The poor will remain poor - by design

Many Democrats want to pass President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief proposal, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks and aid to local governments. A group of Republican senators is pushing for a smaller plan that would provide $1,000 checks.

So Democratic leaders are preparing to use a process known as budget reconciliation, which would allow them to pass Biden's proposal without getting 60 votes in the Senate, which would require at least 10 Republicans.

But under the Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, known as PAYGO, new laws that raise the national debt automatically trigger offsetting cuts in some safety net programs.

The cuts can be avoided, budget experts say, only with 60 Senate votes — leaving Democrats back where they started, because it's unclear whether Republicans would vote to prevent the cuts after having opposed a partisan relief package.

"It's Medicare. It's farm subsidies," said Marc Goldwein, a budget expert at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "It's a bunch of programs that would be cut."

The size of the reductions in Medicare and other social safety net program would depend on the size of the package, but they'd be significant even if the price tag fell under $1 trillion. Social Security and low-income programs would be exempt.

"The cuts would be huge," said Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. "It's a critical issue, which, at some point, is going to have to be dealt with."

[...]

[Bernie Sanders' spokesman, Keane Bhat] pointed to the last time budget reconciliation was used to make a big change — when Republicans passed a costly tax cut on a partisan vote, which triggered $25 billion in Medicare cuts. But Democrats joined Republicans to prevent the cuts from taking effect in a government funding measure that was passed subsequently.

"Trump and his Republican colleagues used deficit spending to pass $2 trillion in tax breaks overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest and large corporations and expanding a military budget with a Pentagon that has never been independently audited," Bhatt said. "When it comes to feeding children who are hungry or treating people who are sick in the middle of a pandemic, funding cuts due to supposed concerns over the deficit would be unacceptable and immoral."

  NBC

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.