As I was saying

 I seldom link to the NYT (or, as Atrios calls it, " that f.ing newspaper) because it ' s paywalled. But I believe you get three free reads a month, and in any case I ' m going to pull the good stuff fromKrugthulu ' s latest.It ' s about this:Many House Republicans arereportedly listening to Russell Vought, Donald Trump ’s former budget director, who has a new think tank and has been circulating abudget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” which purports to show a way to balance the budget without touching Medicare and Social Security. The document uses the word “woke” 77 times, and — weirdly for a fiscal blueprint — also manages to mention critical race theory 16 t imes.By " woke " government he refers to means tested programs -- Medicaid, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), and Affordable Care Act subsidies. Now, in the first place, it is not true that you could balance the budget even by eliminating these entirely. But Krugman ' s main point is that the beneficiaries aren ' t who Vought and other Republicans seem to think they are. When they hear about means-tested programs, they think “welfare,” and when they think about welfare, they imagine that the beneficiaries are inner-city Black people. In modern America, however, some of the biggest beneficiaries of means-tested programs are rural white people — who also happen to be the core of the Republican base.Consider Owsley County, Ky. Eastern Kentucky is at t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs