damage. 

The irony is that many of the poor and middle class voted for Trump, blithely assuming that all his cruelty and hatred was directed at “those other people, not at me.” Sorry folks. Cruelty and hatred know no bounds. They seep out from under rocks, and before you realize it, they are drowning you. Approve cruelty against your neighbor, and you will be next. Then you can whine crocodile tears, crying, “It isn’t fair. I’m not one of them. I never thought it could happen to ME.” And this is only the beginning of your tribulations — call them “Trumpulations.”   Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY