If President Trump really wants to go to bat for the people who voted for him, he won’t slash government safety net programs.
One of President Trump’s major voting blocs was white voters without a college education. They made up a third of the total electorate, and nearly two-thirds of them voted for Trump in the past election, according to a Pew Research report.
At the same time, this bloc of voters represents the largest group lifted above the poverty line by the safety net, according to a new paper published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
That poses a contradiction: while Republicans want to cut government programs for low and moderate-income Americans, many of their constituents rely on those programs to survive.
“The safety net lifted 6.2 million working-age white adults without a college degree out of poverty in 2014,” the CBPP report revealed. A total of 12.2 million working-age adults without college degrees were kept out of poverty by the safety net.
The CBPPs report explains how the safety net plays a critical role in keeping people above the poverty line, whether through programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, previously known as food stamps), housing subsidies or other tax credits.
What’s more, some 6.2 million non-college educated whites also benefitted from Obamacare between 2010 and 2015, according to a report by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Obamacare is also in the crosshairs by Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to be gutted.
Having been elected by promising to fight for hard-working Americans, it’d be a shame to watch President Trump sell out his base.