It feels like to varying degrees, we Americans have has Robin Hood in Reverse policies for quite a long time. But this trend has greatly accelerated and become blatant and in all of our face under the Trump White House.
The House just advanced a bill which many are calling "Reverse Robin Hood." It is designed to give still more breaks and tax incentives to the wealthiest Americans, leaving it to the rest of the country (you know, the 99% of the population) to foot the bill.
Here was how one Democratic lawmaker described it:
"At every turn, Republicans voted down amendments designed to prevent the majority of benefits of their tax bill from flowing to rich people," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the committee, said following Wednesday's vote. "The unavoidable truth is that Republicans' core priority with this legislation was to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and that is exactly what their bill does."
Yup.
Remember when a tax break for the ultrawealthy during Trump's first term was so lopsidedly beneficial to the ultrawealthy at the expense of everyone else that even some Republicans, including Marco Rubio, objected?
Well, the same thing is happening here, this time as well:
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he’s fine with the new work requirements and antifraud provisions that House Republicans have proposed for Medicaid, but he raised concerns about their “cost-sharing” proposal, which he said would make “beneficiaries pay more.”
“These are working people in particular who are going to have to pay more,” he said.
Hawley continued:
“The provider tax in particular, that could have a big impact in my state and lead to reduced coverage, so I’ve got some concerns. I think we need to look really, really carefully at that. I continue to maintain my position we should not be cutting Medicaid benefits,” he said.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also voiced some concerns that these proposals will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and thus hurt those Americans who do not rank among the ultrawealthy:
“We just got to make sure that what we had pre-COVID as a safety net still exists and people have access [to health insurance] in the marketplace,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do before, I think, the details are settled.”
Tillis says he wants to dig in to the projection that more than 8 million people could lose their insurance.
Yet another Republican who expressed concern was Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska):
“That’s why people like Josh [Hawley] and myself and others have weighed in very early … in saying that Medicaid cuts that hurt states like Alaska — that is heavily reliant on Medicaid — are not going to be acceptable,” she said. “How we navigate this is something we’re all trying to wander through."
It seems that even Republicans are worried about the extent to the proposed cuts for regular people, so that the wealthiest and most privileged Americans can, once again, receive huge tax benefits and incentives. Politically, that has become the American way, hasn't it?
There are also concerns about how this proposed bill will attack environmental concerns, which may hurt the economy with still more losses of jobs (because that's just what we need at this point, isn't it?). Here is how Alexander Bolton described it in an article published by The Hill yesterday:
Some Republican senators are also raising concerns about the House GOP’s plan to aggressively phase out federal tax credits for clean energy investments. Advocates for solar and wind energy say it could cost thousands of American jobs.
Making life harder for ordinary Americans so the richest and most privileged Americans can enjoy even more privileges, as well as attacking the environment. You can't get much more Republican than that, can you?
Also, let's face it: nobody put a gun to the heads of Americans this past November. They collectively chose to put Trump back in the White House, and also collectively chose to empower Trump even further by giving him the majority in both the House and the Senate, to add to the majority he already enjoyed in the Supreme Court. In other words, Americans opted to give the most blatantly corrupt and decadent president in American history every lever of power available to him in controlling the American government. What he has done with that since - consolidating power to bring the country closer to dictatorship, pursuing blatant corruption and bribery (most notably with the $400 million "gift" jet) and aggressively pursuing still more policies and tax breaks and incentives for the very wealthiest and most privileged Americans - all of this was very predictable.
So take a bow, America. You brought this on yourself. If many Trump supporters wind up losing their health insurance or struggling even more because of the very politicians that they put in power (and imposed on the rest of us), should we feel sympathy? I have long felt that things will have to grow far worse in this country before they get better. But I have to admit that it would feel a bit more justifiable if the bulk of the people who are going to feel the wrath of these policies were members of the MAGA nation. Maybe that might even get them to wake the hell up and pay attention, and not be so damn gullible?
Nah. I wouldn't put much stock in that idea.
Now, I said it before, such as when Marco Rubio objected to Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich during his first term, and I will say it once more. When even Republicans are warning that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are going too far, we might want to listen.
Below are the two articles which I used in obtaining the specific information used in writing this blog entry, and from which I obtained all of the quotes used above:
"Reverse Robin Hood of the Highest Order': GOP Advances Massive Tax Cuts for the Rich by Jake Johnson May 14, 2025:
"The unavoidable truth is that Republicans' core priority with this legislation was to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and that is exactly what their bill does," said Democratic Rep. Don Beyer.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/republican-budget-tax-cuts
GOP senators raise red flags over House’s ambitious Trump legislative package by Alexander Bolton - 05/14/25:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5298819-senate-gop-house-trump-package-medicaid/
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