When Donald Trump was president, he repeatedly tried to raise rents. at least 4 million of the poorest people in this country, many of whom are elderly or disabled. He proposed cutting federal disability benefits by a quarter of a million low-income childrenon the grounds that another member of their family was already receiving benefits. He tried to force poor parents to cooperate with them. enforcement of child supportespecially having single mothers disclose their sexual historiesbefore they and their children can receive food aid.

He tried to make a rule allow employers to pocket workers’ tips. And he did it make a rule deny overtime pay to millions of low-wage workers if they earned more than $35,568 a year.

Trump and his vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, ran a campaign that they said prioritized the working class, promising to protect ordinary Americans from an influx of workers. migrant workto return manufacturing jobs in the United States, to support rural areas and families with children and, generally speaking, to stick to the elites.

Critics respond by citing Project 2025, a potential plan for a second Trump presidency that proposes deep cuts to the social safety net for low-income families, as well as greater tax breaks for the rich. But Trump, despite its obvious links with its authors, said that Project 2025 did not represent him.

Yet his views on the working class and the poor are reflected in the specific actions he attempted to take when, as president, he had the power to make public policy.

ProPublica examined Trump’s proposed budgets from 2018 to 2021, as well as regulations he attempted to enact or revise through his departmental agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and of Social Services, as well as quasi-independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Social Security Administration.

We found that when Trump was in the White House, he pushed an agenda within his administration to cut health care, food and housing programs and job protections for poor Americans and the working class.

“Trump has proposed far deeper cuts to low- and moderate-income programs than any other president, including Reagan, by far,” said Robert Greenstein, a longtime federal expert on the issue. of poverty policy which recently published an article for the Brookings Institution on the budgets of Trump’s first term.

Trump failed to achieve many of these goals, largely because he failed to pursue them until the second half of his term. According to journalists covering him at the time, he had been unprepared to win the presidency in 2016, not to mention filling key positions and developing a legislative and regulatory strategy on poverty issues.

He actually had control of the House and Senate during his first two years in office, but he used up his only chances for success. budget reconciliation (annual budget bills that cannot be filibustered by the opposing party) to cut taxes for the rich and trying to repeal Obamacare. In 2019, there was little time left for its government agencies to develop new regulations and get them through the lengthy process. federal regulations process and handle any legal challenges.

Trump and his allies appear focused about not repeating such mistakes if he wins the White House again. Republican leaders in Congress I said that this time, if they regain majorities in both chambers, they will use their reconciliation bills to combine new tax cuts with aggressive reductions in social spending. Meanwhile, Trump would likely propose new regulations earlier in his term, in part so legal challenges would have a chance to be heard in court. Supreme Court with a solid conservative majority that he created.

If he sticks to his proposals from the first term, this would mean:

• Eliminating the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, by billions of dollars.
• Cancelation nearly a million children eligibility for free school meals.
• Freezing Pell Grants for low-income students so that they are not adjusted for inflation.
• Revise and significantly reduce the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, in part by defining individuals whose assets exceed $2,250 as not being poor enough to receive assistance and reducing the minimum monthly food stamp amount from $23 to zero.
• Eliminate several programs designed to increase the supply of and investment in affordable housing in low-income communities.
• Eliminate a program that helps poor families heat their homes and be prepared for power outages and other energy crises.
• Contraction Employment body and cutting funding for job training programs – which help move people off government assistance – by almost half.
• Restrict the collective bargaining rights 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 benefits low-income Americans. He cut in half the open enrollment periods during which people can buy health insurance under the ACA, and he reduced more than 80% funding efforts to help low-income people and others navigate the system. This has particularly affected people with special needs or who have limited access or comfort with the Internet.

Following these and other changes, the number of uninsured people in the United States increased in 2017 for the first time since the law was passed, then increased again in 2018 and 2019. That year, 2.3 million fewer Americans had insurance disease than when Trump came to power, including 700,000 fewer children.

President Joe Biden reversed many of these changes. But Trump could reverse them, especially if he has a majority in Congress.

Perhaps the main thing Trump did with its administrative power During his first term – which he openly wants to do more of – it will be about reducing the civil service, that is to say the apolitical federal employees whom he collectively calls “the deep state”.

It would also 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 services to people with disabilities and survivor benefits and housing assistance to low-income families in times of need, rely heavily on mid-level staff in Washington, D.C., and field offices to process applications and provide assistance to individuals.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not respond to a detailed list of questions from ProPublica about whether Trump wanted to distance himself from his first-term record on working-class issues or whether his program for the second term would be different.

Instead, she focused on Social Security and Medicare, saying Trump protected those programs during his first term and I would do it again. “By unleashing American energy, slashing job-killing regulations, and enacting pro-growth, America First tax and trade policies, President Trump will quickly rebuild the greatest economy in history.” , Leavitt said.

A new in appearance 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 argued that more federal spending on welfare programs is not the solution to poverty and that the poor need to be less dependent on government assistance and show more responsibility. personal.

And working-class voters – especially white men without college degrees who feel their economic situation is compromised. decreased compared to other demographic groups – have joined the Trump movement in growing numbers. Additionally, some counties that have seen a large increase in food stamp use in recent years keep voting for himdespite its attempts to cut this and other programs that people in these places rely on. (All that said, Trump supporters are better on average than the media often depicts them as.)

Meanwhile, pandemic relief, including stimulus checksactually began under the Trump administration and has helped reduce poverty rates. But these 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 and high-poverty communities — with Vance repeatedly touting his Adjacent to the Appalachians roots — it’s surprising that journalists haven’t paid more attention to Trump’s first-term budgets and proposals on these issues, said Greenstein, the poverty policy expert.

Would Trump, if he had a second term, continue the actions of the Biden administration? efforts to ensure that the IRS is not disproportionately control taxes on the poor? Would he defend Biden’s social protection reformsaimed at ensuring that states actually use welfare money to help low-income families?

Trump hasn’t faced many of these questions on the campaign trail, in debates or interviews, because candidates and the journalists who cover them tend to focus more on the middle class.