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| Courtesy of the DenverPost.Com |
A. A typical 65-year-old New Yorker would spend $6,518.20 more per year out of pocket for health care by 2022 because Medicare’s promise would be replaced with underfunded vouchers. The national average is a $6,359 increase.
B. At least 305,945 New York residents would lose Medicaid health care and at least 15 million nationally.
C. $4.2 trillion in new tax cuts would be handed out mostly to corporations and the rich.
D. All of the above.
If you answered D, all of the above, you’re right. The House Republican budget would do all of those things. All but four House Republicans voted for this radical proposal. This is mind-boggling.
In retrospect, we know that the point here is kinda moot because this bill was destined to fail. However, it does give us a glimpse into the minds and hearts of the radical lawmakers who devise the House Republican agenda.
From the get-go, we at the Voice Reporter have been calling the Ryan Plan a "Dead Plan Walking." And just yesterday, 40 Senate Republicans voted to give even more tax cuts to Wall Street and the wealthy and pay for them by cutting deeply into services for seniors, children and low and middle income working families.
Every legitimate poll proves that this vision for America is a losing strategy-- one that our nation does not agree with. House Republicans are still trying to short-circuit any recovery by attacking the elderly, working families and the poor. To put it mildly, they have done absolutely zero when it comes to job creation. The only thing the GOP has done is to focus on fighting a culture war-- taking away a women's right to choose, attacking worker rights, devaluing LGBT Americans, and pummeling the disenfranchised at every possible opportunity.
And at the same time, they want to eliminate the tax responsibility for the richest Americans and convince everyone that a reduction in vital public services is somehow in every one's best interest.
Let Tuesday's NY 26th Congressional District race be a wake up call for the nation-- the majority of Americans do not want Congress to fool around with Medicare and Social Security, period.
Much has been made of why and how the local Republicans lost this race-- everyone is pointing fingers and blaming each other. The fact is, this race was one of the most poorly run Republican campaigns ever launched in the history of New York State politics-- precisely because the GOP could never win on the issues that matter to the average, everyday working people of Western New York. When you throw in complete incompetence by campaign staffers, you have a losing formula while the whole nation watched it unfold.
Let's re-focus the national debate back to jobs
At a time when the White House should be attempting to reduce the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate and speed up the glacier-paced economic recovery by creating a new stimulus plan, Mr. Obama is instead trying to outbid Ryan and his Republican cohorts in a game of deficit reduction poker.
As a result, things that would help reduce the jobless rate and improve prospects for the working class, like spending on infrastructure, enhanced job training, and more support for higher education are off the table. Instead, both parties are now obsessed with the national debt rather than the mounting debt middle-class families are accumulating as they watch the value of their homes and their real wages fall and the cost of gas, college, and other staples rise. We need to be talking about the "real vision" for America-- not just responding to the irrational GOP proposals.
When we look back on what has transpired since the GOP took over the House in January, it's a damn shame that we even acknowledge that these initiatives like the Ryan Plan can be described as "starting points" to discuss and debate America’s future. The simple truth is the GOP is out of touch with mainstream America. This is not partisan spin. These are just the facts.
Let's re-focus the national debate back to jobs
At a time when the White House should be attempting to reduce the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate and speed up the glacier-paced economic recovery by creating a new stimulus plan, Mr. Obama is instead trying to outbid Ryan and his Republican cohorts in a game of deficit reduction poker.
As a result, things that would help reduce the jobless rate and improve prospects for the working class, like spending on infrastructure, enhanced job training, and more support for higher education are off the table. Instead, both parties are now obsessed with the national debt rather than the mounting debt middle-class families are accumulating as they watch the value of their homes and their real wages fall and the cost of gas, college, and other staples rise. We need to be talking about the "real vision" for America-- not just responding to the irrational GOP proposals.
When we look back on what has transpired since the GOP took over the House in January, it's a damn shame that we even acknowledge that these initiatives like the Ryan Plan can be described as "starting points" to discuss and debate America’s future. The simple truth is the GOP is out of touch with mainstream America. This is not partisan spin. These are just the facts.
-Ove Overmyer
Mr. Overmyer takes ownership of this commentary. This article does not reflect the views of CSEA as an organization.
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