“Working families over elites” is s the subheading of the House version of the Trump budget sent to the Senate. 

Wow, that reflects exactly what is needed in a nation experiencing the most significant income inequality since the Gilded Age of the 1800s. 

Today, more than at any other period of American expansion, fewer Americans hold more of our wealth than ever before. And so, comes this populist rhetoric from our Republican friends.

If only there were a scintilla of truth in the claim. But there is not. Instead, this budget, made worse for the poorest Americans after a trip to the Senate for revision, is the most regressive budget perhaps ever foisted upon the American people. 

Besides punishing the poor and rewarding the rich for, well, being rich, the bill neither reduces the deficit nor the debt, nor stimulates economic growth.

Instead, this budget, perhaps the first ever to cut the social safety net by literally transferring wealth to the richest Americans, does so with aplomb, the self-confidence that those who will suffer the most will not bother to study what is coming their way.

Princeton economist Owen Zidar analyzed the tax cuts in the current bill for business incomes, finding them to be nearly exactly equal to the benefit reductions in Medicaid. That is a precise example of the means and intent of this budget.

Consider the very insidious attempt here to punish the poor for nothing more than being poor. They are targeted for significant cuts in Medicaid, Obamacare and SNAP, which was previously the Food Stamp Program.

Republicans have long considered, unlike the rest of the developed world, that healthcare is a privilege, not a right. So, making poor folks do without healthcare is little more than a frank encouragement to do better for themselves.

And, as for the SNAP program, the fact that, in Ohio alone, food pantry visits increased by over 16 million in 2024 is no reason to think that people should not have to prove they are working full-time (even with underage children at home) to qualify. 

And the requirement that requires them to register, and re-register frequently for food, is certainly not a deterrent, but rather a minor humbling qualifier and reminder that you are still in need.

 The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.6 million Americans will lose access to these programs over the next 10 years.

In retrospect, we should have seen this coming when the richest man in the world, representing the president of the United States, ended USAID, the help our nation has provided to the poorest people on the planet. 

And we were warned when the new Trump-aligned USDA leadership announced plans to reverse Biden-era SNAP expansions, calling them “financially irresponsible.”  

Yes, of course, that is a rational view by any U.S. administration that hunger is too expensive to address… unless you happen to have a shred of compassion for any other human on the planet.

 We are suffering under an administration led by a president who is both criminally narcissistic and totally transactional. 

And, given his success in staffing the federal agencies with wholly obedient supplicants, what more can we expect from the USDA leadership than a form of cruel disregard that Inspector Javert would endorse?

As this horrific budget moves to congressional passage by July 4, we know that its supporters are comprised of two core groups: Republicans unable and unwilling to cross President Trump, and voters who are simply not paying attention. (Washington Post 6/18/25). 

Even so, only 26 percent of voters (Quinnipiac) support this travesty about to be imposed upon all Americans. 

We are in a crisis of compassion, where that historic American spirit is strained by those who see us as less than we are.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.