When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise the rent on at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of them elderly or disabled. He proposed to cut the federal disability benefits of a quarter-million low-income children, on the grounds that someone else in their family was already receiving benefits. He attempted to put in place a requirement that poor parents cooperate with child support enforcement, including by having single mothers disclose their sexual histories, before they and their children could receive food assistance.
He tried to enact a rule allowing employers to pocket workers’ tips. And he did enact a rule denying overtime pay to millions of low-wage workers if they made more than $35,568 a year.
Trump and his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance have been running a campaign that they say puts the working class first, vowing to protect everyday Americans from an influx of immigrant labor, to return manufacturing jobs to the U.S., to support rural areas and families with children and, generally, to stick it to the elites.
Critics reply by citing Project 2025, a potential blueprint for a second Trump presidency that proposes deep cuts to the social safety net for lower-income families alongside more large tax breaks for the wealthy. But Trump, despite his clear ties to its authors, has said that Project 2025 doesn’t represent him.
Still, his views on working-class and poor people can be found in specific actions that he tried to take when, as president, he had the power to make public policy.
ProPublica reviewed Trump’s proposed budgets from 2018 to 2021, as well as regulations that he attempted to enact or revise via his cabinet agencies, including the departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services, and also quasi-independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Social Security Administration.
We found that while Trump was in the White House, he advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut health care, food and housing programs and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans.
“Trump proposed significantly deeper cuts to programs for low- and modest-income people than any other president ever has, including Reagan, by far,” said Robert Greenstein, a longtime federal poverty policy expert who recently published a paper for the Brookings Institution on Trump’s first-term budgets.
Trump was stymied in reaching many of these goals largely because he was inefficient about pursuing them until the second half of his term. According to reporters covering him at the time, he’d been unprepared to win the presidency in 2016, let alone to fill key positions and develop a legislative and regulatory strategy on poverty issues.
He did have control of both the House and Senate during his first two years in office, but he used his only shots at budget reconciliation (annual budget bills that can’t be filibustered by the opposing party) to cut taxes for the rich and to try to repeal Obamacare. By 2019, there wasn’t much time left for his cabinet agencies to develop new regulations, get them through the long federal rulemaking process and deal with any legal challenges.
Trump and his allies appear focused on not repeating such mistakes should he win the White House again. Republican leaders in Congress have said that this time, if they retake majorities in both chambers, they’ll use their reconciliation bills to combine renewed tax cuts with aggressive cuts to social spending. Meanwhile, Trump would likely put forward new regulations earlier in his term, in part so that legal challenges to them get a chance to be heard before a Supreme Court with a solid conservative majority he created.
If he relies on his first-term proposals, that would mean:
- Cutting the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, by billions of dollars.
- Rescinding nearly a million kids’ eligibility for free school lunches.
- Freezing Pell grants for lower-income college students so that they’re not adjusted for inflation.
- Overhauling and substantially cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps, in part by defining people with assets exceeding $2,250 as not being poor enough to receive aid and reducing the minimum monthly food stamp amount from $23 to zero.
- Eliminating multiple programs designed to increase the supply of and investment in affordable housing in lower-income communities.
- Eliminating a program that helps poor families heat their homes and be prepared for power outages and other energy crises.
- Shrinking Job Corps and cutting funding for work-training programs — which help people get off of government assistance — nearly in half.
- Restricting the collective bargaining rights of unions, through which workers fight for better wages and working conditions.
Trump also never gave up on his goal of dismantling the Affordable Care Act, which disproportionately serves lower-income Americans. He cut in half the open-enrollment windows during which people can sign up for health insurance under the ACA, and he cut over 80% of the funding for efforts to help lower-income people and others navigate the system. This especially affected those with special needs or who have limited access to or comfort with the internet.
As a result of these and other changes, the number of uninsured people in the U.S. increased in 2017 for the first time since the law was enacted, then increased again in 2018 and in 2019. By that year, 2.3 million fewer Americans had health insurance than when Trump came into power, including 700,000 fewer children.
President Joe Biden has reversed many of these changes. But Trump could reverse them back, especially if he has majorities in Congress.
Perhaps the main thing that Trump did with his administrative power during his first term — that he openly wants to do more of — is reduce the civil service, meaning the nonpolitical federal employees whom he collectively calls “the Deep State.”
This, too, would have a disproportionately negative impact on programs serving poor and working Americans. Agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provide disability and survivor benefits and housing assistance to lower-income families in times of need, rely heavily on midlevel staff in Washington, D.C., and local offices to process claims and get help to people.
Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not respond to a detailed list of questions from ProPublica about whether Trump wants to distance himself from his first-term record on issues affecting working-class people or whether his second-term agenda would be different.
Instead, she focused on Social Security and Medicare, saying that Trump protected those programs in his first term and would do so again. “By unleashing American energy, slashing job-killing regulations, and adopting pro-growth America First tax and trade policies, President Trump will quickly rebuild the greatest economy in history,” Leavitt said.
One new ostensibly pro-worker policy that Trump, as well as his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, have proposed: ending taxes on tips.
Trump officials and Republican politicians have long said that more federal spending on safety net programs is not the solution to poverty and that poor people need to be less dependent on government aid and exercise more personal responsibility.
And working-class voters — especially white men without a college degree who feel that their economic standing has diminished relative to other demographic groups — have joined the Trump movement in increasing numbers. What’s more, some counties that have seen large upticks in food stamp usage in recent years continue to vote for him, despite his attempts to shrink that program and others that people in these places rely on. (All that said, Trump’s supporters are better off on average than the media often portrays them to be.)
Meanwhile, pandemic relief, including stimulus checks, did start during the Trump administration and helped reduce poverty rates. But those efforts were temporary responses to a crisis and were mostly proposed by Democrats in Congress; they were hardly part of Trump’s governing agenda.
Amid a presidential race that has at times focused on forgotten, high-poverty communities — with Vance repeatedly touting his Appalachian-adjacent roots — it is surprising that journalists haven’t applied more scrutiny to Trump’s first-term budgets and proposals on these issues, said Greenstein, the poverty policy expert.
Would Trump, given a second term, continue the Biden administration’s efforts to make sure that the IRS isn’t disproportionately auditing the taxes of poor people? Would he defend Biden’s reforms to welfare, aimed at making sure that states actually use welfare money to help lower-income families?
Trump hasn’t faced many of these questions on the campaign trail or in debates or interviews, as the candidates and reporters covering them tend to focus more on the middle class.
–Eli Hager, ProPublica
Judith G. Michaud says
I wish people would read just the first 5 pages of Project 2025 and see how many things are going to be taken away from us little guys and how much the wealthy will benefit! Trump has never and will never help the middle or lower class. It’s all about the rich ! Why are people not researching before they vote!
Not Trump says
In all fairness, Trump has stated repeatedly he has no connection to the Heritage Groups Project 2025.
Sherry says
@not trump. . . and you believe that pathological lier? Really? You do know that many of his closest horrific cohorts contributed to Project 2025, right?
JimboXYZ says
Pocketing worker’s tips, that was a thing even back in the 1960’s & 1970’s. there’s always going to be dirtbag employers that try to pull that. And while that practiced has happened 50-60+ years ago, it’s happened ever since too. Context though, some employers have a system of those that are tipped that must tip out their co-workers for the support of their waiter/waitressing as the frontline & face of the business. Those waiters/waitresses elected to work & be employed for those employers. Sometimes the economy doesn’t cooperate and the split(s)/share(s) are never going to be enough to make everyone happy for a earnings for a shift. There are jobs that tip that the earnings can be considerably better than minimum wage.
Wallingford says
Donald Trump does not fight for the working class. As a business owner he did not pay many of his contractors or, after being sued, paid a much lower settlement amount. No tax on Social Security – most SS recipients do not make enough to pay tax on Social Security. Any tariffs charged to China or any other Country will cost the working class approximately $4,000 per year. Mass deportation will cause a labor shortage, increase inflation thereby causing the middle class to pay more for goods. Project 2025 will eliminate many benefits which the middle class already has. As far as his supporters who are members of the middle class, they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in Legal Fees for his illegal activities and more cases are coming into Courts. Trump, along with Musk, are being sue in a French Court by an Algerian Female Boxer for defamation. The Central Park 5 is suing Trump for defamation. And the Scottish government is examining the Trump Organization acquisition of golf courses.
The dude says
Stop already.
You’re just getting the MAGAs all excited…
Too much spray tanner and too much rouge, leaves them a little excited and and a little confused.
But the felonies are like the cherry on top.
They’re so weird.
Laurel says
There has been a successful agenda to shrink the middle class since the 1970s. The middle class is too hard to control, so they are purposely diminished. Meanwhile, the wealthy get more breaks and loopholes. MAGAs do not understand this, and don’t believe it when told they are voting against their own interests. So, the agenda continues.
Atwp says
Millions have cast their ballots for him,if he win the election, some of his voters will loose many benifits in place now. Many will die because of his social cuts.
BillC says
Trump is for working class Americans? HA! Trump’s new best buddy, Elon Musk, has agreed to lead a Trump proposed cabinet level “government efficiency commission”. When Musk took over Twitter (now X) it had 7500 workers. He immediately fired 3700 by email. X is now worth almost 80% less than two years ago when Elon Musk bought it, according to estimates from investment giant Fidelity. Now Musk is warning that he’ll use his new powers to cause drastic shocks to the economy, resulting in “hardship” for many Americans. Speaking at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last Sunday, Musk said he wants to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. This from the richest man in the world worth 270 billion. That’s why Trump likes him.
Sure, they both have the interests of the average working person at heart. BS.
tulip says
trump is going to give RFK the job of running the medical programs and HS!! In other words women will be controlled, so will people who want vaccines and other care. Imagine Trump and RFK controlling what a woman can and cannot do? Just think about what the women who are in their childbearing years are going to endure and young girls who make a mistake and wind up pregnant and, if there is a problem, will be neglected. And also the men in their lives better give some very serious thought to what they will endure when their loved ones get punished by trumps reproductive and medical rules. They will have all the people who voted for tyrannical trump and rotten Rotten RFK to thank for the deaths and/or damage to these women and girls.
Skibum says
If Trump, God forbid, wins this presidential election on Tuesday, those poorest in this country will continue to suffer the most. This includes the many rural conservative voters who, year after year, continue to vote in republi-cons while thinking it will help them eventually move out of their dilapidated trailers in states like West Virginia, in the appilation, back woods hideouts, in the Oklahoma wastelands where some parents cannot afford to buy shoes for their children. The out of work coal miners in red states who continue to vote republi-con, thinking our nation will somehow start heating our nation’s millions and millions of homes again with coal-fired furnaces because Trump has said that “beautiful, clean coal” will be coming back if he is elected… are delusional and misrepresented by these snake oil salesmen of the republi-con Trump cult party. But, alas, these loyal conservatives keep voting (R) over and over again, thinking things will get better for them, while things actually get worse and worse over time. Go figure.
dave says
Trump will fight for know one but himself. ANd there he is standing around McDonalds which has had a 100% increase in prices.
Inflation: +31% across all items (Jan. 2014 to Jan. 2024)
Change in average menu prices for ten popular items over the past decade, per FinanceBuzz:
McDonald’s: +100%
Popeyes: +86%
Taco Bell: +81%
Chipotle: +75%
Jimmy John’s: +62%
Arby’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A: +55%
Panera Bread: +54%
Starbucks, Subway: +39%
Laurel says
Trump, for the workers, now there’s a joke! He put on a uniform apron, for the first time in his life, in a closed McDonald’s, and didn’t know what a fryer was. Called it a “whatever you call it.” Kind of like supposedly country boy Vance didn’t know how to order a dozen doughnuts “Just put in whatever makes sense.” Now there’s a decisive guy. Also reminds me of GHW Bush, who was amazed at scanners in a grocery store. The world is just full of surprises, especially when you have no clue how most of the citizens live! Yeah, they are for the workers.
How many of these clowns can fit into a phone booth?
David S. says
If tRUMP wins we are off to Canada and I am not kidding….
Mary Koonce says
To the person holding up the Confederate flag by McDonald’s we are tired of your bigotry. Hope you have the day you TRULY DESERVE.
jackson says
Champions of the battle flag argue “it’s not a racial thing,” but it’s tough to deny the pattern has strong links to slavery.
Those who believe slavery was not a central point of conflict in the Civil War may wish to peruse the South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas declarations of secession. Those documents all explicitly cite threats to slavery as reasons for secession. Mississippi’s declaration goes so far as to say that “a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson, as quoted by the Civil War Trust, explains:
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states.
McPherson adds that the government refused to recognize the secession because they feared it would result in the U.S. turning into “several small, squabbling countries.”
James says
I donno about all you folks, but I I’m just wondering how long it will be before that McDonald’s apron shows up at auction… signed and authenticated by Heritage Auctions of course.
Along with a bunch of limited edition signed, numbered (and hopefully) encapsulated “Happy Meals.”
Just say’n.
James says
https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/pool-shot.jpg?ssl=1
Come to think of it. Did Trump pick up the tab for that McDonald franchise’s subsequent code violations? He’s serving food without gloves and he’s not wearing a hair net.
Just two more items that COULD have been auctioned off later… definitely a sign of mental decline.
Just my opinion.
James says
https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/pool-shot.jpg?ssl=1
Well, I don’t know about the hair net and gloves… but McDonald is pretty close to those straws. Does anyone know if he touched any of them?
How many straws do you think that despenser can hold? My guess, not much more than two hundred. Hey, you gotta watch out for ebay fraudsters peddle’n false articles.
Just some advice.
Joe D says
Well it’s 12/02/24…and Donald Trump WON the election…I’m Saving the link to this story and comments thread, so approximately 18 months into the Trump 2.0 disaster, I can show my Trump voting acquaintances where Trump stood during his first administration, and yet they voted for him THIS TIME…and are SURPRISED things probably will be MUCH worse for the average working people unhappy with the Biden administration.
I SERIOUSLY hope I’m wrong…but I don’t think I am…GOD help us ALL!