GOP budget plan would take from the poorest 40 percent and give it to the rich: Yale

The budget plan being contemplated by congressional Republicans would represent a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest 40 percent of Americans to the richest 1 percent of the country, according to a new analysis from Yale's Budget Lab.

As explained by researchers Harris Eppsteiner and John Ricco, the GOP budget under consideration would include $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over a ten-year window.

The reason that the budget would have such an extreme impact on the wealth of the poorest 40 percent of the country, they explain, is because the GOP is looking at cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over ten years, while at the same time cutting Medicaid by $880 billion over ten years.

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"The overall effect of these three policy changes would be regressive, shifting after-tax-and-transfer resources away from tax units (members of a household filing a tax return together) at the bottom of the distribution towards those at the top," write Eppsteiner and Ricco. "Tax units at the bottom of the income distribution would see a reduction in after-tax-and-transfer income of 5%, those in the middle of the distribution would see a modest increase of 0.6%, and those in the top five percent of tax units would see an increase of 3%. More than 100% of the net fiscal benefit would accrue to the top quintile."

The massive cuts to Medicaid come despite the fact that President Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged not to cut the program, although independent analysts have said that there is no way for Republicans to finance such a package without making steep cuts to Medicaid.

Read the full analysis here.