Donald Trump’s presidency is going to be an absolute disaster for the white working class, the white poor, and every other economically struggling person in America. The people the media is crediting with Trump’s win have a tremendous amount to lose.

Lower-income whites are not going to suffer from Trump’s restrictions on Muslims traveling, or from his mass deportations, or from his cavalier attitude toward police brutality. But Trump has promised an economic agenda that will increase the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions, that will eliminate crucial safety net programs for low- and moderate-income Americans, that could start a trade war that drives up prices and devastates the economy, and that will put in place a tax code that exacerbates inequality and leaves many families with children worse off.

Paul Ryan’s budget cuts could send millions of children into extreme poverty

After the end of welfare, food stamps were the last cash-like benefit upon which people without earnings could rely. Ryan will put an end to that.

Sixty-nine percent of the cuts in his last budget came from programs for people with low or moderate incomes, including $137 billion over 10 years from food stamps (now the block grant), up to $125 billion from Pell Grants, and another $150 billion or more from other low-income programs like Supplemental Security Income and the earned income tax credit. Medicaid would be cut by more than a quarter through the block grant.

These are changes that will dramatically decrease insurance coverage among the poor, increase hunger, and greatly exacerbate poverty in its most extreme form. A

Trump will likely oversee the most vicious cuts to programs for poor and medium-income people of any president since Reagan — and could very well go further than Reagan did. The result will almost certainly be a massive increase in uninsurance for the lower-income working people currently covered by Medicaid, an increase in poverty and hunger for the working poor on food stamps, and a large increase in extreme poverty.

Trump will rob at least 20 million people of their health insurance
Trump’s plan is to make health insurance costs tax-deductible. This proposal is well to the right of the kind of thing Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Mitt Romney have championed in the past. Generally the alternative has been to create a uniform tax credit, most likely a refundable one. That way, some benefit goes to poor people who don’t have a positive income tax burden. Trump doesn’t do that. Instead, he limits the benefit to people rich enough to pay taxes.