Why Republicans punish the poor

The Republicans once again are at their favorite sadistic pastime: inflicting more pain on those who already live in a world of pain.

This is the third food stamp cut since Trump came to power. The New York Times reports that “The Agriculture Department moved again this week to cut spending on food stamps, this time proposing changes that would slice $4.5 billion from the program over five years, trimming monthly benefits by as much as $75 for one in five struggling families on nutrition assistance.”

What explains the GOP’s obsession with making the life of the disadvantaged more miserable?

The simplest explanation is that these cuts, which are part of a larger assault on programs that benefit the poor, are part of a bigger class war that for decades Republicans have been waging on behalf of their real base—corporations, the well-off, the rich, and the ultra-rich—against all other classes, especially the poor.

Huge tax cuts for companies and for the upper levels of the wealth and income distribution pyramid must be paid somehow. These tax cuts, and the elimination of the inheritance tax have made the deficit soar, contrary to the fairy tale Republicans always sell the public, that tax cuts “pay for themselves.” Squeezing every tax dollar for programs for the poor like food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing is one way to pay for a portion of the huge shortfall in tax revenues.

Nothing is more revealing of the true nature of the Trump-Republican pseudo-populist program than the massive transfer of money from the needy to the greedy. It’s a neat formula. Rich donors and big corporations fund the campaigns of Republican politicians. These GOP politicos return the favor in spades through colossal tax benefits. It’s an economically regressive scheme that amounts to taking from those who can least afford it to give to those who can easily afford much higher taxes than they have been paying. It is also a profoundly immoral scheme and a corrupt policy which rewards rich Republicans like Trump and their friends and families for the mere virtue of being rich.

Decades of Republican class war have made the United States the nation with by far the highest level of inequality among the developed nations today. Awareness of this reality is now mainstream. Time magazine this week contains a graph that depicts the drastic rise in inequality since 1970.

Many authors have described portions of the process I have outlined above. However, the foregoing analysis differs in describing the cause as a class war carried out over a long period of time mainly through a political party rather than as the result of blind market processes. Not an invisible hand but quite visible and purposeful political forces have brought this country the highest level of inequality ever. The easy conversion of money into power and vice versa within the American political system, including its free-for-all campaign finance laws, creates a self-reinforcing circle of economic privilege and political influence.

These economic and political factors explain much but not all of what motivates Republicans to prey on the poor. I would argue that there are at least three other interrelated influences that make this country unique in its level of inequality: racism, repression, and religion.

Racism colors every aspect of the Republican crusade against the poor. Republicans have used racist stereotypes to undercut support for every social program, even succeeding in their long-held dream of eliminating welfare, the biggest program of all, and doing it during the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton.

Repression, specifically sexual repression, plays a smaller part but not an insignificant one. This is exemplified by comments that Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley made in favor of abolishing the estate tax. Essentially, Grassley said that it was better that productive people who would invest the money have it than to see it go to those who would waste it on women, wine and drugs. The repressed Republicans project their own forbidden hedonistic desires onto those they imagine live an orgiastic life.

Finally, the Calvinist influence on American consciousness links success and virtue. In this generally unconscious mindset, it is not the rich man who, like the camel, cannot go through the eye of the needle to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. In this version, a poor man or woman must go through endless contortions to get through the eye of the needle and thereby prove deserving of assistance. The eye of the needle is indeed a good metaphor for the contortions the poor are required to go through to receive the meager benefits of our shredded safety net.

The irony of the Republican war on the poor is that the GOP is a party almost exclusively made up of (white) “Christians.” These self-proclaimed Christians evidently have carried out very selective reading of the Bible, especially the Gospels. The policies of their political icon, President Trump, have turned on their heads such ideas as the obligation to take care of “the least among us,” the metaphor of “the eye of the needle,” and the mandate to “welcome the stranger.” How can they live with the contradiction between core Christian values of charity and love and cruel and uncharitable Republican beliefs and policies?