House Republicans are now busily working to repeal the Affordable Care Act in secret. Even when the GOP plan is done and made public, the secrecy will continue. The potential impact will still be hidden from the public, as it’s likely to not have any score from the Congressional Budget Office before the House votes on… Continue reading “GOP still planning to gut Medicaid and Medicare”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s budget outline is “dead on arrival” and that proposed cuts to State Department funding “would be a disaster.”
“It’s dead on arrival. It’s not going to happen. It would be a disaster,” Graham said.
He said that if Trump limits the State Department’s ability to exercise “soft power” he is “never going to win the war.”
“What’s most disturbing about the cut in the State Department’s budget, it shows a lack of understanding,” Graham said.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus casually put Medicare and Medicaid in the crosshairs when asked how he plans to find the 15 billion dollars needed to fund Donald Trump’s Chinese wall. On Thursday, MSNBC’s Greta Susteren brought on the leader of the most fiscally conservative nuts in the GOP and asked… Continue reading “Freedom Caucus Targets Medicare To Fund Trump’s Wall”
If you actually believe that Paul Ryan cares about balancing the budget and lifting people out of poverty, you’re probably ignoring the fact that he’s about to do the exact opposite of both. A full repeal of Obamacare would blast a $353 billion hole in the deficit, while kicking millions of Americans near the poverty line… Continue reading “Why the GOP expects to get away with uninsuring millions (and how to stop them)”
Reince Prieubs was on ABC News “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday when Priebus was asked directly whether his boss, Donald Trump, would cut Medicaid. Despite being asked twice, Priebus danced around the question before giving a vague indication that some people would still have some sort of health care coverage: STEPHANOPOULOS: First steps to… Continue reading “Priebus won’t say whether Medicaid is safe from Trump”
Ah yes, the “principled” man Trump wants to put in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. He’s an out and out crook, and you should call your reps @ (202) 224-3121 to ask them to reject him:
Washington (CNN)Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.
Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN.Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.Zimmer Biomet, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of knee and hip implants, was one of two companies that would been hit the hardest by the new CMS regulation that directly impacts the payments for such procedures, according to press reports and congressional sources.
After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company’s political action committee donated to the congressman’s reelection campaign, records show.
Pathologizing poverty has been an long-term, ongoing-and sadly, highly successful-project of the right in this country. From Scott Walker’s recent appeal to PEOTUS Donald Trump to allow the state of Wisconsin to drug test food stamp recipients, to House GOP plans to make it harder to qualify for aid, the goal is to punish and stigmatize… Continue reading “Imagine! Fox was lying about food stamps”
Continuing his holy war against government assistance, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan declared during a conservative PAC speech that giving children free meals deprives them of something vital – their souls. Ryan was speaking before the Conservative Political Action Conference when he made his uneducated opinion on social welfare programs, specifically referring to free school… Continue reading “Paul Ryan: Giving children free lunch at school gives them an ’empty soul’”
Go read it all, it’s informative. From Josh Marshall:
Many Republicans can see the political danger of touching Medicare. No one campaigned on this in 2016. Support for phasing out Medicare and replacing it with private insurance and vouchers is minimal outside libertarians and conservative ideologues. That’s why word play about ‘reform’ and averting ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘saving Medicare’ are the catch phrases. If anyone said, ‘We have an idea to have seniors get private insurance instead of Medicare and a check from the government to pay part of the cost’ they’d be laughed out of whatever room they were in. What’s most salient is that it is toxic within the coalition around which Donald Trump has at least temporarily remade the GOP.
Paul Ryan and his backers in the Koch donor network want to do this badly. People like Mike Pence and Tom Price and a lot of hardcore conservatives in the House GOP caucus want to do this badly. It’s an historic culmination of decades policy dreams and preparation. But I doubt very much Trump and Ryan will be able to achieve this if they have to do it with no Democratic votes.
This is what short-circuited President Bush’s attempt to partially phase out Social Security in 2005. Republicans were willing but wary. They wanted President Bush to bring along some number of Democrats and move public opinion in his favor. As Democrats coalesced around an all but unanimous refusal to support or even negotiate over any phaseout plan, the effort collapsed. The key was depriving would-be privatizers of the cover of ‘bipartisanship’ and anonymity in the legislative crowd.
The Senate will be the hardest obstacle for the Trump/Ryan phaseout supporters. But deprived of any Democratic support, I think they’ll have challenges in the House too. Of course, there they have a number of votes to spare there.
So we have to make sure the Democrats hold the line. With Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, I don’t think it will be a problem.
I wrote earlier this week about Sam Brownback’s deregulated paradise and how it contributed to the decapitation of a 10-year-old boy. (By the way: Thanks to that state’s “tort reform,” the family’s potential damages are limited to $250K. It’s even possible his father, a Kansas GOP state legislator, voted for the cap.
I just don’t have the heart to look it up, under the circumstances.
Anyway, this is a less awful situation than decapitation in North Carolina — but bad enough. Just as in Kansas and Wisconsin, the Koch crowd has taken over down there and immediately began to dismantle government services, cut taxes, and make it harder to vote if you’re black. It is hopeful only in the sense that this year’s gubernatorial race is has Roy Cooper slightly ahead of Gov. Pat McCrory. (If you have any money to spare, I’d send it to Cooper.)
The Dems have had their own shortcomings in NC, but it’s a new day. Anyway:
But what many people don’t realize is that over the past few years, state lawmakers have drastically cut funding for classroom supplies – forcing teachers and parents to pick up the slack. On top of that, politicians eliminated a back-to-school sales tax holiday that used to save North Carolina families an estimated $15 million each year on school supplies. In fact, some parents and teachers are even road-tripping to states like South Carolina and Virginia this weekend to take advantage of the sales tax holiday savings!
According to the Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina spent $59 per student on instructional supplies before the Great Recession began in 2008. But in the 2016-17 school year, that number will be down to about $30 per student. Proper funding for classroom supplies should be a top priority for our state lawmakers. Unfortunately, parents and teachers are being forced to fill an irresponsible funding gap created by the politicians in Raleigh.
When I first started teaching at Millbrook Elementary over a decade ago, teachers received $100 each year to buy classroom supplies. A couple years later, that was reduced to a $75 store credit at a local teaching supply shop. A couple years after that, the amount teachers could spend depended on how much their classrooms raised for the PTA. Then last year, teachers got nothing.
That’s why every year I’m forced to spend hundreds of dollars of my own money on classroom supplies for my students. If we’re doing a special project that requires anything other than construction paper and glue, I have to buy it. If we run out of soil during our plant unit, I have to buy it. In fact, a recent survey found that the average teacher spends about $500 of his or her own money on classroom supplies each year – but many spend much more than that, especially teachers in low-income areas. And when politicians cut funding for classroom supplies, it hurts our low-income students the most.
Nearly 70 percent of students at our school receive free or reduced-price lunch, and some are even homeless. But we try hard to make sure every student is able to succeed, no matter what their living circumstances are like. I’ve bought shoes for a student. I’ve kept crackers in my desk in case a student misses the bus and doesn’t get to eat breakfast. I’ve even bought extra pairs of underwear in case a student has an accident during class. We’re not certainly required to do this – it certainly doesn’t show up on the standardized test scores our lawmakers use to “grade” us on – but if going the extra mile for my students will help them reach their fullest potential in life, how can I not?
