The Big Bucks for Billionaires Bill
Op-Ed by Gilles Stockton, Montana Cattlemen’s Association Director
“The reason 10% of the people need food assistance is because global corporations
underpay for our wheat and calves, leaving our rural communities in chronic poverty.
None of this is fixed by denying children food.“
It is our responsibility as farmers and ranchers to protect and conserve the soil, rangelands, and animals under our care. Failure to be a good steward has both moral and practical consequences. However, we don’t think often enough about our responsibility to foster and protect our communities.
The budget reconciliation bill (H.R. 1) being railroaded through Congress is directly aimed at harming our rural communities, just to give billionaires another tax break they don’t deserve. Government spending is out of control and the deficit is $36 trillion and growing. Choices need to be made, but that is not what is happening.
To reduce the deficit, we are told that we must cut Medicaid and Food Stamps (SNAP) because in the telling of the Congressional leadership, it is those people who are freeloading on the system. What is not admitted is that the deficit comes from past reductions in taxes for billionaires and global corporations. Yet this budget reconciliation bill is, once again, all about lower taxes for billionaires.
However, even with all of the cuts proposed for Medicaid and Food Stamps, it does not come close to solving the deficit. Under this proposed budget reconciliation, the deficit is predicted to rise by $3.8 trillion over the next ten years. Once again, Congress is pulling a fast one. And why wouldn’t they, after all half of the members of Congress are multi-millionaires, and the other half is beholden to billionaires to get elected. Of course, they shall vote for their own financial self-interests if they can get away with it.
As citizens – you might say stewards – of our rural communities we need to ask if this is actually in our interests. Rural Americans are disproportionally beneficiaries of social programs because we are poorer than urban communities. Some 22.2% of rural Montanans have Medicaid and a full 10% receive Food Stamps. These are not some random, lazy, undeserving people who live somewhere far away as they would like us to believe. This is the waitress that serves you coffee at the local café. This is the guy at the checkout counter of your local store. In short, these are people we know personally and have lived with all of our lives. We know their stories – perhaps they are in transition from a bad marriage, or are suffering through a medical crisis, or have mental health issues.
What Congress and the billionaires want us to believe is that the tax cuts are actually for us. According to analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the truth is that for everyone with a taxable income of less than $50,000, their average savings would be $1200. On the other hand, someone making more than a million bucks a year would average $90,000. The richest 1.2 million will receive more than the 127 million people with incomes below $100,000. We all want lower taxes, we all want them to be efficiently used, and most of us want them to be fair. This tax proposal is far from being fair.
We need to be mindful of what will happen to the people in our community who lose Medicaid and Food Stamps. Who is going to serve you coffee? Will the grocery store close because there is no one to run the cash register? Can your school continue with fewer and fewer kids? Small-town hospitals are already in financial trouble, will this be the end of yours? How are you going to pay your pastor if there are no parishioners?
Cutting Medicaid and Food Stamps will have consequences to real people that you know personally. We all want lower taxes but the actual reason 22.2% of our neighbors need Medicaid is because our elected leaders have repeatedly failed to fix a health care system dominated by insurance companies and big pharma. We spend twice as much for health care than any other country and have decidedly mediocre results. The reason 10% of the people need food assistance is because global corporations underpay for our wheat and calves, leaving our rural communities in chronic poverty. None of this is fixed by denying children food.
This budget reconciliation process is all about blaming people who are decidedly not the problem while filling the off-shore tax haven bank accounts of the billionaires. Call Senators Daines (406 587-3446) and Sheehy (202 224-2644); and Representatives Zinke (202 225-5628) and Downing (202 225-3211) and tell them that this is not acceptable. Incidentally, you might remind them that you are fully aware that all four of them are multi-millionaires.