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Budget cuts for the poor while political sacred cows get more and more

By Staff | Jan 26, 2023

To the editor:

Those in the Republican party have proposed no federal legislation to trim any fat off the biggest taxpayer boondoggle. Pentagon spending is by far the most bloated budget item responsible for the national debt. Neither Scott nor Rubio has insisted, for example, that Ukraine borrow money and pay us back any of the $105.5 billion we have sent them to fight a proxy war with Russia. Instead our senators target the U.S. poor, demanding cuts to Social Security and pouting that the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act to the indigent program be trimmed. According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation we spent $785 billion in taxes for the Pentagon last year and the ask for 2023 alone is $813 billion.

Goggles’s best guess is that a comparatively paltry sum of $5.1 billion in federal funds would be the federal tax burden for medical treatment fee payments in Florida for expanding to Florida the Obamacare Federal government aid. The Florida Health Justice Program published a fact sheet in 2020 claiming expanded MediCAID (Obamacare) would generate $7 billion in revenue to the Sunshine state. Florida health providers would receive, by their guess $4.3 billion per year in Federal reimbursement. So if Florida would input $7 billion of national taxes allocated if expansion continues. By sharing our costs with the entirety of U.S. taxpayers, we in Florida would gain. Remember this is a program that is paid for and effective in most other states.

Senators Rubio and Scott have expressed no appetite for gathering taxes through IRS audit from those making more than $400,000. per year. Evasion is possible from those who are in the best position to hire lawyers to evade tax payment. Many is the billionaire who pays little to no taxes. The other billionaires in the Senate are cool to have their taxes audited. So if there is no appetite for meaningfully cutting waste, nor raising revenue — is this merely the GOP suggesting we stiff our creditors in service to an election slogan for a balanced budget? While advocating tax cheats to go uninvestigated?

Republicans demand a cut in services and survival funds and tax audits while the American underemployed are trying to survive unemployment. It seems to me cheating the Social Security seniors out of their benefits (remember we pay our own Social Security, it’s listed as FICA on your payroll deductions stub). But the Senators who voted for the debts which must be paid, now want to dine and dash, risking ruination on the good faith credit rating of the nation.These petty meaningless quibbles from the GOP playbook could send the U.S. and the world economy careening into a ditch.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral