A millionaire gets a $61,000 tax cut while your child’s teacher gets laid off due to “budget constraints.” Your family pays more for healthcare while corporations pay record-low tax rates. This isn’t coincidence—it’s the GOP’s deliberate playbook, and it’s playing out right now across America.
The Pattern Behind the “Fiscal Crisis”
For forty years, Republicans have perfected what they call “starve the beast”—a cynical strategy that creates budget emergencies to justify slashing the public services working families depend on. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations
Step 2: Watch deficits grow
Step 3: Declare a “fiscal crisis”
Step 4: Demand cuts to “wasteful” spending on schools, healthcare, and infrastructure
Step 5: Repeat
The numbers tell the story. Under Trump’s tax law, the top 1% of households—those making over $835,000—receive average tax cuts of more than $61,000 in 2025. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% of families, those earning less than $90,000, get less than $500. When these tax cuts expire, guess whose get extended and whose disappear?
Real Families Pay the Price
While wealthy donors celebrate their windfalls, here’s what happens to everyone else. The House GOP’s 2025 budget slashes education funding by $24.6 billion—that’s an 11% cut that would eliminate 224,000 teaching positions during a nationwide teacher shortage.
In healthcare, Republican plans would strip coverage from 17 million Americans by cutting Medicaid, CHIP, and Affordable Care Act subsidies by 54% over the next decade. Rural hospitals, already struggling, would face impossible choices between closing emergency rooms or shuttering entirely.
The human cost is staggering. Title I cuts of $4.7 billion would directly impact 5.1 million English-learning students, while eliminating early childhood education for 51,000 children. These aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet—they’re kids who won’t get the support they need to succeed.
Project 2025: Making It Even Worse
The extreme agenda laid out in Project 2025 would accelerate this wealth transfer. A typical middle-class family of four would pay $3,000 more in taxes annually, while 45,000 households making over $10 million would each receive between $1.5 and $2.4 million in additional tax cuts.
The plan calls for gutting 60% of public schools’ federal funding through voucher schemes that primarily benefit families already sending their kids to private schools. It’s a direct attack on the 90% of American children who attend public schools.
The Shutdown Strategy
When Congress won’t voluntarily slash services, Republicans manufacture crises. The October 2025 government shutdown—orchestrated by far-right Republicans—exemplified this tactics. Essential services stopped while tax cuts for the wealthy continued flowing automatically.
Remember December 2024, when Trump and Musk used social media to sabotage a bipartisan funding deal? Federal workers faced furloughs, national parks closed, and critical health programs nearly shut down. Yet capital gains tax rates for wealthy investors remained untouched.
We’ve Seen This Movie Before
Kansas provides the perfect case study. From 2012 to 2017, Governor Sam Brownback implemented massive tax cuts for wealthy residents and corporations, promising economic growth. Instead, schools closed early due to lack of funding, roads crumbled, and the state’s credit rating plummeted. The experiment failed so spectacularly that even Republican lawmakers revolted, overriding Brownback’s vetoes to restore funding.
Similar patterns played out in Louisiana and Wisconsin—tax cuts for the wealthy followed by devastating cuts to higher education, healthcare, and public services. The playbook is predictable because it works for those writing the checks.
Democrats Offer a Different Path
Democratic leaders understand that strong public services and fair taxation create prosperity for everyone. Instead of manufacturing budget crises, they’ve shown how strategic public investment—like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—creates jobs while rebuilding America’s foundation.
When wealthy individuals and profitable corporations pay their fair share, we can fund excellent schools, accessible healthcare, and modern infrastructure without forcing impossible choices on working families.
The Choice Is Clear
This November, voters face a fundamental choice about priorities. Do we want a system that gives millionaires massive tax breaks while teachers buy classroom supplies with their own money? Or do we want leaders who understand that investing in education, healthcare, and infrastructure benefits everyone?
The GOP’s fiscal shell game isn’t about responsibility—it’s about transferring wealth upward while convincing working families that there’s simply no money for the basics of a functioning society. But there is money. It’s just being redirected to those who need it least.
Every vote is a choice about whether America’s resources should serve a wealthy few or build opportunity for all. The shell game only works if we don’t see what’s happening. Now you do.