Notable Quotable: Paul Krugman On GOP Budget Bill

Paul Krugman is an economist, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the University of New York, and in 2008 was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

His recent article, Attack of the Sadistic Zombies (whose subheading is The GOP budget is incredibly cruel—and that's the point) reveals a grotesque reconciliation bill that is big on lies and anything but beautiful.

Here are important excerpts :

To get a sense of how extreme this legislation is, do a side-by-side comparison of the impact on different groups of Americans between this bill and Trump’s one major legislative achievement during his first term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 

The TCJA, like the current legislation, gave big tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. But it also threw a few crumbs to people further down the scale. By contrast, the House Reconciliation Bill, by slashing benefits — especially Medicaid — will cause immense, almost inconceivable hardship to the bottom 40 percent of Americans, especially the poorest fifth.

In 2023 Medicaid covered 69 million Americans, far more than Medicare (which covers seniors), including 39 percent of children.

Providing health care to children, by the way, isn’t just about social justice and basic decency. It’s also good economics: Children who receive adequate care grow up to be more productive adults. Among other things they end up paying more taxes, so Medicaid for children almost surely pays for itself.

And although Republican legislation apparently won’t explicitly target children's care, it will impose paperwork requirements that will cause both children and their parents to lose coverage.

Wait, it gets worse. One of the ways Republicans will try to slash Medicaid is by requiring that adult Medicaid recipients be gainfully employed — or, more accurately, that they demonstrate to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats that they are gainfully employed, which is not at all the same thing.

The belief that many Americans receiving government support are malingering, that they could and should be working but are choosing to be lazy, is a classic zombie idea. That is, like the claim that cutting taxes on the rich will unleash an economic miracle, it’s a doctrine that should be long dead. It has, after all, been proved wrong by experience again and again.

But right-wingers simply refuse to accept the reality that almost everyone on Medicaid is either a child, a senior, disabled or between jobs. 

– Paul Krugman

Read his full article.