The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
When Donald Trump is sworn into office next week, he’ll arrive as an adjudicated felon working with billionaires and far-right ideologues bent on tearing down what took many decades to build.
While initial plans are still being drawn up, it’s clear that the people behind these plans are good at one thing — using language to misinform. In fact, they’re quite Orwellian as they describe damage as assistance.
Language games are being played in Congress.
U.S. House Republicans are currently planning how to cut health care, anti-hunger programs and more to, as Politico puts it, “bankroll President-elect Donald Trump’s top priorities.” The most expensive Trump budgetary focus is tax cuts that most help wealthy people and big corporations.
So how can they sell a suite of policies that will harm seniors, the working poor and many others? Well, they’ll try to make them sound good.
Just look at the document being circulated by the head of the GOP-controlled House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas.
Cutting health care for seniors by $479 billion is under the heading “Strengthen Medicare for seniors” and slashing health care for people with low incomes by $2.3 trillion is referred to as “Making Medicaid work for the most vulnerable.”
The overall label for the document, positively called “Spending Reform Options,” also includes a cut of $22 billion in food assistance and that’s termed “SNAP Reforms.” The House Republican document also lists taking away subsidies that help middle-class and working-class people purchase Affordable Care Act plans, as part of a $151 billion in cuts it calls “Reimaging the Affordable Care Act.”
“Strengthen.” “Reform.” “Reimagining.” Working “for the most vulnerable.” Doesn’t all that sound wonderful?
Sure — but the actual impacts of these cuts would be very harmful to average people and it would be part of a master plan to take from regular Americans and give to the people at the top, including, if not especially, the billionaire class.
No wonder Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who’s been living at a $2,000 a night cottage at Mar-a-Lago, has been participating in this reverse Robin Hood effort.
Along with Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk is the co-leader of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. But DOGE is not a department of the government. Those have to be created by Congress. Nor is it focused on efficiency, which means trying to do something the same or even more but with less effort and fewer resources.
Instead, Musk and Ramaswamy, who started with little understanding of how federal budgets and appropriations work, initially proposed getting rid of entire programs that haven’t been formally reauthorized. The most expensive by far of these are veterans’ health care and the next most costly supports drug development and opioid addiction treatment. Getting rid of them wouldn’t be efficient and it’s hard to imagine that the public wants to zero out that spending.
Acting without expertise and lots of arrogance was also Musk’s approach in another high-profile venture, taking over Twitter. According to the book “Character Limit,” by technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, after Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, he sent top deputies from his electric car and satellite businesses to implement mass firings and policy shifts. Done quickly and without any real analysis, Musk’s approach put the organization in legal jeopardy and lost them many advertisers, the largest source of its revenue.
Rebranded as X, the company is worth 80 percent less than what Musk paid. That’s what comes from his attempts to achieve efficiency.
Another threat comes from Trump acting as an imperial president. Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Office of Management and Budget and a Project 2025 architect, argues that Trump can just refuse to spend money Congress appropriates. Trump praised this in Orwellian terms, saying Vought, “will help us return Self Governance to the People.”
As Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy and congressional Republicans try to use positive language to sell their harmful agenda, with concerted pushback they likely will fail to persuade.
While an outcry from constituents could normally thwart them, if Trump tries Vought’s plan, it will be challenged in court but no one can be confident that the Supreme Court won’t go along with this unprecedented expansion of presidential power.
