Nasty Business

Yesterday I wrote about the tax reform bill being considered by Congress. As you know a few more things are hidden in the bill they don’t want the rest of us to know. The first one is repeal of the mandate for Obamacare. This won’t kill the program but it will harm it once again, at the hands of a republican controlled congress.

The other day Sen. Hatch of Utah lamented on how badly the Obamacare program has worked. He wondered why. That only shows you how complicit he is in the entire republican debacle to undermine the program. He has been front and center on nearly every move to hurt the program from the start. They wanted to demonstrate to the American people how such a program would not work.

Well surprise! It worked better than imagined and President Obama was a hero. They were embarrassed and frustrated that their nasty business hidden in the details of legislation did not work to torpedo the Affordable Care Act. Frustrated. Embarrassed.

So they set to undermine the program in other ways they had control over. And they did, over and over again. They planted so many poison pills against the ACA it is a wonder it still works to this day. This makes them even more frustrated. And dishonest. Blaming dysfunction on the program that works because it is needed by huge number of folks in our nation.

Obama did the right thing. Congress has not kept its contract with the people. Shame on them.

So now they come to another cornerstone of their power and control: first was repeal and replace the ACA; they failed at that so far. Second is to reform taxes. That’s what they are working on now.

Instead of focusing on actual reform, this is what they are doing:

1.      Trying to kill ACA one more time; it has nothing to do with tax reform, but…

2.      Cut corporate taxes with the hope new jobs will be created; they already have the new jobs created but the labor pool either doesn’t want very many of them (after all we are deporting and discouraging immigrants from those very same jobs!), or they are not trained and experienced in performing those jobs. Remember these same corporations have been creating millions of job in the last 10 years overseas; India, Germany, France, Indonesia, et. al. What makes Congress intent on following this poor line of reasoning? To satisfy their corporate donors who helped elect them. Political payback. That’s it.

3.      Tax reform is also masking a huge cut to Medicare - $30 billion is the reported figure. Now why? Medicare is funded totally by you and I through employment taxes in the form of premiums. They don’t like this program because they think it smacks of socialism.

Meanwhile, only the rich will notice tax cuts. The rest of us will notice very little benefit; many of us will notice, however, a tax increase. The poorest and most vulnerable.

If anyone thinks this is the way to save money, then they haven’t considered the enormous price tag of the results of poor education, high unemployment, and lack of diversity in our labor pool and market place.

In short, republicans do not understand how the economy works. You would think so, but once you have your bounty, you don’t care for the other people. So you protect your own and ignore the suffering and decay of your own culture and wonder why.

I know this sounds like a rant. It is. But I share this with you because the complaints on both sides of the aisle are the same old, stale tales. Isn’t it about time they sit down in the same room and begin actually doing something positive for the American people?

I thought this is what they were elected to do. Their jobs. High time they did them. Nasty business indeed!

November 17, 2017