In the coming days, a burgeoning plan to end the government shutdown would effectively end the fight over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and restore federal food aid to millions of low-income families. In the meantime, however, Donald Trump’s administration is fighting tooth and nail to make sure those families struggle as much as possible to put food on the table. The New York Times reported:
The Trump administration told states that they must ‘immediately undo’ any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown. The Agriculture Department … guidance threatened to impose harsh financial penalties on states that did not ‘comply’ quickly with the new federal orders.
Over the course of the ongoing government shutdown, the White House has taken all kinds of punitive and unnecessary steps when it comes to SNAP benefits. Trump and his team, for example, cut off federal food aid in ways that didn’t happen during previous shutdowns. They’ve brazenly lied about the program; peddled weird claims about “liquidity” while making excuses for cutting off struggling families; repeatedly gone to court to defend their ability to cut off SNAP aid; and in recent days threatened states that tried to fill in the gaps, demanding that they “undo” benefit payments to low-income families that states have already made.
My MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem made the case last week that the president is “blatantly using hunger as a political weapon,” and there’s ample evidence to bolster the thesis.
But right around the time state officials received threats from the Trump administration about taking back food aid resources, the Times ran a separate report about a seemingly unrelated subject:
With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country’s most profitable companies and wealthiest investors. The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, through a series of new notices and proposed regulations, are giving breaks to giant private equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real estate investors, insurance providers and a variety of multinational corporations.
As the report explained, the Republican White House is specifically targeting the Biden-era corporate alternative minimum tax, which was designed to generate $222 billion over the next decade. “But the succession of notices the Treasury and I.R.S. have issued beginning this summer,” the article added, “means the tax could bring in a fraction of that.”
The Times added, “The Treasury’s actions are probably contributing hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit, tax experts said. That is on top of the trillions that the legislation signed by Mr. Trump in July is already adding to the deficit.” The bookends aren’t exactly subtle: While the president, his team and his party fight to cut off federal food aid to low-income families, they’re simultaneously delivering tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthy Americans who invest in them. This is the same president who celebrated his marble bathroom and held a “Great Gatsby”-themed soiree at his glorified country club as SNAP benefits expired last week. Trump is occasionally referred to as a populist. It’s past time for the political world to come up with a far more accurate label.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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