It is time to thank President Trump for the great American comeback! According to his reelection website, he is keeping America great with his many promises kept. At this year’s State of the Union address, he said, “we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny.” Now that we are in an election year, what better time to evaluate our progress?
I know it’s a small thing, but the president’s recent rollback on healthy school lunches will help America stay No. 1 in obesity. Who needs healthy fruits and vegetables when our children can fill up on greasy burgers and fries at school? Ketchup is a vegetable again! As a matter of fact, Trump’s proposal to cut SNAP benefits could eliminate free school lunches for up to a million children nationwide. Thank goodness we don’t need to worry about hungry children downsizing our destiny.
Apparently education as a whole isn’t too important when considering the president’s $4 billion cut to Pell Grant programs. Another $4 billion in cuts would impact all types of programs, including help for low-income families. Thanks to Betsy Devos, his budget would increase incentives for private schools, though. At least Trump didn’t try to cut funding for Special Olympics again, like he did last year.
For years, the president has been promising the best health care for Americans. Here is a promise kept: we are number one — in costs, that is.
In 2018, the United States spent an average of $10,600 per person on health care. A whopping 17% of our GDP goes toward health care, well beyond any industrialized country in the world. Unfortunately, when it comes to life expectancy, we are a little behind the curve; we come in 43rd or 46th, depending upon the source. The infant mortality rate in the US is far worse than our modernized partners around the world. At 5.44 deaths per 1,000 born, we rank right between Croatia and Lithuania. When looking at suicide rates we see similar patterns. Globally we have the 34th-highest suicide rate, with 13.7 per 100,000.
Mental health, substance abuse, obesity, you name it, we’re not doing so well. Whether we believe in Medicare for all or building upon the Affordable Care Act by adding a public option, it’s easy to see that the current administration’s policies are hurting our nation. Trump’s Medicaid block grant scheme would deny health care to millions of low-income families and people with disabilities. Furthermore, it could deny prescription drug coverage and raise co-pays for people living in poverty. Restricting access to affordable health care and denying protections for pre-existing conditions would be like having de facto death panels.
One area where Trump is the undisputed champion is rolling back environmental protections. Clean water — who needs it? The repeal of Obama’s Waters of the United States rule now allows polluters to dump toxic substances into our waterways without a permit. So much for safe drinking water and wildlife habitat! Apparently clean air is overrated. Even though the world’s largest auto manufacturers were on board with Obama-era restrictions on emissions, Trump overruled the regulations and actually banned states from retaining clean air standards.
Other deregulations will allow coal power plants to emit more carbon dioxide. Oil and gas companies can relax methane monitoring, allowing more pollutants into our atmosphere. I suppose if you deny climate change, it’s no big deal. If you believe in science, well, that’s another matter altogether. Finally, the Trump administration is attempting to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Big construction projects are more important than threatened wildlife in this new era. Bald eagles, Florida manatees, humpback whales can take a back seat to corporate profits.
With all this success keeping America great, we must feel like Rocky at the top of the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We dwarf the rest of the world in military spending. We spend more on our military than the next seven countries combined. We must feel very safe now that we’ve abdicated most of our foreign policy to Russia.
We are also No. 1 in the number of firearms per person. There are actually more guns in America than people! Thanks to the NRA and the Republicans who kowtow to the lobbyists, the Senate has done nothing to curb gun violence. Only Brazil has more firearms deaths per year than we do. Looking at per capita rates of violent gun deaths, we are one of the most dangerous countries in the world, barely better than Iraq.
With Trump’s record trillion-dollar deficit, our growing income inequality, and a compromised justice department, maybe we need new slogan. How about, “With friends like Trump, who needs enemies?”
Tom Scanlan writes from Westminster.