Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Shortly after the Trump administration unveiled its controversial budget proposal for 2018, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) totally dismantled the plan in a scathing op-ed.
“The [$4.1 trillion] budget introduced this week by the Trump administration constitutes nothing less than a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1%,” Sanders wrote Wednesday.
On Thursday, the Vermont senator confronted Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on the budget’s $26.7 billion cuts.
Regarding “the cuts you are making to Medicaid, why are you going to throw seniors in the state of Wyoming or the state of Vermont off the Meals on Wheels program?” Sanders asked the director seated before the Senate Committee. “Why are you going to throw women and low-income babies off of the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Food and Nutrition Service) program at a time when infant mortality rates in this country are already high?”
“Do you really think it is a great idea to tell a low-income pregnant woman that you’re going to take away the WIC program, take away nutrition programs from children in order to give a massive tax break of $53 billion to the Walton family?” Sanders hammered. “Please explain your logic.”
Mulvaney immediately dodged the question about slashing safety net programs—a plan that would actually hurt Trump’s own voters the most.
“It is mathematically impossible to take those general principles and assume their impact on a particular family,” Mulvaney asserted.
Sanders rebuffed his comment with an explanation of why the wealthiest .002 percent of Americans, which include the Waltons, would greatly benefit from Trump’s plan.
“The wealthiest family in America gets a $52 billion tax break as a result of the estate tax,” he explained. “Tell the American people why you think that’s good when you cut Medicaid and you cut programs for kids.”
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