Last week my five-year-old granddaughter showed me a magic trick. She put a big wooden spoon up her sleeve when she thought I wasn’t looking. Then with some ferocious shaking of her arm she made the spoon magically appear in her hands. I was dutifully amazed. Pretending to believe the illusions of children is what a good grandpa does.
Our local congresswoman in Western New York, Claudia Tenney, attempted her effort at illusion last week, as did Republican members of Congress around the country. But what they are all trying to hide is something far bigger — the taking of health care and food from millions of struggling Americans to fund tax cuts for the rich.
In a guest column in our local paper titled, “Setting the record straight on the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Tenney defended President Trump’s legislation that makes the wealthiest even wealthier. Parroting Trump’s talking points, Tenney writes, “Did the bill cut Medicaid? Absolutely not.” All it does is root out waste and end coverage for illegal immigrants, she says.
Then there are the actual facts.
Medicaid is the federal program that helps 70 million Americans get access to health care when they are sick. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill will take health coverage away from more than 11 million of them, citizens of our country.
That won’t stop them from getting sick, though. Millions of Americans will be forced to go without care. Some will die. Others will end up in hospital emergency rooms racking up giant medical costs they can never pay. Much of that cost will then get passed on to the rest of us through higher health insurance premiums.
What about federal help with food? Trump and his blind followers say all the bill does is require able-bodied recipients to work at least 20 hours per week. Who could argue with that?
Again, the facts. SNAP is the federal anti-hunger program that helps millions of low-income Americans maintain access to food. The Big Beautiful Bill slashes that program by 20%, reductions that will be felt directly and immediately by millions of seniors, people with disabilities and children.
That is not cutting waste, it is cutting the ability of people to feed themselves.
But the real centerpiece of the Big Beautiful Bill is something else — a tax cut larger than anything in the nation’s history. Tenney writes, “Is this a tax cut for billionaires? No, it’s a lifeline for middle-class families.”
Let’s take a closer look at who actually gets the tax cuts and who gets stuck paying the government for what the trillions of dollars they will cost the U.S. treasury.
To understand who really benefits, think of it like a giant apple pie and look at who is eating how much. The very wealthiest 1% of Americans, people who earn $1.5 million a year and more, they get a full third of that pie all to themselves. The wealthiest 20% get served more than half.
The rest of us, the eight out of ten Americans who are not wealthy, get to divide up whatever is left. But we also get stuck paying the bill.
You see, chopping taxes does not come free. All the deep cuts Tenney loves in health care, hunger programs and the rest — those don’t come close to covering the cost of the massive tax cuts she supports for the wealthy, including herself.
The Congressional Budget Office warns the Trump tax cuts will add $3 trillion to the national debt, now approaching $38 trillion. That comes out to more than $8,000 in new debt for every woman, man and child in America, debt we will hand down to our children and grandchildren.
Think about Jeff Bezos, for example. He is one of the wealthiest men on Earth, a close ally of Donald Trump. He sends his friends into space in a private rocket. He just spent $50 million to marry his second wife in Venice. This is not a man short on cash.
But Trump and the Republicans are hellbent on cutting health care and food aid for regular Americans so that they can slash the taxes of Bezos and all the other billionaires.
When a five-year-old plays make believe it’s adorable. When members of Congress play pretend with the health and economic security of millions of Americans, it is an act of abuse and arrogance.