Next federal budget resolution will be worse

The House Budget resolution that almost shut down the government was the first of two. The one last Friday was for this year. The one for next year passed two weeks ago. It has big cuts in services and big tax breaks.

Budget two contains huge tax breaks for the richest 1 percent, those who annually earn over $743,000 each year. On average this group will get an additional $62,000 each year until the year 2034. The total given to the rich is about the same as the cuts, also in the resolution, for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Let’s say this another way. “The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people — one in five people in the U.S. — who have health coverage through Medicaid,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Middle income people also get some of the tax cuts. If your family makes less than $96,000 per year your cut will be $400 per year on average. With that, a family could buy a McDonald’s Happy Meal about once every four days during the year. The average for each family in the top 1% would be about 13,500 Happy Meals.

Giveaways to the rich, cuts for the poor, Happy Meals for most of us.

And they may pass the tax benefits and cuts to services in the same way they did with funding the government for this year. Threaten a government shutdown if Democrats don’t give them enough votes.

David Osterberg is a former state legislator, emeritus professor of Public Health at the U of Iowa, and former economics professor at Cornell College. He was the leader of the Iowa Policy Project which lately merged into Common Good Iowa. He lives in Mount Vernon.