Thursday, November 02, 2017

The Rampant Cynicism at the Heart of the GOP

As we near a potential constitutional crisis over the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, the Republicans are trying to shove through a tax bill that hurts the vast majority of Americans to help a chosen few. Together with earlier failed attempts at healthcare “reform,” their complicity in Trump’s attack on our environment and democracy and the shoving through of cabinet members clearly unqualified to run the agencies they now do, this latest bill lays bare the cynicism at the heart of the Republican party today, not only on the fringes but straight through to the mainstream and even more moderate members.

The bill cuts Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor children and adults, by over $1 trillion over the next 10 years (costing 15 million Americans their insurance). It cuts Medicare, which provides healthcare to the elderly, by $473 billion. And it includes huge cuts to education, nutrition programs, affordable housing and transportation (of approximately $200 billion). And why? To give tax cut to our wealthiest citizens and corporations still hording their record profits, rather than passing them on to their employees. Eighty percent of the cuts go to the top 1 percent of wage earners and a full 40 percent of that to the top 0.1 percent. This includes ending the alternative minimum tax, which will hand $400 billion in tax cuts to that group, and repealing the estate tax yet again (handing $240 billion to the the richest .02%). And it gives another huge handout to corporations (cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 20 percent, which translates to $2 trillion in lost revenue they then have to make up), many that pay little to no taxes to begin with. The middle class? They might actually see a tax rise.

Remember that healthcare bill that would have taken health insurance away from about 32 million Americans and only failed by a single vote? This bill is much worse. It is symptomatic of a party that has ceased to cultivate any new ideas or substantive policies beside lowering taxes on the rich, cutting services to the poor and serving the interests of corporate America, no matter at what cost to the environment, workers, our children or our collective future.

With each of the bills introduced by the Republicans since taking control of all levers of the federal government, there has been an attempt to release the bill’s details in relative secret, avoid the criticism of the media and their constituents by any means necessary and then slip it through, though those efforts have largely failed to date. As with the healthcare bill, which was even less popular, they appear to care little that only 25 percent of Americans support it or that they continue to push an agenda that is detrimental to the average (and majority) of Americans.

One could argue that the Republican party today, with an assist to politicians like the Clintons and other DLCers from the 90s, first cultivated the rampant cynicism that has spread across the country like a plague and are now attempting to capitalize on it to further hurt average Americans, in the process only further propagating that cynicism. This is accomplished through a number of avenues, but the most important might be the uber-partisanship that now reigns in Washington. When they are out of power, they simply block as much of the agenda as possible, and then speak to the fact that nothing is getting done. At the same time, they attack government in general, based on this “policy blockade,” further perpetuating the idea that government can’t solve any of our problems. And they simultaneously attack all of the other social institutional that could hold them accountable for their cynical actions, from the media and universities to our schools and unions.

As a final piece to the puzzle, they play on the fears and anxieties of average Americans, distracting them with fake news (aka propaganda) and conspiracy theories and then stoking the flame of their racism, sexist, homophobia and xenophobia, to avert attention from the real source of so many of the problems in this country – too much economic power in the hands of too few, the continued growth in power and size of our biggest multinational corporations and the dramatic and growing inequality in the country.

“Make America Great Again,” feel more and more like “corporate fascism rocks!”everytime a new policy agenda item comes to light.