Letter: Trump leaving supporters behind

David Brooks, in a March 17 opinion column in the New York Times, writes about the diminishing influence of Steve Bannon in the Trump administration.

Donald Trump was elected because he ran on Bannon’s populist agenda, appealing to working class voters in the industrialized Midwest and Pennsylvania, primarily because he voiced their concerns about social, cultural, and economic issues.

According to Brooks, Bannon’s philosophy was, “Close off trade and immigration. Fund a jobs-creating infrastructure program. Reverse the Republican desire to reform and reduce entitlements. Increase funding on all sorts of programs that benefit working-class voters.”

Instead of dealing with the decaying infrastructure and jobs, Trump went along with Paul Ryan’s health care plan, which “punishes the very people Trump and Bannon had vowed to help.” It would greatly increase premiums on those nearing retirement age and those whose earnings are a bit too high to qualify for Medicaid.

The Trump budget is even worse, cutting programs that would provide job-training and infrastructure rebuilding jobs. Rather than help the working class, Trump’s budget would cut taxes for the rich and make defense contractors even richer.

Brooks concludes, “We’re ending up with the worst of the new guard Trumpian populists and the old guard Republican libertarians. We’re building walls to close off the world while also shifting wealth from the poor to the rich.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Letter: Trump leaving supporters behind."