Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, July 11, 2025 "You're All About to Lose a Lot of Valuable Services"

A Liberal Dose

“You’re All About to Lose a Lot of Valuable Services”

Troy D. Smith

Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has been passed and signed into law. Surveys show it to be an extremely unpopular bill -except, I guess, among the roughly 800 billionaires in America, of whom 33 make a billion or more a year- because of the massive tax breaks in it for them. Those are the folks Donald Trump works for, and respects… not the working class and middle class in America, including his own followers. The “bottom” sixty percent of Americans will wind up paying roughly the same amount, or -the lower you get in that group -significantly more. Meanwhile, the deficit -which Republicans claim must be brought down every time a Democrat is in the White House -will go up by over three trillion dollars. (By the way, over the last half-century, the deficit has always gone UP under Republican presidents, and DOWN under Democrats. Look it up.)

However, the Trump administration has brought down some expenses. Through all the mass firings of government workers Elon’s college-aged DOGE wonder boys have made, for starters. And we’ve seen the effects. In addition to killing Meals on Wheels, Americorps, and Head Start, we have seen the gutting of PUBLIC parks (which Trump now wants to charge admission to enter), the Federal Aviation Administration, leading to skeleton crews of air traffic controllers and to a huge upsurge in delays and crashes, and medical research (by the way, Trump has ordered a halt on all research into sickle cell anemia, a disease that is closely associated with the African American community, because of “DEI”).

Oh… and the cuts have severely hamstrung NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which oversees the National Weather Service. When they started doing that, right after the inauguration, I warned in this column that there were about to be a lot more weather-related fatalities once the government’s ability to track storms and floods has been hampered, as well as their ability to issue timely warnings and coordinate responses. Trump supporters have been crying out loudly that those cuts had nothing to do with the results of the terrible Texas flood that killed over a hundred people last week. But here are some facts about the region that flooded: the National Weather Services in San Angelo was missing a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist. The San Antonio office was also missing a meteorologist, with a warning coordination specialty (theirs took Elon’s early retirement offer) as well as a science offer. All told, twice as many unfilled positions as they normally have. Did that cause the flood? No. But it sure as heck didn’t help in efforts to mitigate the damage and save lives.

Remember how, on the campaign trail, Trump promised up and down that he would never touch Medicaid? Well, his new Big Beautiful Bill, which I guess they’ll now rename the Large Lovely Law, cuts ONE TRILLION DOLLARS from Medicaid, which will result in eleven million people losing their health insurance (and a lot of them dying). Well, after all, as Republican Joni Ernst said, “We are all going to die”. And as Mitch McConnell said, “They’ll get over it.” “To heck with those lazy poor people,” you might say. Except… eleven million people unable to go to the hospital will have dire consequences for hospitals, especially rural ones, who get a large percentage of their money from Medicaid. Already, the only hospitals in Sparta and Smithville are on the list of about a dozen statewide that are expected to have to close down as a result of this law. Fact is, in the past few years several rural hospitals have closed, including a couple in our region… because our state’s Republican politicians refused to accept the federal government’s offer to expand Medicaid, because they think Medicaid is “socialist”. (Side note: remember that viral clip of the elderly Republican lady in 2008 saying “That socialist Obama… better keeps his hands off my Medicaid!”)

Well, you may say, “I always go to the Cookeville hospital anyway.” Guess what -everyone in Sparta and Smithville will be going to Cookeville now, which will overwhelm them… can you imagine the wait times? Or you might say “I’m not on Medicaid, I’m on Tenncare (or my mom is, or my nana).” Guess what. TENNCARE IS MEDICAID.

But I guess it’s okay, because under this new law billionaires can count the entire cost of their private jets off on their taxes now. And Trump can hire 10,000 more ICE agents (they probably get their masks in bulk), and maybe toss in a few alligators to eat immigrants.

Remember when Project 2025 leaked and Trump claimed he had never even heard of it, and had no intention of doing the things in it? And every time I brought it up, people accused me of spreading fake news, because Trump said he wasn’t going to do it? And how I kept saying “Trump lies constantly”? Everything that has been done the last six months is from the Project 2025 playbook.

Donald Trump is not a salesman, he is a con artist, and always has been. He has no respect, compassion, or even interest in the middle and working class, whom he views only as rubes to be cheated. He led you on, he lied to you, he conned you, into voting him into office… and now he has no use for you, and he is going to fleece you like a three-legged sheep. And I haven’t even mentioned (this week!) the havoc he is wreaking on the economy.

By the way, the very WORST parts of the new law are designed not to go into effect until after the midterm elections, so voters won’t notice they’ve been conned. Look into it.

No one should be embarrassed over being conned by a master. But you should not fall for the same tricks over and over again. Get out there in the midterm elections and make your vote count.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE