Old 'welfare queen' legends haunt Trump's budget plan

As the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives neared passage of President Donald Trump's beloved -- and enormous -- "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," my mind raced back as it often does in such debates to memories of the late Linda Taylor, a Chicago woman better known as "the welfare queen." That's not what she called herself. The nickname was coined either by the late George Bliss, a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, in 1974 or later by Jet magazine. Taylor ultimately was charged and convicted in 1977 of illegally obtaining 23 welfare checks, among other charges, and using two aliases. She died of a heart attack in 2002 in Ingalls Memorial Hospital, outside Chicago. Taylor the woman may be gone, but the "welfare queen" lives on in American political legend. She was first made famous by Ronald Reagan in his 1976 presidential campaign. In speech after speech he recounted her exploits in the characteristic Gipper story-telling style. Crowds ate it up. "She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veterans' benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands," said Reagan in a 1976 campaign speech in Asheville, North Carolina, quoted by the New York Times. Reagan didn't name her. He didn't say her race. But given the emergent dog-whistle rhetoric of the New Right, he didn't have to. "There's a woman in Chicago," he told a New Hampshire audience. Wink, wink. "And she's collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare and Social Security cards under each of several names. Her tax-free cash income alone was estimated at more than $150,000." Reagan's aim was to justify real-life changes to policies, including the shrinking of the social safety net, as recounted by Slate reporter Josh Levin in his award-winning biography "The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth," which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. And he succeeded — the imperative to dismantle the social safety net became bipartisan Beltway orthodoxy for decades after Reagan took power in 1981. Today, amid the ferocious debate over Trump's "Big Beautiful," I can hear echoes of the old "welfare queen" legend, particularly when lawmakers or other opportunists such as erstwhile DOGE operative Elon Musk cynically hack and slash away at programs and agencies Americans depend on. We depend on them to deal with our real problems, and the "fixes" appear designed to create new problems. Rep. George Latimer, a New York Democrat, called Trump's spending bill "Robin Hood in reverse" before voting against the House version. "This House Republican budget takes away money from people who desperately need it," he said, "and gives it to people who already have plenty of it." This was confirmed by experts at the Budget Lab at Yale, a research center, in its analysis of the Senate bill. "Americans who comprise the bottom fifth of all earners would see their annual after-tax incomes fall on average by 2.3 percent within the next decade," the Budget Lab concluded, while those at the top would see about a 2.3 percent boost, which factors in wages earned and government benefits received. "On average," as the New York Times summarized the findings, "that translates to about $560 in losses for someone who reports little to no income by 2034, and more than $118,000 in gains for someone making over $3 million, the report found. Martha Gimbel, the co-founder of the budget lab, described the Senate measure as 'highly regressive.' " Yet, Republicans have continued to defend the package as a win for all Americans. In theory, maybe. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it a "deal for working people" and claimed it would protect Medicaid. Once the legislation passed, Stephen Miran, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, heralded it as a boon for economic growth. Yet the fact remains that Republicans are only slightly offsetting significant tax cuts for the rich by decimating programs that help the poor, including food stamps and Medicaid. The suffering and financial burdens on these Americans will take a large toll on their lives. And for what? To cover only a fraction of the enormous cost of the bill, which will add more than $3 trillion to the federal debt by 2034. The cuts have been described as one of the largest retrenchments in the federal safety net in a generation. That sounds about right to me. But it also sounds wrong, deeply wrong. In a time when the suffering and seemingly hopeless prospects of America's poor are known to all who have eyes to see, the only fig leaf available to hide the obscenity of this bill is the old partisan charge of waste, fraud and abuse. Even after DOGE — especially after DOGE — that trope lacks any credibility. For now, another old saying comes to mind: Elections have consequences. As the full impact of the bill that looks increasingly like a big, beautiful disaster hits home, it may be left up to the voters to have the final word. I don't expect them — or us — to be filled with glee. Clarence Page is a senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.