Cartoon & column from the Sunday Star-Ledger

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things …”

— Donald Trump

The quote above is from early April, when the president was speaking to a crowd during a private Easter event at the White House. It seemed appropriate to surface the comments again with the administration’s announcement that it will be cutting Medicare benefits next year.

The Biden-era Medicare Part D prescription subsidies are falling prey to the budget ax, which will lead to higher premiums for older Americans. While cutting subsidies won’t do jack for the senior affordability crisis, it will do wonders for Trump’s. The president is currently seeking an additional $87 billion for his big, dumb war with Iran, and in the spirit of shared sacrifice, he’s calling on your grandparents to forgo their blood pressure medication. During the same event mentioned above, the president went as far as to cite the war as a reason to cut senior health care in favor of heavy munitions: “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.”

Shrinking the social safety net was, of course, the plan all along. If it weren’t the president’s ill-advised, unilateral decision to launch an offensive against Iran, the administration would have found an equally ridiculous reason to go after benefits Americans see as vital and they see as socialism. Trump and his allies claim they don’t want to kill these programs; they just want to shift the burden back to the states, which would have largely the same function.

It’s long been a conservative fever dream to gut “entitlements” in favor of rugged individualism, bootstraps, etc. The president and his allies have already gone after the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and they have their eyes set on Medicaid and Social Security next. They will, unbidden, bring up the fact that the OASI (Old-Age and Survivors Insurance) Social Security trust fund will run dry in 2032 and conveniently forget to mention the most logical fix of ensuring solvency by raising the income tax cap on high earners.

Spending, personal or government, is always a matter of priorities. By seeking to gut Medicare while spending $87 billion on bombs, the president has revealed his priorities, and you aren’t one of them.