I noticed that this "deal" protects veterans ... excuse me while I gag in
disbelief. But I digress. For over a decade of working with blind folks one of
the general rules was that we cannot duplicate services that are being provided
through another agency. As a result I have worked with a scant few of veterans
because they were receiving the services through the VA. Now in the past two
years my caseload has been liberally peppered with veterans (of all ages) for a
variety of services and they all reiterate that the VA isn't serving them. I
have said it before and will say it again that this is a by-product of selfish,
feel good third party protest voting or non-voting that put Trump in office the
last election cycle and will keep in office this coming election cycle.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2019 2:55 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Trump-Pelosi Deal Raises Debt Limit, But Protects
War Machine, Hyde Amendment
Trump-Pelosi Deal Raises Debt Limit, But Protects War Machine, Hyde Amendment
House Speaker Nacy Pelosi shakes Donald Trump's hand while grinning President
Trump shakes hands with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as they attend the 38th
Annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service on May 15, 2019, in Washington,
D.C.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images
By Karen Garcia, Sardonicky Published July 24, 2019
Let me get this straight. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump Treasury
Secretary Steve Mnuchin have miraculously just come to a silky-smooth
bipartisan budget agreement that rips the feathers right off the deficit hawks
and kills the Obama-era Sequester and fake debt ceiling crises all in one swoop.
The catch is that the debt ceiling truce is only for two years. So if a
Democrat wins the White House and the GOP holds the Senate, it will be back to
deficit hawkery as a bipartisan weapon to kill any possible resurgence of the
New Deal.
Meanwhile, Trump is happy because the deal protects the war machine and “our
veterans” and contains no poison pills that would nauseate rich people. The
Democrats will not interfere with his border wall, and the Hyde Amendment
prohibiting federal funding for abortions will remain. Pelosi is happy because
the deal “will enhance our national security and invest in middle class
priorities that advance the health, financial security and well-being of the
American people.” But Trump being Trump, it is entirely possible that he’ll
ultimately refuse to sign it no matter how much he praises it today. And Pelosi
being Pelosi, she utters not one single word about helping the tens of millions
of people now living in abject poverty in the United States. Bare survival
priorities, such as food and shelter, are not the same thing as middle class
priorities, which might include such things as somewhat more affordable
prescription drugs and protecting our right to purchase expensive health
insurance on the predatory marketplace.
Before we celebrate, therefore, we need to read the fine print in this proposed
budget deal. Because whenever politicians “reach across the aisle” in one of
those rare bipartisan moments of good feeling, we ordinary people must steel
ourselves for the blows that are sure to come. The very fact that the deal was
reached so secretly and so hastily and that it must be voted on before the
artificial deadline of the Congressional summer recess, is our first clue that
bipartisanship is the exact opposite of social and economic justice. This deal
must go through before anybody even has a chance to read it.
That’s how many poison pills for struggling people and how many gifts to the
oligarchs that this package undoubtedly contains.
Take the issue of the nation’s community health centers, which deal or no deal,
appeared to be very much on the bipartisan chopping block as recently as last
week. These centers, which serve the poor, are therefore conveniently and
cynically exempt from Pelosi’s “middle class priorities.”
The Democratic lawmakers proposing the cuts frame their cruelty in the usual
way: in order to be kind and save the poor, they have no choice but to punish
and sacrifice the poor, because otherwise the Republican hostage takers will
beat the poor into a bloody dead pulp.
As reported by the Washington Post,
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, is pushing a bipartisan plan that would provide flat levels of
federal funding for hundreds of community health centers nationwide, at about
$4 billion for the next four years. A similar plan is advancing in the Senate
with the support of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Lawmakers face a September deadline for the community health centers, after
which their funding would begin to expire, likely leading to steep cuts.
Pallone said the plan would provide the security of the longest guaranteed
funding commitment ever secured by the clinics, averting the September cliff.
But flat funding would not keep pace with medical inflation, likely forcing the
community health centers to serve about 4 million fewer people annually by 2023
than they do now, said Leighton Ku, professor of health policy at George
Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.
That prospect has alarmed liberal lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the congressional Progressive
Caucus. They argue Democrats should use their control of the House to approve
increases in funding for the centers, and then hammer out an agreement with
Senate Republicans.
“I was, quite honestly, stunned. It’s just absolutely disastrous, and moving in
the wrong direction,” said Sanders, a 2020 presidential candidate, in an
interview. “We should be substantially increasing funding. I was very, very
disappointed by Democratic leadership … We will do everything we can to rectify
this.”
We still don’t know if the Trump-Pelosi Manifesto contains the bait and switch
method of reducing health care for the poor, or whether it’s a side-deal
negotiated apart from the budget agreement.
It is also quite telling that Trump waited until right after the budget
agreement was announced to reveal plans to kick three million people off their
food stamp benefits. In so doing, he gives credence to Pelosi’s limited boast
of protecting the financial interests of the “middle class” — or those living
above the poverty levels necessary to qualify for government nutrition
assistance.
And speaking of bait and switch, the fact that Bernie Sanders is still going
strong, and is even finally getting more refreshingly blunt about such
corporate tools as Joe Biden, has finally elicited the full-blown hysteria of
New York Times pundit Paul Krugman, who’d so far this campaign season kept his
storied anti-Bernie powder dry, mainly by studiously ignoring Bernie Sanders.
Not any more. In a transparently bad-faith “both sides do it” column,
ironically subtitled “A Bad Faith Debate Over Health Care Coverage,” Krugman
hilariously equates Biden’s mendacity with Bernie’s exposure of his mendacity.
But right now, two of the major contenders for the Democratic presidential
nomination, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, are having an ugly argument about
health care that could hurt the party’s chances. There are real, important
differences between the two men’s policy proposals, and it’s fine to point that
out. What’s not fine is the name-calling and false assertions. Both men are
behaving badly. And for their party’s sake, and their country’s, they need to
stop it.
Notwithstanding that Krugman cannot point to one single example of Sanders
calling Biden any bad names or lying (because he hasn’t) the accusation is
simply cover for his main point: he doesn’t want Medicare For All to be a
platform in the presidential campaign, even though he likes Single Payer “in
theory”. The column is all of a piece with the centrist, or corporate wing of
the party, striving to please its deep-pocketed donors at the expense of
everybody else. The message is this: you can get rid of Trump, or you can
clamor for things that will make your lives better. But you cannot do both.
Supporting Medicare For All is the same thing as giving Trump another term.
Therefore, everybody please shut up about your damned health. And that includes
the 70-80 percent of you in favor of Medicare For All. You’re nothing but a
distraction.
Also, now that Pelosi’s attempted diminution of the “Squad’s” championship of
single payer health care has spectacularly backfired, the corporate party and
its pundits need a new scapegoat with which to undermine Single Payer, even as
they pretend to embrace the female members as a means of combating Trump’s
racism. Bernie Sanders, an old white guy, fits their bill perfectly. A
Democratic legal pundit who hilariously calls herself a “moderate” can even go
on MSNBC and complain that he “makes my skin crawl and I don’t know why” with
no consequence whatsoever.
Here’s my published response to Krugman, in which I refused to take his slimy
personality-politics bait, but instead tried to address the centrist groupthink
propaganda that he so shamelessly parrots:
Whenever you hear universal coverage defined as everyone having “access” to
“affordable” health care, beware of the bait and switch.
Access to care is not the same thing as guaranteed care. Calling a trip to the
doctor or emergency room “affordable” is glib to the point of cruelty, given
that the majority of Americans don’t even have $500 in savings.
The standard talking point that “folks” will never accept a Single Payer
program because they are loath to give up their wonderful employer-based plans
is also pretty cynical. Employers not only change plans regularly, they are
increasingly passing the costs of overpriced plans with less coverage along to
their workers.
If people are afraid of Medicare For All, it’s mainly because our rulers and
their corporate media stenographers, beholden to the insurance cartel and Big
Pharma and their Wall Street investors, are making sure they stay very afraid
of it. It’s obviously not in their job descriptions to educate people and
inform them that the taxes for Single Payer will be far, far lower than what
they now pay to the predatory health care marketplace, with the continued risk
that they can go bankrupt if they get hurt or sick.
Once Single Payer is passed, and the profit motive goes out of health care, it
will be repeal-proof. It will be as popular as Medicare For Some is right now.
That’s what has the wealthy donor class shaking in their custom-made shoes: the
prospect of too many people becoming healthy and less stressed.
