The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of the new and revised American Health Care Act. As many suspected, it forecasts millions of people to lose their insurance; 23 million by 2026, to be precise. This, coupled with Trump’s budget is cause for American outrage.

  • His budget takes from the needy and vulnerable in order to give to the wealthy.
  • His healthcare plan cuts insurance for millions, and raises the prices on the sick.
  • These scandals of betrayal are in plain sight, and cannot be looked past – surely?

There are lies being told in private, revealed by shadowy leaks that are causing outrage. But here, Trump is lying in public, through appendix tables and open policy. Will America care as much about Trump’s betrayal of the sick and the poor as they will about the betrayal of James Comey and the Israeli intelligence services?

Nothing here is left to interpretation or inference, these are the policy facts that Trump and his team have put out and begged Congress to pass. There are no whistle-blowers to wait for or secret tapes to uncover – the evidence is right before us all.

Budget lies

Throughout his campaign and even through to his ascension to the Oval Office, Trump has brazenly lied in public about the most consequential of policy decisions that he is now able to make as President.

The budget released on Tuesday is an assault on the poor and vulnerable, and a clear U-turn from the economic populism that propelled him to the White House.

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in May 2015. But his budget cuts Medicaid by $1.49 trillion — about half its expected budget — and slashes Social Security’s disability insurance program by $31.4 billion.

Bernie puts it perfectly:

During the campaign, Trump said that his new tax plan was “going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true.” Of course, this is actually not true. Trump stands to nearly wipe out his entire tax bill with the proposed abolition of the Alternative Minimum Tax alone.

He told Meet the Press, “For the wealthy, I think, frankly, [taxes are] going to go up. And you know what it? It should go up.” This is also not true, his tax plan consists of huge cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and Trump in particular.

Healthcare lies

The ACHA, or “Wealthcare” as it is dubbed, is also a thinly veiled tax cut for the rich as it redirects $600 billion in health subsidies for the poor to tax cuts for the wealthy and is the main cause of the terrible bill’s coverage losses.

“I am going to take care of everybody,” Trump told 60 Minutes before being elected. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, the AHCA would lead to 23 million fewer people with health insurance than if Trump simply left the system alone.

Trump also warned, “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” Of course this is not true either, it is going to happen with him. The main reason why so many people will lose health insurance under the new plan is because they cannot afford it – and that is the core of Trumpcare: if you can’t afford it, you don’t get it.

Furthermore, Trump promised that he’d make sure everyone had health insurance plans with “much lower deductibles”. The ACHA removes the regulations that stops insurers from charging higher deductibles than they currently do, while shrinking and reshaping the tax credits to push people into cheaper plans that the CBO expects millions of people to end up in “policies that would not cover major medical risks.”

As recently as April 30, Trump told the country that “pre-existing conditions are in the bill – I mandate it.” He said the AHCA has “a clause that guarantees” protection for anyone with pre-existing conditions. But in actual fact, the only reason the bill was able to pass the House was because of an amendment that allows states to waive the ACA’s protections for said pre-existing conditions.

The CBO predicts that a sixth of the states will use these waivers meaning, “less healthy individuals (including those with pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions) would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all.”

Trump is unavoidably a liar

Trump is now president, he is not a wild Twitter user speculating from the outside, or on the campaign trail making empty promises to get elected. He is now in power and both the budget and the ACHA are vetted documents constructed by people appointed by Trump, and approved by the man himself.

You may argue that Trump doesn’t know he is breaking his own promises, because he is too stupid, but in reality it is because he doesn’t care, and doesn’t want to know.

The fact that his policies hurt his own supporters, along with millions of others, is the most damning evidence of all. This is a scandal of epic proportions; many more people will be affected than the intelligence leaks to the Russians. It is time for Americans to stand up and resist.