The millionaires’ House of Representatives has passed the Senate’s 2018 budget resolution, setting the stage for the circumvention of the Senate’s filibuster rules. Instead, the Republicans will need only a 50-50 tie with Vice President Pence then casting the tie-breaking vote to pass their package of severe austerity. This is because the budget was passed using what’s known as the reconciliation process — a process introduced into law by Congress in 1974 and first used in 1980 — this will be the 21st time reconciliation was used by Congress. It allows resolutions that relate to the allocation of spending to be passed using a simple majority, disarming any opposition use of a filibuster which would require 60 votes to break.
This is significant because the GOP budget is at its core a package of severe austerity. Largely just a tax cut for the ultra rich, this new budget will see sweeping changes to the U.S. tax code that will ultimately result in $1.8 trillion being transferred from the federal government to the super rich over the next decade through massive budget cuts. The budget cuts $473 billion from Medicaid over 10 years, and all non-Medicaid medical programs would see a staggering cut of $1.3 trillion or nearly 30 percent of their overall budget by 2027. This budget is a vicious and naked attack by the ruling class on the poorest and most marginalized people. It further strips basic health care services from those most in need and directly transfers this wealth to the ultra rich.
One of the most deceptive things about the budget reconciliation process is that we do not know specifically how those cuts will be implemented because lawmakers themselves do not yet know. Budget resolutions often contain minimal detail as to how exactly the government plans to reduce spending or which specific programs would be cut. For example, this resolution calls for the repeal of Obamacare and mentions using block grants to states to replace it, but gives absolutely no details on how this would be accomplished. The Senate has stated they will release their actual tax plan on Nov. 1 and will seek to pass the bill for President Trump to sign before the end of this year’s legislative session.
This budgetary battle is fundamentally just an extension of the ruling class’ ongoing attempt to slash basic health care services for the poorest and transfer that money to the super rich. Having already failed several times to repeal Obamacare in 2017, this budget resolution can be viewed as just a shift in tactics with ultimately the same goal.
It must also be pointed out though that a significant reason the policy goal may be achieved this time is because of the totally flaccid opposition by the so-called hashtag resistance, the Democrats. While Democrats were somewhat effective in mobilizing mass call-ins to prevent the direct repeal of the Affordable Care Act several times, they have made no such appeals when it comes to this budget process. They refuse to call the GOP plan what it is, a naked theft of basic health care services for the most vulnerable communities.
This is because the Democratic Party has been and remains a capitalist party, which views health care as a commodity and not a right. They instead are engaging in the rightwing rhetoric on the budget and discussing it only in terms of deficits and debts, not in terms of the actual material cost to 99 percent of everyday people.
At the moment what has been passed is not a law, but merely a set of recommendations. It is the upcoming reconciliation process itself that determines what the final form of the new budget will be. Yet again, the people mobilized in mass numbers are the only thing that can prevent the ruling class from stripping away even more of our basic rights. Just as we did several times before in 2017, we must talk to our families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers and organize ourselves to oppose this brazen theft of our most fundamental rights.
We should also use this moment of organizing to stop these budget cuts as an opportunity for ongoing mass work. These cuts are just one of many recent assaults by the ruling class on the rest of us, and the attacks are going to continue under the Trump administration going forward. Building solidarity in our homes, communities, and places of work is what we need to be doing – to not only have the organized networks we need to rise up and stop specific attacks like these budget cuts, but also to eventually have the organized networks we need to overthrow this whole capitalist system and replace it with a true people’s society, one that guarantees and delivers all the basic human rights for every person in society equally.
