From: Steve Schoettmer
Elizabethtown
The Republican-controlled Congress has come out with various versions of its “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans claim that these plans are vast improvements, great for America, cheaper and somehow will make our country more godly.
Yet all of their plans take insurance away from 15 million to 32 million Americans while simultaneously raising premiums out of the reach of others. All this is done while miraculously lowering benefits. Now, of course, some of these plans do allow you to buy cheap insurance; it’s just that the cheap plans really shouldn’t be called insurance because they insure virtually nothing.
A true gift to a people yearning to be free.
They are now trying to pass tax reform. Once again, they speak about the bounty that awaits poor and middle-class Americans. But even a casual glance of the plans tells you all you need to know:
- A $6 trillion tax cut to add to the $20 trillion national debt.
- $1.5 trillion cut from Medicaid and Medicare.
This plan is meant to do one thing, rape this country of its riches and hand it over to the top 1 percent.
The Republican Party used to believe in government; it used to have big plans and big ideas. Now it is all about me (as long as the me is ultra-rich). Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, Teddy Roosevelt established our national parks. Even Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency through executive order and allowed the U.S. Postal Service to unionize. (Side note: Now it seems all congressional and state-elected Republicans are anti-union and all right-to-work.)
Where has the Grand Old Party gone?
Don’t support those in Congress who now carry that label. All they do is protect the rich and the monopolies as they pass tax cuts for the 1 percent and take benefits from the poor and middle class. There is nothing grand to that. Nothing grand at all.
