Republicans Pass Horrible Budget Bill - anti children

 House Republicans just passed their Medicaid-slashing, billionaire-enriching megabill (aka the Republican Tax Scam) in a 215-214 vote. The bill got even worse overnight, and at the end of this email we’ll detail some of its most harmful provisions -- but the most important thing to know right now is this:

This fight isn’t over, and this bill can still be stopped! Even now, as Speaker Johnson and his pals prematurely pop their champagne, we have two clear paths to killing this bill:

1. We can defeat the bill outright in the Senate by pressuring four Senate Republicans into abstaining or voting against it.
2. If the Senate changes even one word of the bill -- and GOP Senators are already pledging major rewrites their House counterparts won’t like -- it’ll go back to the House for another vote, giving us a second chance to block it there.

Let’s break that all down a bit more.

To start, it’s important to remember that Republicans are using what used to be a fairly unusual legislative maneuver -- reconciliation -- to skirt the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster. To do that, the House and Senate must agree to pass the exact same bill, down to the letter, in both chambers.

But Senate Republicans simply aren’t going to pass the House’s bill without major changes. Vulnerable senators are concerned about draconian cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Others think the cuts should be even more ruthless, or are annoyed at some of the deficit-ballooning deals Johnson had to make to get this thing through the House.

There are no easy fixes for Republican leadership here. The divides are so deep, and the cuts so politically toxic, that we have a real shot at flipping four votes to stop reconciliation in the Senate outright, just like we did in 2017.

Even if a bill does squeak through the Senate, it’ll be significantly different from what the House just voted on. That means another tough round of deal-making, infighting, and politically risky votes for House Republicans -- with no guarantee of success.

MAGA Republicans will be furious that some of their cuckoo, extremist ideas got stripped out.

Swing-seat Republicans will be furious they need to vote twice to cut Medicaid and SNAP -- especially if the Senate strips out special concessions Johnson promised to secure their yes votes in the first place.

And Trump will be furious he’s not simply getting his way, instantly and unquestioningly.

If that happens -- and if we keep relentless pressure on vulnerable Republicans -- the bill may never pass the House a second time.Getting it across the finish line in one chamber took a herculean effort. Passing it again, with two chambers involved and weeks of additional pressure, will be even harder.

Whether we stop the reconciliation bill in the Senate or in the House, there’s no doubt we can still win this fight! But we’ll need to ratchet up pressure on Republicans in both chambers right now.

If you have a Republican representative, call them now to show them there’s a political price to siding with billionaires over working people. 

You can also use this tool to send them an email. 

If you have Democratic Members of Congress, you don't need to make a call because Democrats are standing strong against this bill, but to join the fight in a different way, please chip in to fund our work toxifying this bill in some of the most narrowly divided Republican districts in America.

Congressional Republicans need to hear from us right now, but calling and emailing is just the first of many ways that Indivisibles like you will keep fighting this bill.

As we roll out more events, outreach campaigns, volunteer opportunities and other pressure tactics, we’ll let you know exactly what you can do to beat this bill and stop the cuts. Please stay tuned, and thanks for being with us in this fight.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

Why and Where the Working Class Turned Right

Why and Where the Working Class Turned Right: A new book documents the lost (and pro-Democratic) world of Pennsylvania steelworkers and how it became Republican.

Republican Votes Helped Create the National Debt

  

 

 

Republican Votes Helped Washington Pile Up Debt

As they escalate a debt-limit standoff, House Republicans blame President Biden’s spending bills for an increase in deficits. Voting records show otherwise.

Republicans, who are demanding deep spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing cap, will almost certainly greet that proposal with a familiar refrain: Mr. Biden and his party are to blame for ballooning the debt.

But an analysis of House and Senate voting records, and of fiscal estimates of legislation prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that Republicans bear at least equal blame as Democrats for the biggest drivers of federal debt growth that passed Congress over the last two presidential administrations.

The national debt has grown to $31.4 trillion from just under $6 trillion in 2000, bumping against the statutory limit on federal borrowing. That increase, which spanned the presidential administrations of two Republicans and two Democrats, has been fueled by tax cuts, wars, economic stimulus and the growing costs of retirement and health programs. Since 2017, when Donald J. Trump took the White House, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have joined together to pass a series of spending increases and tax cuts that the budget office projects will add trillions to the debt.

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/us/politics/federal-debt-republicans-democrats.html?

 

 

A Takeover of the Republican Party ( not in California)

 

The stolen election myth inspired thousands of Trump supporters to take over the Republican Party at the local level, exerting more partisan influence on how elections are run.       

REPUBLISH

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Isaac Arnsdorf, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette Damon 
September 2, 2021
ProPublica

 

One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump’s supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We’re on the point of attack,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It’s them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?”

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.

Much, much more. 

 

Pro Publica.

https://www.propublica.org/article/heeding-steve-bannons-call-election-deniers-organize-to-seize-control-of-the-gop-and-reshape-americas-elections

 

 

How Republican Voter Fraud Has Prepared to Steal This Election

Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/magazine/trump-voter-fraud.html?

 

How Republican voter fraud is organized and ready to cancel the election.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/magazine/trump-voter-fraud.html?

Republican Economics

So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the presidential election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the White House. The Trump campaign was aware of this intervention and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened.

Never mind attempts to spin this story as somehow not meeting some definitions of collusion or obstruction of justice. The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country. And the question everyone is asking is, what will Democrats do about it?

Paul Krugman.

Republican economics 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/opinion/trump-republican-party.html?searchResultPosition=2

See John Oliver's report below. 

Republican Tax Scam

Remember the tax scam that the Trump administration and their Republican allies jammed through late last year? The one that was supposed to "help working families," and "provide relief for the middle class"? 

The evidence is here -- and it proves what we've known all along. Here's a chart that shows exactly who is benefiting from this travesty: 


That's right: This deficit-busting tax law hasn't done a thing to lift real wages for workers. All it's done is deliver massive gains to big corporations and the ultra-wealthy executives who run them. 

It's a scam -- and as more and more Americans catch on, Republicans are starting to distance themselves from what they called a "victory" only months ago. 

We won't forget, and it's time to hold representatives accountable for their support of this bill. Join Team '18 today, and get to work in this critical push: s

Republicans Reward Bankers- endanger you and I

Courting the Next Financial Collapse. You’d almost think the Republicans want the banks to melt down again. Bit by bit, they’ve been gutting the Dodd-Frank Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been put on ice, placed in the hands of one of its sworn enemies, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney.

Giving banks free rein to screw consumers is one thing. Letting banks play roulette with the entire economy is something else. But the latest bad idea from the Comptroller of the Currency, the agency that regulates national banks, and the Federal Reserve, goes at the heart of the abuses that Dodd-Frank sought to remedy.

At the core of the financial crisis of 2008 was the tendency of banks to make increasingly risky bets, where the potential loss far exceeded their own capital. If all the bets went bad, all the banks would be insolvent. That’s what happened in the fall of 2008, and it took a massive government bailout to keep the banking collapse from taking down the rest of the economy.

Now the Fed and the Comptroller want to allow banks to have larger multiples of debt to capital. One of the core reforms of Dodd-Frank was to limit excess bank leverage. It’s not as if these strictures are draconian—banks today need to keep only six cents capital for every 94 cents they lend out. 

But the bankers have lobbied the administration for even more generous rules, and the administration seems inclined to do their bidding. Like the tax cut, these policy changes have nothing to do with making the economy more efficient. They are entirely about rewarding the already rich, and increasing risks for the rest of us.

This proposal is so perverse that two Republican regulatory officials, one former head of the FDIC and the current vice chairman wrote an op-ed piece that The Wall Street Journal published warning against it.

Tom Hoenig and Sheila Bair wrote: "These proposals would weaken system resiliency either to benefit shareholder distributions or to allow the eight largest banks to become even bigger by taking on more leverage and more risk."

You get the sense that the Trump crowd knows their days are numbered—and want to deliver everything that’s not nailed down to their corporate allies before they are tossed out. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Austerity Economics Leads to Teacher Strikes

TEACHERS WALK OUT IN ARIZONA, COLORADO: "Thousands of teachers in Arizona and Colorado walked out of their classrooms on Thursday to demand more funding for public schools, the latest surge of a teacher protest movement that has already swept through three states and is spreading quickly to others," Simon Romero and Julie Turkewitz report in the New York Times. 

"Widespread teacher protests have in recent months upended daily routines in the conservative-leaning states West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky," the Times reports. "But the sight of public workers protesting en masse in the Arizona capital, one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country, and demanding tax increases for more school funding, spoke to the enduring strength of the movement and signaled shifts in political winds ahead of this year's midterm elections."

"Educators in both states want more classroom resources and have received offers either for increased school funding or pay, but they say the money isn't guaranteed and the efforts don't go far enough," Melissa Daniels and Anita Snow write in the Associated Press. "Most of Arizona's public schools will be closed the rest of the week, and about half of all Colorado students will see their schools shuttered over the two days as teachers take up the Arizona movement's #RedforEd mantle." More from the Times here and the AP here.

See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/teachers-arizona-walkout.html

Paul Ryan - Architect of Republican Austerity

And, he has won.  For now.!

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) announced this week that he will not run for re-election later this year, bringing down the curtain on his long career of antagonism toward the plight of the nation’s poor and disadvantaged people.

Though Ryan’s public persona has been characterized, off-and-on, as something of a serious and deep thinkeron issues related to poverty, taxation, and welfare policy, his record — and now legacy — in public life is one of consistent cruelty. For the entirety of his nearly 20-year career in the House and, especially, since holding the Speaker’s gavel since 2016, Ryan’s single-minded purpose in governance has been to seek and destroy federal support for the poor. 

Ryan came to Congress in 1998, pledging to bring discipline and reform to Social Security and other federal welfare programs that he’s hated since his college days.

Ironically, Ryan owes, in great part, his personal and political success to the Social Security payment he and his family received following his 55-year-old father’s death, when Ryan was 16 years old. In other words, the welfare-cutting Speaker got his start in life by earning a B.A. in economics and political science at the Miami University of Ohio, with money provided by his late father’s welfare payments.

Paul Ryan says he fantasized about cutting health care for the poor at his college keggers

That was just the start of Ryan’s hypocrisy.

In 2014, Ryan displayed his callous disregard for the suffering of poor and hungry Americans when he argued against progressive budget proposals that urged giving low-income students free lunches. “The left is making a big mistake here,” Ryan said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.“What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”

Corporate Taxes

The Right Way to Cut Corporate Taxes

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/opinion/corporate-tax-cuts-gop.html?

NYT Editorial

Republican health care

Congressional Republicans introduced Trumpcare, their plan to gut the Affordable Care Act and begin destroying Medicare and Medicaid less than a week ago. And the more we learn, the worse it gets.

One of the major advantages of the Affordable Care Act is that it addresses income and wealthy inequality by taxing the rich to provide health insurance to tens of millions of low- and middle-income individuals―seniors, people with disabilities, and the poor (including older adults who are not yet Medicare eligible).

Trumpcare is part of a war on seniors which threatens the health care of tens of millions of people through $370 billion in cuts to Medicaid and severely weakening Medicare―robbing the trust fund of $346 billion.

Email your Representative now and tell them to reject Trumpcare―anti-healthcare legislation that steals health insurance from seniors, people with disabilities and working families in order to give a massive tax break to the wealthy.

Donald Trump has promised to take on the drug companies and protect Medicare. But Trumpcare breaks both of those promises.

As part of the $465 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy and health care companies, Trumpcare gives the pharmaceutical industry a $25 billion handout.

Instead of protecting Medicare for current and future generations, Trumpcare cuts the Medicare trust fund by $346 billion.

Trumpcare is nothing more than a huge tax cut for the wealthy on the backs of seniors, people with disabilities and low- and middle-income families.

Write your member of Congress today and tell them to reject Trumpcare.

Approximately 70 percent of Americans ages 65 and older will need long-term care at some point during their life. Long-term care is not covered by Medicare; it’s covered by Medicaid. Trumpcare’s $370 billion in cuts to Medicaid will negatively impact the 10 million seniors who currently qualify for joint Medicare and Medicaid coverage by forcing them and their families to pay out of pocket for the unaffordable costs of long-term care.

Together we must protect the healthcare and the economic security of millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and low- and middle-income families.

Thank you for all that you do.

Michael Phelan
Social Security Works

Republican Plan for Healthcare

The secret healthcare bill is out. Monday night, House Republicans finally released their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and now it’s being rushed through committee, after being kept under lock and key with the details and cost hidden from members of Congress and the public. 

What’s the rush? 

The lack of hearings, cost estimates and sufficient time to review the language would be problematic in any situation. But a bill that takes away healthcare from Americans in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy should not be pushed ahead without thorough review and informed debate. 

With Republican control of both chambers of Congress, with Donald Trump in the White House and Tom Price as health and human services secretary, this bill could actually become law.

The consequences would be disastrous, and Americans know it. Of course the ACA had its problems and needed to be fixed, but this plan does none of that. It rips healthcare away from Americans to give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, which is about as cruel as it gets. This isn’t a healthcare plan—it’s a massive giveaway to insurance companies and those at the top, while it hits America’s families with a triple whammy of less coverage, higher costs and more taxes. This bill will potentially leave millions without coverage. Not only that, some want to radically restructure Medicare and Medicaid while they’re at it.

Our voices are making a difference. Throughout the country, people are calling and writing their elected officials, and showing up at congressional offices and town hall meetings to share their personal stories about how the ACA gave them or a loved one access to affordable health insurance, many for the very first time.

Paul Ryan and Republican Economics

WASHINGTON — First, it was called the Roadmap for America’s Future. Later, it was the Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise. The next installment was Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal.

STORIES FROM OUR ADVERTISER

Each one could be called the Ryan Plan, for short, or the Ryan Budget: a single-minded — Democrats would say absurdist — quest by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to drastically cut federal spending and taxes, transform Medicare essentially into a voucher program, partly privatize Social Security and abolish the corporate income tax, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.