Trump seeks sharp cuts to housing aid, except for program that brings him millions

Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords.

One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trump-seeks-sharp-cuts-to-housing-aid-except-for-program-that-brings-him-millions/2017/06/20/bf1fb2b8-5531-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html

10 Ways Mitch McConnell's Secret, Evil Senate Operation To Destroy The Affordable Health Care Act Will Make Life Hell For Many Americans

Mitch McConnell's politics have always been abysmal. But now he's playing with people's lives.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

June 13, 2017, 4:54 PM GMT

Photo Credit: cspan.org

As details emerge from Senate Republicans’ backroom deliberations to write a single bill repealing Obamacare, defunding Medicaid and deregulating health insurance, it's clear that virtually no American household—apart from the very rich—would be immune from fiscally painful and medically harsh consequences if the GOP gets a bill to the president’s desk.

For the past month, an 11 man committee appointed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has been meeting in secret to fine-tune the House-passed Obamacare repeal legislation. They are not starting anew, but are polishing a bill that will leave 15-20 million people without health care, prompt higher insurance and medical costs for all but the youngest adults, freeze and shrink state-run Medicaid (which now covers 45 percent of the children in rural America), and defund Planned Parenthood. This is according to analyses by the Congressional Budget Office, Kaiser Family Foundation and others.

Even the pro-corporate Washington Post editorial board has called out the GOP for its chaos-creating prescriptions, writing that they are “motivated to solve a problem that does not exist—saving a health-care system supposedly on the path to inevitable collapse by repealing and replacing Obamacare.” None of that seems to matter to McConnell, who wants to pass the as-yet-unreleased bill before the Senate’s July 4 recess. While defections from the GOP’s far right or few moderates could thwart any Senate bill’s passage, the White House has made it clear it wants McConnell to pass something the president can sign.

What’s unfolding in Washington right now is appalling. Beyond the cowardly political tactics, the GOP is literally playing with the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Everyone ages, and many will get sick and develop chronic illness and disease. The consequences can be devastating if the GOP shreds medical safety nets for the poor and allows the insurance industry to charge more yet deliver less health security in myriad ways.

What follows are 10 takeaways from the Senate’s Obamacare repeal process.

1. McConnell’s skullduggery is back. As Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017, wrote in a Washington Post column Saturday, only 8 percent of the public supported passage of the House’s Obamacare repeal bill (which also slashed Medicaid and included major tax cuts for the rich). He could have told senators to fix Obamacare’s problems, such as allowing small states to form insurance pools.

“Instead, McConnell put a plan in place to pass something close to the House bill using three simple tools: sabotage, speed and secrecy,” Slavitt wrote. “He formed a committee to meet secretly, hold no hearings, create a fast-track process and pressure Senate skeptics with backroom deals.” Trump just wants it done, Politico.com reported. “He’s definitely leaving it to Mitch to lead. But he very much wants it to happen,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, told Politico.

2. Congressional chaos is having its desired effect—2018 premiums to rise. The GOP is not just sending mixed signals about what they may do to one-sixth of the U.S. economy. They are intentionally provoking insurers to raise their prices for 2018 as a pretext to pass their legislation.

This was cited in a Washington Post editorial, “The GOP’s Obamacare Sabotage Continues,” in which the editorial board was unusually clear-eyed. “‘Insurers have made clear the lack of certainty is causing 2018 proposed premiums to rise significantly,’ House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Thursday, arguing that Congress should step in.” That’s creating a problem to fit a solution.

3. Meanwhile Trump’s team is also embracing more chaos. The Trump team is doing everything it can not to enforce Obamacare, such as “lax enforcement of the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, inadequate efforts to enroll more people in coverage and other gratuitous subversions of the finely tuned system Obamacare sought to create,” the same Post editorial said. As significant, the White House is refusing to commit to paying 2018 Obamacare subsidies for millions, according to Vox.com, which reported that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price wouldn’t even tell a U.S. Senate committee what the administration’s plans were.

4. Against this backdrop, the Senate is 'making progress.' That’s the word from a handful of center-right Republicans who have been shown glimpses of what’s going on behind closed doors—as if reversing one or two planks of the House bill is supposed to be a sign of moderation. That is absurd. Moreover, what the Senate is said to be doing is terrible.

For example, restoring Obamacare’s pre-existing condition rule—which requires insurers to sell people policies—but without cost controls or coverage requirements. Last month’s Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House-passed bill said a wide swath of the public “would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all.” Moreover, many policies are likely to cover less once minimum coverage standards are deregulated.

5. The young will pay less, but everyone else won’t. The only people who stand to benefit, the New York Times reported, are those least likely to get sick. “The budget office [CBO] did note that the House bill would potentially lead to lower prices, especially for younger and healthier people,” it said. “But the budget office also warned that markets in states that allowed insurers to charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions—whether high blood pressure, a one-time visit to a specialist or cancer.” This is what deregulation of the insurance industry will bring. The industry will go back to creating more barriers between patients and doctors.

6. Many policies will only be used for hospitalization. Other analyses include scenarios where people will see deductibles rise to levels where they will pay for most care until a serious emergency requiring hospital care arises. As the Times wrote, that can amount to a major fiscal burden.

“Millions of people could also wind up with little choice but to buy cheap plans that provided minimal coverage in states that opted out of requiring insurers to cover maternity care, mental health and addiction treatment or rehabilitation services, among other services required under the Affordable Care Act. Consumers who could not afford high premiums would wind up with enormous out-of-pocket medical expenses.”

7. Medicaid is going to be frozen, justified by big lies. Another detail that’s leaked out of the Senate drafting sessions is that it’s not a question whether Medicaid will see $800 billion in reduced spending and 14 million fewer recipients during the next decade, as the House bill laid out. Rather it is a question of how fast the Medicaid rollback will be. The Hill reports there’s been debate whether it will be three years or seven years. Vox.com also reports that the Senate wants to institute an approach that could lead to sharper funding cuts than the House: more frequent revisions to Medicaid reimbursement rates.

The White House and GOP talking points on this are a series of lies. HHS Secretary Price told a Senate committee, “We are trying to decrease the number of uninsured,” after the CBO estimated that 23 million people would lose insurance. Trump has said he will not touch Medicare—even though Medicaid pays for nursing home care in that program. And Republicans keep saying this is not spending cuts, but slower spending increases. “What the defenders of this claim—ranging from Karl Rove to Sally Pipes—have insisted is that this is a cut to the growth rate, not cuts to the existing program,” wrote health policy blogger Emma Sandoe. “The reality is that states will have to reduce the number of services they provide or reduce the types of people that can enroll as inflation and increased costs in medical services rise.”

8. This is a war on government and on the poor. What the GOP is trying to do is not just go after Obamacare, but dismantle safety nets dating back to the 1960s. As Sandoe noted, “The GOP has campaigned for decades on the idea that the social welfare state is bloated and that the oversized growth of the welfare state needs to be trimmed. The GOP should embrace the idea of calling per-capita caps and block grants cuts. From a policy perspective, the goal of the per-capita caps and block grants is to reduce the size and scope of the program.”

9. Republicans are pursuing this despite vast opposition. Recent polls show safety nets are incredibly popular while the GOP’s American Health Care Act is not. On Medicaid alone, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll by Democrats and Republicans opposed cutting its expansion and changing its financing structure. “Many other polls show that the majority of voters have favorable views of Medicaid, coming close to the level of support for Medicare,” Sandoe wrote. “Telling is that a Quinnipiac poll found that Republicans oppose cuts to Medicaid. This is one possible reason that the latest [GOP] messaging appears to be focused on reframing the cuts as minimal. Meanwhile, the AHCA has polled from 17–21 percent by Quinnipiac and only 8 percent think that the Senate should pass these reforms without changes.”

10. If this passes, a colossal downward spiral will ensue. The impact of the AHCA, if passed, is not just going to be fiscal—in terms of increased out-of-pocket costs for those with insurance policies. As the Times reported, people age 50 and older, and “millions of middle- and working-class Americans” will once again be trapped in their jobs because they will be unable to pay for coverage. “The Affordable Care Act has enabled many of those workers to get transitional coverage that provides a bridge to the next phase of their lives—a stopgap to get health insurance if they leave a job, are laid off, start a business or retire early.”

For those too poor to buy insurance, Medicaid will contract and likely be forced to focus on emergency and crisis care, rather than prevention. Rationing care will likely ensue, unless states step in with raising revenues to offset federal cutbacks. Safety nets are likely to roll backwards, landing somewhere between where they are now and where they were before Obamacare’s reforms took effect.

McConnell’s Fast Track
As Axios.com reported, McConnell is hoping to finalize the Senate’s legislation this week, because the Congressional Budget Office will need two weeks to “score” it—the Washington term for assessing its financial and programmatic impacts—if it is to come up for a Senate floor vote before the July 4 break. While it's possible that McConnell could present a bill without that analysis, it is likely that more details will emerge in coming days.

At that point, Republicans will surely feel the full wrath of voters who aren’t going to have anything positive to say if their health care is trashed, or if the GOP tries to blame Obama and the Democrats for market chaos they have worsened, not diminished.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's democracy and voting rights. He is the author of several books on elections and the co-author of Who Controls Our Schools: How Billionaire-Sponsored Privatization Is Destroying Democracy and the Charter School Industry (AlterNet eBook, 2016).

Mick Mulvaney Mocks People With Diabetes, Says They Don't Deserve Health Care

Republicans plan massive cuts to programs for the poor

Under pressure to balance the budget and align with Trump, the House GOP has its eye on food stamps, welfare and perhaps even veterans’ benefits.

By Rachael Bade and Sarah Ferris

House Republicans just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement. Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for low-income families.

Donald Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and Medicare — and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall and tax cuts — is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in politically sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most vulnerable.

Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget, Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate, multiple sources told POLITICO.

The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs would get the ax; instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block, the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the disabled and perhaps even veterans benefits.

If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs — all while juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates — would amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.

Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea. While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”

“The Budget Committee is trying to force the entire conference and committees of jurisdiction to focus on ways to bring down this deficit,” said senior budget panel member Rep. Tom Cole.

Republicans have long sought to tackle the nearly $20 trillion debt, but Trump has tied their hands by ruling out cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The Oklahoma Republican, however, acknowledged that mandatory spending reductions could become “very tough issues” — though he declined to name which programs would see major cuts:

“These are hard for anybody, no matter where you’re at on the political spectrum.”

While budget writers are well aware of the sensitive nature of their proposal, they feel they have no choice if they want to balance the budget in a decade, which they’ve proposed for years, and give Trump what he wants.

Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018 blueprint.

House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.

“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a budget panel member. Trump has "made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. … And so people will see a process much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”

New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up all but $150 billion of that stash — relatively speaking, mere pocket change to play with.

Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, account for the lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all mandatory spending.

But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)

Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs: While the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to a request for comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House budget writers.

“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers of our debt,” Mulvaney told radio host Hugh Hewitt in March. “There are ways that we cannot only allow the president to keep his promise, but to help him keep his promise by fixing some of these mandatory programs.”

Final details of the GOP’s budget plan aren’t expected until June, and specific language mandating the mandatory cuts still hasn’t been written, according to one aide familiar with the process.

Committees would then have several months to put together the department-by-department details on what exactly to cut, proposals that probably won’t land until the fall at the earliest, given the legislative calendar.

The idea could run into problems: It is unclear whether such cuts would be acceptable in the more moderate Senate. In order for the proposal to actually move, Senate Republicans would need to include the same instructions in their own budget.

In the House, Republican leaders hope the moves toward deficit reduction will buy them some good will with conservatives going into September, when the party’s right flank will have to swallow difficult votes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government.

Cole argued the deficit-trimming push will appeal to the House Freedom Caucus, which blocked the House GOP’s budget on the floor last year in protest of spending levels its members considered too high.

But pleasing conservatives this time around will fuel anxiety on the other end of the conference. Endorsing cuts to programs for the poor will certainly make centrist House Republicans — many of whom were uncomfortable voting to slice Medicaid just weeks ago in the Obamacare repeal bill — very uncomfortable.

Rep. Charlie Dent, a centrist and senior Appropriations Committee member, said budget reconciliation instructions should center solely on tax reform, which “is complex enough on its own,” he said.

“All I can say is: Tax reform by itself is very complex and controversial,” Dent (R-Pa.) said. “Adding some of these other changes will only make the tax reform more difficult.”

Asked about mandatory programs that might be cut, he added: “This will create challenges, no question about it. When so many of the entitlement programs are taken off the table for discussion … that limits our ability to fund the non-defense discretionary programs and other mandatory programs that affect a lot of people.”

GOP backers of the idea will argue in the coming weeks and months that moderates have voted for GOP budgets that included similar cuts in the past — so they should be able to support them again.

But if House GOP leadership has learned anything from the Obamacare repeal debacle, it should be that voting for something that has no chance of becoming law and makes for great campaign fodder is much easier than backing a bill that could be enacted.

Kurt Eichenwald: 'and they smiled and high-fived'

https://www.facebook.com/kurt.eichenwald.1/posts/1448157071889590

In 1986, I left a job I loved for one I hated. I had been desperately sick for seven years, with medical bills no one could possibly cover. But I was approaching the dreaded age of 25, when I would be forced off of my parent’s insurance policy. Everyone knew, without insurance, I would die. I was frequently hospitalized. My treatments were very expensive. But the job I loved offered no insurance. The one I hated did.

This was the second time insurance chose the direction of my life. I applied for the job of my dreams a year before. The boss told me he wanted to hire me, but theirs was a small company. They already had a person with high medical costs on salary. If they hired me, he said, their insurer would drop them. Insurance companies could do that back then.

But with the job I hated, I thought I was safe. Then I found out, even the group policy had a preexisting condition clause: I would not be insured for nine months. I could not stay. I would go bankrupt. And so, I went to find another job. All I wanted was insurance. It didn’t matter the job. Insurance would decide my career.
 
I had been a political writer at CBS, an associate editor at National Journal. Very successful at my age. But I only had a few weeks until I was uninsured. I begged a friend at the New York Times to help me. He offered to help me land a position as a copy boy. It was a terrible job, he knew, but it had insurance. At first, I was turned down for the job – I was way too overqualified, the HR person said. But my friend intervened and, after years of personal success, I agreed to take a job fetching people’s coffee.

There was a two-week period before I began my job when I was completely uncovered. I ended up hospitalized. By the time I was conscious, I had rung up a bill in excess of $10,000. That was almost half my expected full-year salary. I called my parents, in tears. I didn’t know what to do. They told me they would take care of it.

Nothing was more depressing than having to have given up everything for insurance, to take a job where everyone was younger than me, everyone was far less experienced than me. And I knew, if I lost my job, I would lose my insurance. And if I lost my insurance, I could die. So I worked – seven days a week, 12-18 hours a day. If nothing else, that helped me believe I would not be fired from my lousy job. But it also gave me the chance to write for various sections of the paper. I would do my copy boy job eight hours a day, then start reporting and writing. This went on for two years – no vacations, no break, terrified every day.

Then, I was offered a junior reporter’s job at the Times. One-year tryout. I worked almost every day. I rarely left the office. I knew the stakes. For me, this wasn’t about being a reporter. This was about keeping my insurance.

In my late 20's, I married. My wife is a doctor. At that point, I had greater freedom. Even if I lost my job, I could be on her insurance. Because of that freedom, I began to write books. If the Times got mad at me for it, it would be ok. But still, I could never shake the belief that I could never say no. I took every assignment. I did not take book leaves. We rarely vacationed.

I finally started to relax around 2008. I had never lost insurance for 12 years. Then, a miracle: the rules keeping people with preexisting conditions from being insured were ended under ACA. I listened to blowhards like Rush Limbaugh rage that people like me – and people with asthma and cancer and cystic fibrosis – were leeches, demanding charity. It amazed me how stupid he and his followers were, not understanding that, without private insurance, people like me would all be on government disability. We would have to stop working in order to survive. People were instilled with rage about a topic they didn’t even understand.

No matter. I knew I would never have to face that problem again. More important, I knew the millions and millions of others like me – young kids, middle aged, whatever – would never again be forced to make decisions about their lives giving up their dreams solely for the insurance. I would hear every day from my wife about people who came to her office in horrible medical shape, people who had gone without treatment or sought their medical care at emergency rooms. People who could only get care in the ER rang up giant medical bills, so expensive no one could pay them. And so the taxpayers picked up the cost. Now, those same people were getting care from my wife with insurance they purchased. Opponents raged about their taxes paying for the subsidies, so ignorant they had no idea their taxes had been paying for the far more expensive emergency room care before.

Last week, the House passed a bill that would push everyone with preexisting conditions back into the same situation. The representatives billowed and cooed that high-risk pools would protect us, fooling the same uneducated ones who didn’t know they paid for the uninsured. High risk pools had been tried before. They failed. But these members of congress probably didn’t even know that. They didn’t care enough to hold hearings to find out whether high-risk pools would work. They didn’t wait to find out how many people would lose their insurance. They had to rush it through. Then they cheered for themselves.

Meanwhile, those of us with preexisting conditions were plunged back into fear. Foundations for people with chronic diseases began receiving phone calls from panicked people. My wife and I reviewed our options if this bill became law. We are middle aged now, which presented new issues. She is four years older than me. She hits retirement age in five years. If she retired and was on Medicare, I would be clinging to a slender thread to keep my insurance. I could never write another book. It would be too dangerous. My wife said she would work until she was almost 70 to keep me safe. Guilt overwhelmed me. She was born in Britain, and we discussed her citizenship and, if necessary, we could move there if I lost my coverage. We would have to burn through our savings for a long time, but eventually I might be able to get onto national health insurance.

But I don’t want to leave America. I don’t want my wife to work until she’s almost 70. I don’t want to be guilty. And most important, I don’t want all the other people with preexisting conditions to be forced to make their life decisions based on where they can get group insurance. Or worse, to not be able to obtain group insurance, be denied private insurance and die.

I watched Fox News. They giggled and laughed that people were being hysterical about preexisting conditions. There were high-risk pools, they sneered, that states could participate in unless they didn’t want to. I watched the clip, over and over, of those self-congratulatory members of Congress, high-fiving and smiling, as I knew the situation at my house was playing out at millions of houses where talking points and rationalizations didn’t change the realities of what we would face. I commented about how terrible this was. And then I saw comments from people deriding those with preexisting conditions as wanting charity.

I thought of members of Congress who wanted prisons as brutal as possible, until they themselves were jailed; then, they became advocates for prison reform. I thought of the ones who screamed about gays until their child came out, then they became tolerant. I thought about the members of Congress who happily sent other people’s children off to fight in Vietnam, while getting their own kids deferments and spots in the National Guard or reserves, making sure they wouldn’t see battle. And then I thought of the child whose parents home I visited, who told me of their boy dying of suffocation in his mother’s arms as they rushed to the hospital. They hadn’t been able to afford his inhaler that week. They had no insurance. They planned to buy it the week that followed. Their son died two days after they decided to take the risk.

And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

More people’s children would die. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. People would be forced to take jobs they did not want or marry people they did not love. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. For millions, every day would be terrifying as they wondered if they would they run up bills that day that would bankrupt them or would they be unable to get treatment? Would they live through the week? And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

My anger exploded. I wanted them to feel the consequences of what they thought was so wonderful. Why should they be exempt from the damage they would inflict on others from their vote, votes they cast with so little concern about others that they didn’t hold hearings to find out what damage they might cause?

And so I tweeted, “As one with a preexisting condition, I hope every GOPr who voted for Trumpcare get a long-term condition, loses their insurance, and die.”

Harsh? You bet. I wanted the words to be blunt, to lay out the reality of what real people would face, people who didn’t have the ability of members of Congress to avoid the consequences they voted to inflict on real people.

Conservatives broke out the fainting couches. I was wishing Republicans to die, they moaned. I forgot we live in an era where fools will interpret it the way they are told. One of the propagandists at the Daily Caller, after emailing me for comment at 3:00 in the morning, posted a story proclaiming I wanted my political opponents to die. And the conservative trolls descended, screaming for my death.

I remain angry. I remember the tears of that woman whose son died in her arms. I remember my struggles. I remembered my fears. I remembered the fears of so many others I have spoken to over the years who struggled with preexisting conditions.

I deleted the tweet. Apparently, confronting people with the reality of what they have chosen is just too inappropriate. Voting to let people die is fine, rubbing the fact that they voted to do that is just wrong.

Do I regret what I said? No. I want those words to sink in. My tweet won’t kill anyone. But the vote from those members of Congress will.

And if they are not forced to confront what they are doing, they will just keep smiling and high-fiving.

Social Security safe? Here's the double-talking regime's plan to gut it

By Meteor Blades

 

Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes—Donald Trump is coming for your Social Security: How the GOP plans a bait and switch to cut taxes — and pensions:

It seems like a lifetime ago that Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus brokered a meeting between the unexpected presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to try iron out their differences. But it was just a little less than a year ago in a world that seems more and more distant by the minute. They spoke of many things, with Ryan desperately trying to convince Trump that he needed to adopt the GOP agenda and Trump telling him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Bloomberg reported one particular exchange in the meeting that stuck in my mind:

According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”

Trump may not have realized it, but Republicans have never won the presidency by explicitly saying they were going to make cuts to Social Security. They have always used euphemisms, saying they were going to “privatize it” or promising to “save it” from itself. The reason Democrats continually win the day (if not the office they are vying for) is because people don’t trust Republican double-talk on the subject and for good reason. They have been trying to destroy Social Security since it was enacted.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in “The Coming of the New Deal” that President Franklin Roosevelt knew that creating a dedicated funding stream gave workers the “legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions.” He said, “With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.” Schlesinger also noted that Republicans and business leaders at the time were appalled, with one warning that the program would “undermine our national life by destroying initiative, discouraging thrift, and stifling individual responsibility.”

Donald Trump’s comment in that meeting last year that he agreed with Ryan on a “moral basis” indicated that he was on the same page as those earlier plutocrats even if he sings a different tune in public. [...]

Yes, Paul Ryan Actually Did Bend The Knee.

By Cyra Master

 

The Washington Post detailed the House GOP’s fight over the ObamaCare repeal and replacement plan this week, rounding up the dramatic details of leadership’s fight to win support for the measure.

At one point, the paper said, House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) got down on one knee to plead with Rep. Don Young of Alaska – the longest-serving Republican in Congress -- to support the bill.  (He was unsuccessful.)

The moments highlighted by the Post during the Republican conference negotiations show what a tough battle Ryan and his deputies faced in whipping the vote.

But they also show the fierce support some offered to leadership - like freshman Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, who lost both legs in 2010 in Afghanistan and called on colleagues to unite behind the bill as he and his Army colleagues had done on the battlefield.

At another point, a Republican shouted, “Burn the ships” to Majority Whip Steve Scalise, invoking the command a 16th century Spanish conquistador gave his crew when they landed in Mexico.

The message was clear, the Post said –- the Republicans felt there was no turning back.

The GOP was ultimately unable to coalesce around the party’s plan and Ryan pulled the bill from the floor Friday, when it was clear it did not have the votes to pass.

Trump: Trump Care Failed Because Of Democrats!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-blames-failure-republican-healthcare-bill-democrats

The American Health Care Act Of 2017 (Trumpcare)

The Best Single Statement Ever On GOP "Healthcare" - Devastating

Dear Mom,

You won't comprehend this because you have Stage 6 Dementia, but things need to change. The nice congressmen in Washington want to free us from government dependency so we can make better healthcare choices without the stigma of taking handouts from society.

So, Mom, about your Medicaid Aged and Disabled Waiver that pays me a 40 hr/week pittance to care for you at home 24/7: the new HHS Secretary and Medicaid Chief sent our Governor a letter that says people on Medicaid should seek employment if they want to keep those benefits. This may sound unfair considering you're 89, bladder and bowel incontinent, unable to walk unassisted, and often lapse into episodes of uncontrollable whimpering, but if the government decides it's for the best, we'll all need to buck up and contribute our fair share. After all, your 50 year nursing career doesn't necessarily entitle you to a free ride.

I'll probably need to get a "real" job too, because I exploit the system. Never mind that your care would cost the state $78,000 annually in a nursing home versus the $16,000 it pays me; leave the math to those smart fellas in Washington who understand that big government should stop controlling our lives. The important thing is we'll have freedom to choose, and not impose an unfair tax burden on millionaires and the medical industrial complex.

Once I stop taking handouts, I won't be home with you. We should bolster the economy by hiring attendant care, but it costs more than I can earn, and Medicare won't cover it because those warmhearted legislators support family values like looking after our own. You'll enjoy being home alone all day, Mom. You don't really need regular meals or clean Depends, and when you have one of your falls, you can rest quietly on the floor in a puddle of urine until I get off work. Those dear congressmen give us other options, too, such as permanently placing you in a facility to die more quickly and efficiently. Here's another choice: I could stay home and attend you for free! We'll do fine on your Social Security income by sacrificing a few luxuries like groceries, property taxes, electricity, and the car.

There's a bonus, Mom. I won't be forced to maintain health insurance! Remember “Obamacare” that saved my life through early cancer screening? The Republicans devised a better plan. Because I'm over 50 and earn $150 per year above the Medicaid cutoff, my annual premium will increase by roughly $6,000, but I can choose to opt out! I'll still have "access” but not be victimized by the enslaving tax subsidy that let me afford coverage for the first time in 25 years. I'm excited about returning to indigent emergency room treatment and boosting insurance industry profits while taxpayers shoulder the cost instead.

With so many great options it's hard to decide, but here's our new plan, Mom. Under Trumpcare, I'll "choose" to lose health coverage, seek a minimum wage job, and dump you in a nursing home. Between the cost of facility care, a couple of ER visits and perhaps one minor surgery for me per year, and the food stamps and heating assistance I'll need once you and your Social Security income leave the household, I estimate we will save the government roughly NEGATIVE $350,000 over the next 5 years! Multiply that by the millions of people who will lose coverage, and you can appreciate what a sensible and economical plan the Republicans have devised.

You'll be proud to receive depersonalized institutional care instead of burdening society in comfort with your family. The facility gets your Social Security check, and Medicare/Medicaid will cover the balance until you hit the newly proposed block grant funding cap. If you're still alive then, we're unsure what will happen, but we can trust Congress to do what's right. I hear they're formulating a plan to ship the poor, elderly, and chronically ill to arctic ice floes. It's called “Trump Tower North: the Last Resort.” You might even get to see polar bears before they become extinct! Won't that be fun?

I'm so happy that the government wants to stop interfering in our lives.

Love,
Your Freeloading Daughter

P.S. Mom, if you do need a job to keep that Medicaid, I thought of a placement for someone who can't function productively, has no grasp of reality, and relies on government entitlements. 435 congressional seats will open up next year. You appear to be perfectly qualified.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/24/1646735/-Dear-Mom-About-your-50-year-nursing-career-Medicaid-Woman-s-post-will-blow-GOP-minds

Paul Ryan dreamed about screwing over poor people back in college

"So, the health care entitlements are the big, big, big drivers of our debt. There are three. Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare. Two out of three are going through Congress right now. So, Medicaid—sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since you and I were drinking out of a keg."



http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/17/paul_ryan_s_college_dream_was_to_kick_poor_people_off_medicaid.html

Trump budget cuts meals on wheels to fund defense contractors

"The preliminary outline for President Donald Trump's 2018 budget could slash some funding for a program that provides meals for older, impoverished Americans.

The budget blueprint suggests cutting funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by about $6.2 billion, a 13.2% decrease from its 2017 funding level.

Here's what Trump wants cut

Almost half of those savings will come by eliminating the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which provides money for a variety of community development and anti-poverty programs, including Meals on Wheels."

Mick Mulvaney defends meals on wheels cuts

"At a news conference Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget chief, defended proposed cuts to the Meals on Wheels program, which provides food aid to needy senior citizens, by saying the program is one of many that is “just not showing any results.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/16/trump-budget-chief-says-meals-on-wheels-is-not-showing-any-results-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.076df1fe6814

Jaws Drop As Trump WH Claims Starving Seniors By Killing Meals On Wheels Is Compassionate

Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters today that eliminating food for senior citizens via the Meals On Wheels program was the compassionate thing to do because if a program can't demonstrate results, it should get cut. 

By Jason Easley



When Mulvaney was asked about the elimination of funding for Meals On Wheels, he answered, “I think you know that Meals On Wheels is not a federal program. It’s part of that Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that we give to the states, and then many states make the decision to use that money on Meals On Wheels. What I can tell you about CDBG's is that’s what we fund. Right? So we spend $150 billion on those programs since the 1970's. The CDBGs have been identified as programs since I think the second Bush administration as ones that we just not showing any results. We can’t do that anymore. We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. Meals On Wheels sounds great. Again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion, but to take the federal money and to give that to the states, and say look we want to give you federal money for programs that don’t work. I can’t defend that anymore.”

Later Mulvaney was asked if this is a hard-hearted budget. He answered, “I don’t think so. In fact, I think it is one of the most compassionate things we can do to. You’re only focusing on half of the equation. Right? You’re focusing on recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients and the folks who give us the money in the first place, and I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say look, we’re not going to ask you for your hard earned money anymore.”

In other words, screw the starving elderly and the kids who are going to go without afterschool programs, people like Donald Trump aren’t giving you their “hard earned” money anymore.

Meals on Wheels helps 2.4 million seniors have access to food while being able to stay in their own homes. The results for the program can be seen in both nutritional terms and increased independence for millions of Americans. Meals on Wheels saves taxpayers $34 billion a year in healthcare costs.

This is a vital program for America’s communities, and anyone who claims otherwise is not telling the truth. The selfish argument about taxpayers isn’t going to fly in this case.

The Trump administration has gone from being out of touch with America to trying to starve Americans.

'I Might As Well Have Not Voted': Details Of GOP Health Plan Leave Trump Voter Appalled

By Brad Reed

Donald Trump this week signaled his support for the House Republicans’ new health care bill — but it looks like that legislation is going over like a lead balloon with his base.

Not only are the Trump diehards at Breitbart News bashing the plan as “Obamacare 2.0,” but even some casual voters are worried about the president’s plan.

ABC News this week talked with North Carolina resident Martha Brawley, a 55 year old woman who cast a ballot for the first time in her life for Donald Trump. Brawley says that she voted for the president on the hopes that he could bring down the cost of health care — but she’s been appalled so far by what she’s seen from the Republican Congress.

“I voted for Trump hoping that he would change the insurance so I could get good health care,” she told ABC News. “I might as well have not voted.”

Brawley was particularly upset when she learned that, under Trumpcare, she would receive a paltry $3,500 tax credit to buy insurance. At the moment, she gets a federal subsidy of around $8,688 to buy insurance from Obamacare.

“All these people who talk in politics have insurance,” she told ABC News. “People like me don’t.”

One Brief Example Of The Insane Hypocrisy Of The GOP On The Health Care Bill

Posted by Rude One

It's really one of the weirdest things in the American Health Care Act, the bullshit bill that bullshit Republicans rolled out so their bullshit president could declare that he was St. Donald fighting the Affordable Care Act dragon. From pages 10-16, the bill's authors lay out the conditions by which MegaMillions and Powerball and other winners would have to pay for their own damn health insurance. That new part takes up a tenth of the length of the entire 66 page bill that escaped Mario Kart character Sean Spicer jigged around and pointed at for its brevity, contrasting it with the monstrously huge stack of pages that make up Obamacare (yeah, the black guy's was bigger and you could do more with it).

And the lottery section is just bizarrely precise in talking about the conditions when a lottery winner wouldn't be able to get Medicaid: "a State shall, in determining such eligibility, include such winnings or income (as applicable) as income received— (I) in the month in which such winnings or income (as applicable) is received if the amount of such winnings or income is less than $80,000; (II) over a period of 2 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $80,000 but less than $90,000; (III) over a period of 3 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $90,000 but..." You get the idea.

Obsessively detailed, no?

This is easy to mock in a "God, how fucking dumb are they?" kind of way. Except, instead, looking at why this language is in the bill reveals something just a little more sinister about the hypocrisy under which the GOP is operating to commit this health care fuckery.

One of the reasons that Republicans are desperately trying to cram the bill through like a limp cock on an unlubed asshole is because the Congressional Budget Office hasn't finished its scoring of the bill to see what its effects might be. When the CBO is done, it will likely reveal that the AHCA is, as previously mentioned, a bullshit bill that will cost a ton of money and kick millions of people off health insurance. Republicans in the House, at least, are trying to maintain the illusion that they're not just complete twat mites who want to straight up murder people to give the wealthy a tax cut, but, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on.

A cynical reader might be thinking, "Well, sure, everyone loves the CBO when it gives them the numbers they want. What's the big deal?" But that's not quite cynical enough.

See, the lottery exclusion up there was actually first brought up in 2016 because, apparently, there are enough winners to make a big damn difference: "Using the typical per capita cost for Medicaid adults, this provision would reduce direct spending by $475 million over the 2016-2026 period." You know who came up with that nearly half-billion dollars in savings because of a seemingly odd provision? The Congressional Budget Office.

That's the depth of hypocrisy occurring here. The Republicans need the CBO's figures to write their goddamn bill, but they are running scared from the CBO when it comes to the final bill's effects on Americans. That's the incredible dickishness involved here.

Paul Ryan: "Did You Know Insurance Works Like Insurance?"

Posted by Rude One

Blithering ass pimple Paul Ryan, a man who looks like he's perpetually contemplating how he can get away with getting fucked by a horse dick, said one of the stupidest things anyone in politics has said recently, and that's even counting every word out of Donald Trump's dumb, leathery, old man mouth.

Using the filmstrip of the damned that is PowerPoint, Ryan attempted to explain what is so bad about the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate, and, in doing so, demonstrated that you can make anything seem sinister with a colorful pie chart.

"The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level. Young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So the young, healthy person’s going to be made to buy healthcare, and they’re gonna pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her 40's, or gets heart disease in his 50's," Ryan said.

You following that so far? Now let's have some motherfuckin' pie: "So take a look at this chart. The red slice here are what I would call people with pre-existing conditions, people who have real healthcare problems. The blue is the rest of the people in the individual market, that’s the market where people don’t get health insurance with their jobs, or they buy it themselves. [For the record, the blue is about 80% of the pie] The whole idea of Obamacare is the people in the blue side pay for the people on the red side. The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral."

In other words, the insurance works, well, just like fuckin' insurance works. Exactly like insurance works. Every kind of insurance. Your car insurance? Homeowner's? Yep. But, hell, let's put insurance aside for a moment.

By Ryan's reasoning, there is no reason for there even to be a society, let alone a government. Some of you don't have children and you pay property taxes, which, in most states, goes to fund schools, which you don't use because, hey, you don't have any fuckin' children.

Jesus fuckballs, this is even more of a scam than health insurance because there's a good chance you're gonna go to a doctor some day. If you never have kids, you never take advantage of the school system. Why the fuck should you have to pay for it?

You know why we pay for schools for other people's kids? Because that's what the fuck you do or your entire society turns to shit (unless we start sending kids back to work all those coal mine jobs that Trump has promised). And that's why you pay for other people's health care. Because if you don't, you will end up paying, through emergency room visits, lost productivity, and more.

My insurance that I've paid during this relatively healthy time of my life is a hedge against the time when I get cancer from the soon-to-be poisoned water or have a heart attack from watching cock knobs like Ryan attempt to explain why the basic model for the existence of insurance is wrong. I'm not gonna forego insurance because I'm paying for someone's chemo now. What a fuckin' tool I'd be.

And, look, we shouldn't even be talking about fuckin' health insurance. We should be talking about a national health care system that eliminates the profiteering corporations. But we're Americans, and, goddammit, we want people to suffer because we think it's better that people have a fantasy idea of "freedom." Motherfucker, we have jobs and shit to do. And Ryan wants you to take the time to figure out how to get the best price on that stent surgery that you need. That's not freedom. That's fucking with people's lives and making them believe they are free when they are just slaves in your chains of market forces.

Towards the end of his TED-talk from hell, Ryan gave away the game, the real reason why the House GOP is attempting this nonsense: "We, as Republicans, have been waiting seven years to do this. We, as Republicans, who fought the creation of this law and accurately predicted that it would not work, ran for office in 2010, in 2012, in 2014 and in 2016 on a promise that we would -- if given the ability, we would repeal and replace this law. How many people running for Congress and the Senate did you hear say that? How many times did you hear President Donald Trump, when he was candidate Donald Trump, say that? This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment. And this is the closest this will ever happen."

We're all just victims of a tautology that has ensnared the GOP. They swore up and down that they would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and now that they can repeal the ACA, they have to repeal the ACA because they said they would repeal the ACA and now they can repeal...

Except they can't unless they get a critical number of Americans to think, "Wait, I shouldn't pay for shit I'm not using right this second," which, sadly, is probably a convincing argument to the selfish pricks who voted for these assholes like Ryan.

(By the way, the ACA isn't in a "death spiral." Premiums have gone up for just 3% of all Americans with health insurance. That's what we're arguing about here. It's all a fucking game.)

Welcome to Trumpcare™

Republicans Could Be Heroes On Obamacare (And Liberals Should Let Them)

Posted by Rude One

Let me be honest: I'd rather have my prostate checked by Wolverine on a vengeance rampage than help an elected Republican in Congress. But if you are one, chances are you're either facing crowds of angry constituents (and, really, and, c'mon, you can lie to your Twitter followers all you want, but it's mostly your constituents who are showing up) at town hall meetings where they force you to defend the idiot president and your own campaign promises, the ones that really promise to hurt them or their familes, or you're cowering like a beaten puppy in a corner of your local office, avoiding anyone who might tell you to your face what you know is true: "You're full of shit."

Face it, GOP scum. Now that the black guy and that Clinton woman are out of the way as a lightning rod for all the misdirected hatred you could foster, you have nothing between you and the voters. There is no buffer. And anything you do is something you own. Yeah, motherfuckers, acting is a whole lot harder than obstructing. It's a lot easier to talk about killing something than to actually drown the cat or bludgeon the milk man.

But when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, you have painted yourself into a corner and then placed landmines all around the floor. For seven years, it's been a constant chant of "repeal," followed by "repeal and replace," which was already a retreat, an admission that you needed to do something about the uninsured in the United States, that the government had to be involved to some degree, even if it was just with bullshit tax credits.

Now, since the election and certainly in the town halls, what you're hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rep. Jason "Little Rat-Faced Bitch" Chaffetz of Utah, Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, and so many more, is that the ACA or, you know, Obamacare, is doing what it was supposed to do: give people who previously didn't have access to health insurance a chance to go to the doctor and get treatment without having to choose between medicine or food. People who previously didn't have that access, those who got policies through the exchanges and through expanded Medicaid, have learned that they like being treated like human beings whose lives have worth.

And when you, the GOP Congress men and women, tell them that you are gonna come up with a plan that'll be even better, that you can't give your constituents all the details because it's "still being worked out" or some such shit, that someone's cancer treatment might be interrupted while you attempt to figure out what "replace" is supposed to mean, that to get cancer treatment under the Affordable Care Act is to not want "freedom" or have "individual responsibility," as Vice President Mike Pence alluded to in a tweet, then you are telling those voters that they do not deserve to be treated like human beings. You're saying, senators and representatives, that their cancer treatments and medicine and other health care, their lives, aren't worth the effort to save.

So, yeah, they're pretty fuckin' angry. You've lost on this issue. You can be jerks about it and dick people over. Or you can admit you lost.

Here's the deal, though. I've got a solution. It's so easy that you will come out of the whole thing looking like the most democracy-loving motherfuckers in history, like goddamned heroes. Listen. No, shut the fuck up, GOP assholes, and listen:

You tell the voters that you heard them. Tell your constituents that you understand how important the Affordable Care Act has been. And tell them that because they have spoken so passionately and made so much sense that you are now going to listen to them. You can make a big fuckin' show about it. "Republicans want to take care of all Americans," you can say. Hell, you can even remind us all about how the ACA was a Republican idea to begin with (which, let's be honest, is the reason you can't come up with a replacement).

You don't have to admit error. You can say that you "evolved," which seems to be the term now for "Boy, I was a fucking prick about that. Sorry." And then you can say that instead of "repeal and replace," you're going to "reform and repair" Obamacare.

And you can essentially do nothing. No, really. You can do absolutely nothing except for a few tweaks that it needs to help out the marketplace in some states. Then you can say, "See? We fixed it. Republicans fix things." Hell, Democrats might go along with it, and you can claim a bipartisan victory, that phantom of something that we used to think was important. Your idiot president can make one of his barely coherent speeches about how he fixed the ACA and now it's "Trumpcare."

Now, sure, sure, you're wondering, "Won't people think we're liars and hypocrites?" To which I can only say, "What the fuck do you think people think you are now, GOP?" But, to put it another way, right now, Republican voters are fucking nuts. They honestly believes that millions of people voted illegally. They really think that Donald Trump is doing a good job. A good many of them are convinced that kids are being raped in the basement of a DC pizzeria because "cheese." You just say that this was what you wanted all along. You wanted to hear from your constituents and you listened. And if Trump tweets that out, you're golden. The stupidity of your voters will be your cover.

As for us liberals, we'll gnash our teeth. But, ultimately, we're liberals. We want people to have access to health care. Democratic members of Congress and candidates will likely campaign on, "Oh, c'mon, we were right all along." As well they should. And maybe they'll win with that. However, GOP, you will definitely be losing a lot of races if you take away Daddy's heart surgery and Mommy's chemo.

Oh, dear, sweet, terrible GOP, you have lost Obamacare as an issue. Because Obamacare without "Obama" is just "care," and do you want to be the party that takes that away from millions of Americans?

(Note: Yeah, they probably do.)

GOP Rep tries the "death panel" line at town hall

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R) fields questions at a healthcare reform listening session in New Port Richey, Florida. The false claim of 'death panels' in the ACA was PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" in 2009.



"..The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

George Orwell