Trump supporters who didn't take him literally are freaking out

Vox senior editor Sarah Kliff wrote a poignant account last week of her visit to Whitley County, Ky., where the uninsured rate declined 60 percent under Obamacare but 82 percent of voters supported Trump. There, Kliff, a former Washington Post colleague, found Trump voters who were downright frightened that the president-elect would do exactly — literally — what he and Republicans promised: repeal Obamacare.

Among those she found was Trump voter Debbie Mills, a store owner whose husband awaits a lifesaving liver transplant; they got insurance through Obamacare, and Mills is hoping the law won’t be repealed.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if it does go away,” Mills said. “I guess I thought that, you know, (Trump) would not do this. That they would not do this, would not take the insurance away. Knowing that it’s affecting so many people’s lives. I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot ... purchase, cannot pay for the insurance?”

Mills, who supported Trump for other reasons, figured Obamacare repeal was just talk. “I guess we really didn’t think about that, that he was going to cancel that or change that or take it away,” she said. “I guess I always just thought that it would be there. I was thinking that once it was made into a law that it could not be changed.”

Others who didn’t take Trump literally may soon face the same dilemma. The Urban Institute estimated this month that under the partial repeal plan previously passed by Republicans in Congress, 30 million people would lose insurance, 82 percent of them would be in working families and 56 percent would be white. Among adults who would lose insurance, 80 percent don’t have college degrees.

“The people hit the hardest are a lot of the demographics that went heavily for Trump,” observes Bob Greenstein, who runs the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal number-crunching group.

And it’s not just Obamacare. Take — literally — Trump’s “Penny Plan,” which would reduce nondefense discretionary spending by 1 percent each year for 10 years. It’s one of the more modest of Trump’s promises, yet Greenstein’s group calculates that, once inflation is factored in, it would require the government to cut by a third what it spends on such things as cancer and medical research, highways, air traffic, the Coast Guard, job training, education, Pell Grants, housing, energy, child care and food assistance, the administration of Social Security and Medicare, national parks, NASA, the IRS, Congress and the courts.

Take literally Trump’s promise to exempt public safety, and other cuts would have to be even deeper.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Vox senior editor Sarah Kliff wrote a poignant account last week of her visit to Whitley County, Ky., where the uninsured rate declined 60 percent under Obamacare but 82 percent of voters supported Trump. There, Kliff, a former Washington Post colleague, found Trump voters who were downright frightened that the president-elect would do exactly — literally — what he and Republicans promised: repeal Obamacare.

Among those she found was Trump voter Debbie Mills, a store owner whose husband awaits a lifesaving liver transplant; they got insurance through Obamacare, and Mills is hoping the law won’t be repealed.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if it does go away,” Mills said. “I guess I thought that, you know, (Trump) would not do this. That they would not do this, would not take the insurance away. Knowing that it’s affecting so many people’s lives. I mean, what are you to do then if you cannot ... purchase, cannot pay for the insurance?”



Mills, who supported Trump for other reasons, figured Obamacare repeal was just talk. “I guess we really didn’t think about that, that he was going to cancel that or change that or take it away,” she said. “I guess I always just thought that it would be there. I was thinking that once it was made into a law that it could not be changed.”

Others who didn’t take Trump literally may soon face the same dilemma. The Urban Institute estimated this month that under the partial repeal plan previously passed by Republicans in Congress, 30 million people would lose insurance, 82 percent of them would be in working families and 56 percent would be white. Among adults who would lose insurance, 80 percent don’t have college degrees.

“The people hit the hardest are a lot of the demographics that went heavily for Trump,” observes Bob Greenstein, who runs the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal number-crunching group.

And it’s not just Obamacare. Take — literally — Trump’s “Penny Plan,” which would reduce nondefense discretionary spending by 1 percent each year for 10 years. It’s one of the more modest of Trump’s promises, yet Greenstein’s group calculates that, once inflation is factored in, it would require the government to cut by a third what it spends on such things as cancer and medical research, highways, air traffic, the Coast Guard, job training, education, Pell Grants, housing, energy, child care and food assistance, the administration of Social Security and Medicare, national parks, NASA, the IRS, Congress and the courts.

Take literally Trump’s promise to exempt public safety, and other cuts would have to be even deeper.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/dana-milbank/dana-milbank-trump-voters-didn-t-take-him-literally-on/article_1334b3f2-421f-51e1-9a00-8c9ada2730a3.html

Original Quill wrote:Bless her....but Kentucky is where they marry their sisters.  They get confused.

Ben Reilly wrote:The part that kills me is:

“I guess we really didn’t think ... he was going to cancel that ... I was thinking that once it was made into a law that it could not be changed.”

And to think, Trump's plan also reduces education funding