THE ELEPHANT-IN-THE-ROOM IS EVEN BIGGER THAN IT SEEMS

 

We would look like a 3^rd World Nation if the GOP got their way.

As I have been spending my time writing about and going after the many candidates that have signed up for the 2016 GOP nomination, I realized that I have been ignoring the big and serious elephant-in-the-room.  That monstrous pachyderm being the Republican run House and Senate and their latest conservative offerings.

What finally brought me to my senses is when I read what these two bodies have done in the passing of their latest federal budget. 

This latest monstrosity by the GOP slashes virtually every social program from pre-school to our senior citizen’s safety nets.

For what you will read in the following, this is a vast composite of information from multiple sources so you can see the totality of the devastation that would occur should the Republican House & Senate budget become reality due to their also running the White House from the 2016 election.

As one liberal publication put it, “Democrats, responded by accurately calling it ‘a recipe for national decline,’ as it goes after health care, anti-poverty programs, schools and student loans and Social Security, all the while raising taxes on the middle-class, and breaking promises to veterans while boosting military spending.”

But it’s not stopping at the federal level.  In those Red states where Republicans control the Legislature and executive branches, the rampage has gone even further. Like in Kansas, where the GOP has rewritten laws for their welfare programs.  In this state, they treat recipients such as single parents and children like paroled convicts. In 11 Red states, 37 new rules have been adopted this year creating more barriers to abortion.  From goes from requiring parental consent, to mandatory waiting periods, to even falsely telling women that some abortion procedures can be reversed.

As a June 30th deadline approaches for states to expand Medicaid, state-run health care for the poor in 21 Red states are still refusing to do so. According to Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s statistics, 960,000 adults and 2.52 million children are being deliberately denied access to care. In a handful of other Red states, the right-wing war on labor continues repealing prevailing wage laws for construction jobs, which cuts union wages by 10% and non-union construction pay by 2% to 4%.

The real question is what would the Republicans try to do if they controlled Congress and the White House after the 2016 election?

The GOP’s just-passed 2016 budget in Congress is obviously heading for President Obama’s veto pen.  But it does signals what the GOP would do if they were pulling all the strings.  In Red states, social conservatives are going after abortion rights, opposing LGBT equality, and punishing welfare recipients.  Business conservatives are following the pro-corporate American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and going after unions, opposing living wages, while denying climate change and more.      

So, let’s look at what they would do in detail.

First, they would cut health insurance to 27 million people by repealing Obamacare and its related Medicaid expansion.  This is #1 for what the House-Senate’s just-passed 2016 budget seeks. In its first five years, Obamacare has expanded coverage to 16.5 million uninsured, and expanded Medicaid in 29 states and Washington, D.C. It did that by paying start-up costs for several years and 93% after that. The Republicans want absolutely none of that. They do not see health care as a right, public obligation or responsibility, but a service only for those who can afford it and as a profit center for the private sector.

Next the GOP attack on public health care does not stop with Obamacare. Medicaid is the state-run health plan for 70 million low-income people. That includes single parents, people with disabilities, every third child in the US, and the elderly. It pays more for long-term care and for nursing homes than any single source, according to congressional analyses. The GOP budget wants to repeal the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, cut another $500 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, and turn it into a block grant to the states. (Block Grants never work.)  These changes would play out differently in the different states, but the end result is they would shrink options for our society’s most vulnerable. 

The changes called for in the budget would privatize and gut senior healthcare. The GOP’s war on safety nets would continue against Medicare, the federal health plan for Americans older than 67.

The GOP would turn Medicare into a voucher program, where beneficiaries get an annual fixed payment to buy private insurance (Like a Block Grant).  Those costs cannot be accurately known up front, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) studies. That means more out-of-pocket costs for seniors on fixed incomes. Because Obamacare contained a provision that lowered prescription drug costs, those too would go up. The GOP would cut $430 billion from Medicare over the next decade, which would undermine the health care options.

The GOP would put Social Security on the chopping block. Despite efforts by progressive groups and growing numbers of elected Democrats, they recognize a looming retirement security crisis that calls for lifting the payroll tax cap. But the GOP keeps falsely saying that Social Security is driving the federal debt, which is totally false.  Their long-term intentions could not be clearer. A small part of Social Security, covering people with disabilities, will run out of money next year or face benefit cuts. Instead of using money from the retirement trust as was done in the past, the GOP’s budget agreement says “not a penny” can be used this way. They are pretending there is a major fiscal crisis when there is none, when the government has been acting as a bank for taxpayers and holding their money. As it was under President George W. Bush, in the case of health care, Republicans still want to privatize Social Security.

The GOP also doesn’t want to confront the realities of poverty in America, which include tens of millions of children. Per the House Budget Committee Democrats’ analysis of the GOP budget, they explains that it would cut $300 billion to food stamps, “greatly reducing benefits or pushing many more people from the program.” In Kansas, the GOP went even further in revising the state welfare law, which now contains lifetime benefit caps, harsh work requirements, $25-a-day limits on bank withdrawals, restrictions on where recipients can shop and buy their food, background checks, even ongoing drug tests, and more.

Per the House Budget Committee Democrats, the GOP does not believe education is an investment in America’s future. Spending on education would fall to its lowest level in 15 years, with 46,000 additional children losing access to Head Start, more layoffs of special education teachers and those who work with disadvantaged youths. Similarly, adult job training would be cut, as well as funding for medical and scientific research grants.

As higher education keeps getting more expensive, student debt keeps growing. Yet the GOP budget worsens this problem. It cuts another $200 billion from higher education over the next decade, of which $85 billion is Pell Grants whose maximum will be frozen “forever,” according to House Democrats. Additionally, the GOP would start charging interest on loans while students are still in college, adding thousands to borrowing costs. It also ends a $2,500 tax credit “that helps more than 10 million low- and moderate-income students,” House Democrats have stated. Taken together, the Republican’s philosophy toward education is based on their belief that government should have no role in helping people achieve goals, even through education.   

The GOP budget would increase taxes for millions because it ends an annual tax credit that helps millions pay for college, and it lets key provisions expire in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. The National Priorities Project, whose analysis of the GOP budget echoed the House Democrats.  They also said these moves would end up “raising taxes on millions of working families.”

The Republicans also believe America’s roads and bridges can get by for another decade with minimal maintenance.  Their budget will cut transportation funding by 26%, over the next decade.

You remember when the GOP hounded the White House when a scandal broke out Veterans Administration hospitals where vets could not see physicians promptly. Well, this same GOP budget cuts discretionary funding for vets next year by $1.9 billion and envisions $20 billion in cuts over the next decade. This is all coming as vets from Iraq and Afghanistan are returning with horrible injuries requiring more health care and services. At the same time, the GOP budget adds $187 billion for next year’s overseas military operations “for unrelated defense needs,” the House Budget Committee Democrats said. This is more of their approach to “love war but abandon the soldier” pattern that has existed for years in Washington.

The GOP budget ignores many of today’s pressing issues. Their budget has nothing for immigration reform. Instead, Congress is siding with right-wing governors who sued to block White House executive orders suspending deportations—even as 2.3 million undocumented people live in those Red states. There’s an ongoing effort to block federal climate change research at the CIA, Pentagon and most recently NASA. Meanwhile, all of the GOP’s presidential contenders are downplaying or denying that climate change is real, siding with the fossil fuel industry, which works to undermine all the renewable energy options.

The GOP’s budget in Congress and in Red states show what they would seek to do if they had a congressional majority and the presidency after 2016’s elections. It’s clear they would try to dismantle or privatize health care and retirement security safety nets, like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. They will do nothing to make higher education more accessible; instead they would raise student loan interest rates. Meanwhile, their rough treatment of the poor would keep the most vulnerable Americans trapped at the bottom—and they’d punish those who seek public assistance, starting with food stamps.

If all that and more wasn’t enough, if they had control, they also would have the power to select and confirm the next Supreme Court Justices—where the current Republican-appointed 5-4 majority has made decisions that are radical and regressive. They have turned the federal elections into a process controlled by the rich where voters only get to weigh in at the very end.  They allow Red states to reject the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare and they’ve gutted The Voting Rights Act and have sided with corporate and state powers in anti-democratic ways.    A Republican lock on Washington could result in an even more right-wing Court as there are four justices approaching or older than 80.

It’s easy to scoff at the party-line budget votes in Congress, because the Obama White House would never sign anything like that into law. But that budget agreement is not just an ideological statement. It is a blueprint for a GOP dismantling of federal government, where life would become harder and harsher for multitudes of middle-class and poor Americans.

This is all worth remembering as the 2016 campaign rhetoric heats up, and Republicans falsely promise a new era of so-called freedom and prosperity to America.

Copyright G.Ater 2015