Trump wages war on rural poor with cuts in SSDI

Predator in Chief mocks the disabled

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican,”

So said Donald Trump right before he declared himself a candidate for President of the United States.  However, his recent budget suggests cutting $70 billion from Social Security disability benefits over the next 10 years. They are not social security apparently.

Most people aren’t surprised by this news as we’ve come to accept that Trump, apart from being a racist and misogynist, is a pathological liar. But there are some of us who are surprised by it and they are the people that trusted him the most, the poor white rural voter.

They weren’t necessarily driven by ideology, white nationalism, racism, Nazism although some have them may well have weaknesses in this area. But in the main, these were people who desperately need help and, as people so often do, cast aside all else hoping Trump would provide it.

BusinessWeek points out, “Of the 20 counties with the highest share of working-age adults receiving disability benefits, 17 voted for Trump, by an average margin of 56 percentage points.”

The cuts will have a serious if not catastrophic affect on residents of counties like Dickenson and Buchanan in Virginia, the two counties with the highest rates of disability payouts in the nation.  Mick Mulvaney, the White House Budget Director said that these cuts are necessary because Social Security Disability Insurance is a “welfare program for the long-term disabled,”, rife with abuse.  What incredibly callous individuals Trump and his gang are. In a sense, they are simply more honest about their attitude to US workers and aggressive regarding policy, than the previous administration but their callousness is special. And their aggressive approach more likely to invite and hasten social upheaval

Morgan Griffith, the rep for Virginia’s 9^th congressional district that includes these two counties, agrees that fraud is a concern and has to be focused on, but not in his district. “…..the people in Dickenson and Buchanan counties are good, honorable folks. The fraud isn’t down there.” Grifith says. Poor people are always “good and honorable” to these characters; that’s what makes them poor as they’ll get their rewards in heaven. What this reflects is the complete disregard for the nation and its citizens as a whole. The object is to stay in power, keep one’s seat, don’t cut my constituents or I won’t get re-elected.  It’s pure self-preservation at the local level and they’re all at it.

There is another factor here.  Mulvaney’s statements with regard to SSDI including telling the world that, “These people need to go back to work.” is that “he’s thinking of people of color in urban areas—and the exact opposite is true.”, says professor John Kregel, a specialist in disability policy at Virginia Commonwealth University,  “Here in Virginia, it’s overwhelmingly white, rural voters who went for Trump who are the beneficiaries.”

Mulvaney naturally thinks it’s the black folks committing fraud, they just need to get off their asses, and what better way to accomplish that than to cut benefits. Griffith agrees, his district is 91% white and they’re not fraudsters, it must be the 9% who are not white. The truth is, of course, the only fraudsters here are Mulvaney and Grifith and the gang in Washington.   Griffith is a member of that right wing, Zionist freedom caucus and Mulvaney is a former member.

While the number of recipients of SSDI has decreased  the number of people claiming SSDI is increasing as the US workforce is getting older. Then the politicians that represent the 1% increase the retirement age two years to 67 and that adds more older people while increasing the likelihood of injury, especially as older workers are forced to compete with younger, generally co-workers.

The lack of health insurance (I hate using those two words together) has also contributed to increasing SSDI claims says Professor Kregel. Across the state line in West Virginia, the crisis is not as acute as that state expanded medical coverage through the Affordable care Act, Virginia didn’t.

In their rush to cut benefits from urban workers of color, especially blacks who are all fraudulently claiming SSDI, they’ve inadvertently drawn a huge sector of the white rural poor in to the net-----their voters----- those people they conned in to thinking that the present administration was on their side. Oh my!

The US capitalist class, as all of them do, has nothing but contempt for working people. After all, if we were smart we’d be doing what they’re doing. This view by very definition has racist and sexist roots as well. The acute crisis affecting communities of color and other disenfranchised elements can only be of their own making----the poor are poor by their own making.  In our society, if you work hard, make the right decisions, you will be successful, look at Donald Trump.

The cuts in SSDI are just part of the overall assault on working class people and future generations as billions more will be eliminated from programs that enable ageing or disabled Americans to live somewhat of a dignified life.  US capitalism’s wars to maintain its position in the plunder of the world’s resources have to be paid for. As we have said many times, US capitalism can no longer afford guns and butter, the butter has to go. This is partly due to the rise of China and to a lesser extent Russian imperialism. Oh for the relative stability of the bi-polar world.

When we consider the trillions of dollars spent on US capitalism’s predatory wars under the absurdly titled “War on Terror” there is absolutely no need for such suffering either domestically or throughout the world. The cost of these wars in human terms is immense. For US veterans the future is grim. The survival rate due to improved armor is much higher than it was in Vietnam, another one of US capitalism’s crimes against humanity, so there are some 800,000 of them needing medical attention for the physical and mental damage that these sons and daughters of the US working class, a small section of them, are faced with.

This cannot go on. It is simply a matter of time before the critical mass is reached and the class struggle breaks out in to the open more aggressively. The history of the US working class is one of long periods of relative calm before huge explosions on to the streets and workplaces. A major reason this hasn’t occurred up to now is while there is increased resistance to the capitalist offensive, around various issues, they are isolated and there is no social force pulling them together. There is nowhere to turn and it seems like there is nothing that can be done. 

The mass of the US working class has not burst on the scene but it will and as always happens in this situations is workers tend then to overcome the superficial divisions that harm us and seek class unity. This will undermine the exaggerated influence of the petty bourgeois that prevails at the moment.  The socialist and militant traditions of the US working class will resurface and new leadership will arise, this is the crucial factor is the struggle between the classes.

While there are no guarantees in this world; history is on our side.

“I have a big heart.” Donald Trump prior to his entry in to the race for president.

Escalating Attacks on Retired Workers-The End of Social Security

It is not news that the recent recession has forced governments world wide to take on in some cases trillions of dollars of debt in order to bail out the financial system that created crisis in the first place. What is becoming more obvious everyday is that should economic growth and recovery happen it will take place on the backs of working people. No doubt there was fear and panic as debates over tax cuts and stimulus spending began to take centre stage. But worldwide as they opened the public coffers to the banks and financial institutions,a silver lining for the ruling class soon became visible. They could not have set the stage more effectively to undermine decades of economic and social gains of working people! Facing deficits in the billions and trillions of dollars , where better to begin to get this money back than from ordinary working people.

After over 30 years of gradual attacks on workers wages, benefits and working conditions, as well as strategically planned attacks on our public services through underfunding, undermining and privatizations, here was an opportunity to escalate these attacks dramatically -to intensify austerity measures and put in place plans for what may be called "permanent austerity." This means nothing more or less than taking back not only the actual wages and benefits , won through collective bargaining,  strikes and struggles of the trade unions and the consequent raising of demands for the working class generally but to literally take away every aspect of the social wage won by the working class.

What began as a potential catastrophe for global capitalism has now revealed a potential silver lining and possibly even a golden egg for the exploiting class if we do not organize a fight back in our trade unions and in our communities.

Every day we are confronted with starker examples of their determination to roll back the hard won gains of the working class. With globalization and shifting of capital and labour to poor countries where labour is cheap and regulation barely exists , great new opportunities emerged for the profit seekers. Cheap investment opportunities, cheap labour, virtually non-existent labour and safety regulation. The loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector and the downward pressure on wages, benefits, working conditions and pensions,soon turned into even more elaborate schemes and strategies to escalate existing attacks on public services and public sector workers.

In the absence of any willingness on the part of the labour leadership to throw resources into the building of a strategic well organized fightback, to build political alternatives to the existing bourgeois parties, in fact using the union dues to throw millions of members' dollars into Obama's campaign, working people are left confused, disoriented and without direction and leadership. None of this is news to working people. Nor is it news that in the absence of a trade union or political leadership working people and the poor do not see alternatives in which to put their anger, energies and capacities

It is startling really the degree of danger we are facing. It is as one blogger said " like Alice in Wonderland." The reality is so obvious and everyday working people must feel an increasing sense of disbelief and almost the kind of powerlessness that one feels in a dream.

Today as it is everyday,  the most striking news for me throws out another insult to our class, to the point where it is hard to keep up, what stands out are the tensions and debates going on in the US re raising the ceiling on US debt. Already 13 trillion dollars in debt and with a ceiling of 14.3 trillion Obama is struggling to win a vote to raise the debt ceiling. He has no political choice and is maneuvered by his opposition to force further deep cuts to public services and entitlements -to win support. What lousy dirty games these criminals play.

With full awareness that the higher the debt the more that must be stolen from the pockets of working and poor people, Social Security is moving more to the forefront as a purse to dig into,  maybe even to steal entirely from the American working class. Of course every theft is linked to another theft -these criminals are organized and strategic. Social Security, as limited as it is, ensures that working people can retire with at the very least some income- not enough certainly if not augmented by work pensions and private savings -but enough to keep them out of deep and dire poverty. This entitlement is especially necessary for retired workers in the absence of a publicly funded health care. First they wanted to raise the retirement age, then a means test was proposed - not only to claw back universal entitlements and to " save tax payers money" but strategically designed to split the "middle class" from poorer workers, as if the divide between working and poor people is not huge enough. Well planned to undermine support for Social Security generally and in the long term get rid of it entirely. If nothing else these crooks are clever.

The silver lining has the potential to turn into a real golden egg for the ruling class.

On the Real News Network Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, one silver tongued devil among many, talks about how he will refuse to vote for an increased debt ceiling unless Social Security is on the table. He and others like him have a long term plan. Using the government deficit/debt crisis as a spring board, he poses what is nothing less than an attack on the US working class at the deepest level as an opportunity for the government to "change it's spending ways " and look at "long term debt obligations." Looks to me like the potential silver lining for the profiteers as the cloud of the economic crisis is rapidly turning into a potential golden egg and the stage is set more elaborately for the permanent austerity -meaning nothing less than complete victory over the working class and the poor in the US, a brutal destruction of decades of hard won gains for working people.

In concrete terms this means that millions of retired working people will have no safety net whatsoever and after 40 years or more of working for the bosses and paying taxes they can look forward to dire poverty, pain and suffering at a time in their lives when they are weakest and most vulnerable. And perhaps when the retired working class in America becomes a potential "burden" on the rotten state that stole in many cases their only means of existence/subsistence, they just get rid of us all in the end because we will become part of those dreaded "long-term debt obligations."

More and more like Alice in Wonderland for sure.

Social Security? No Such Thing in a Capitalist Economic System. That's why it's called the "Free Market" its free to not provide security in society.

As Congress toys with the idea of raising the retirement age in order to deny paying Social Security benefits to millions of workers, Economic Policy Institute economist, Monique Morrisey makes a few interesting points about the program in last Sunday's New York Times.  She reminds us that earnings above $106,800 are not taxed for SSI. So Bill gates, one of the world's richest men, and LeBron James, the basketball player whose 2011 salary is estimated to be more than $14 million, and your doctor if he or she earns more than $106,000, will pay $6622, the maximum.  "Look at it this way" Ms Morrissey adds, "If we got rid of the employer cap, the Miami Heat would need to shell out about $900,000 in Social Security taxes on Mr. James’s reported $14.5 million salary next year."  She makes some very simple but important arguments.  Because, as we all know, the inequality gap in the US has gotten wider as the rich have gotten richer at our expense, a larger portion of higher earnings escape the SSI tax, 16% of earnings.

It is important to raise these issues as an example of the way they set up the tax system to benefit themselves and as a counter to their arguments that money cannot be found except in the pockets of workers and our families.  But it has to be made clear that the Bill Gates' of this world and the political parties that represent them will not voluntarily hand over the loot they have plundered from society, whether they pass laws or not.  Yes, we can force concessions from them and so we should, but each victory will only be a temporary one and serves best as a political education, a lesson in helping us understand better the relationship between the classes and how the world around us really works.  It's like a Union contract, the second that baby is signed, the boss is busy violating it. We learn through our experiences though and every struggle against the forces of capital teaches us about the world in which we live and that reforms are not enough; all the reforms won through years of struggle in the US are under attack or being eliminated altogether. It is the economic system under which we live that is the culprit and it is this that has to be transformed.