In the first Reagan Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, the Administration and Congress raised the rent on every elderly, disabled, blind, and poor resident in any kind of federally subsidized housing unit by 20% (phased in over five years)—from 25% of residents’ income to 30%. It was only one of many ways in which the lives of the “least among us” were savaged in the budget bill.
In the same bill, lucrative tax cuts, programs, and other benefits were ladled out to the wealthy and special interests in so egregious a fashion that Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman later acknowledged that it resembled “pigs at the trough.” It was only a part of a greater trend that has brought us to today’s America that is ever more unequal and divided in income and assets.
A little tax cut here; a little crony capitalism there; a little squeeze of the “un-deserving poor” there; and no real gains for middle America while the wealthy and powerful blame it all on the poor and stow their riches in overseas bank accounts and undertaxed assets.
Now we await a new set of bills and budgets designed to do what? “Health insurance for everyone,” President Trump tweets—but what will it cost, what will it cover, and who will pay for it? “Repeal and replace,” the Republican Congress has declared about the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) for seven years. But has anyone seen a replacement that the Republicans and President Trump can agree on?
