Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican congressman, wants you to believe that the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that he helped pass early Thursday will somehow protect Medicare and Medicaid by cutting more than a trillion dollars in spending from the two programs.
More than 8 million people stand to lose what passes for them as health insurance if the House Republican bill passes the U.S. Senate.
Rob Wittman is living in fantasyland.
“I’ve fought to protect and preserve Medicaid for Virginia’s most vulnerable, and this bill does just that. It secures protection for pregnant women, single mothers, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. By removing deceased, ineligible, and non-citizen beneficiaries, this bill strengthens the integrity of the program, saves taxpayers billions, and ensures care is available for those who truly rely on it,” Wittman said in an Orwellian statement issued by his office on Thursday.
Reality check: the only way the bill saves any money is if it throws people out of the programs entirely.
The pretense from Republicans is that all they’re doing is kicking able-bodied people off the welfare rolls.
Another reality check on that: 70 percent of the adults on Medicaid have jobs, but too many employers, like, say, Walmart, don’t give their employees enough hours to qualify for employer-provided benefits, which is a feature, not a bug, of late-stage capitalism – big business saves money by letting the government cover its benefits for its employees.
More from the reality check department: 37 percent of the Medicaid rolls are children.
Guess they’re going to need to get jobs now, too.
“I am outraged and disgusted. I cannot fathom how extreme Republicans can sleep soundly after rubber stamping the largest cuts to basic needs programs for healthcare and hunger in my lifetime,” said Eugene Vindman, a Democrat who represents the Seventh District, which covers a swath of Central Virginia and the Northern Virginia exurbs.
Yes, the hunger part of this, need to get into what the “Big, Beautiful Bill” is doing to send kids to bed without dinner.
The bill the GOP passed this morning would reduce spending for the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program by $267 billion over 10 years.
Who gets hit here: 33 percent of SNAP recipients are seniors and the disabled, 36 percent have jobs, 67 percent are families with kids, with a lot of single-parent (read: mom raising the kids by herself) households in there.
The evangelicals pat themselves on the back because they were the driving force behind overturning Roe v. Wade, but once the kids are born, it’s like, f**k ‘em, they’re somebody else’s problem now.
I’m not putting words in their mouths there; that’s literally what this bill does.
“This is an effort to slash programs that everyday people rely on to give a tax break to billionaires and the super-wealthy. That’s what this whole thing is about. That’s what it was about in 2017 when they did it. Can we give tax breaks to the richest? U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters on a conference call this morning.
“If you have a minimum-wage job, chances are you may have to even be working two jobs, working two jobs to make ends meet, you’re going to see your taxes go up estimated 53 percent. If you’re at the high end of earners, that top 10th of 1 percent, you’re going to get a tax break about a minimum of $188,000, and if you’re really super wealthy, you could see a tax break, you know, exponentially higher. That’s just not right. It’s just not fair,” U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters on a separate call, also this morning.
The Senate is where this fight goes next.
Republicans, yes, are the majority party there, as is the case in the House.
We’re going to need Kaine and Warner and the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus to use the tools at their disposal to preserve as much of the safety net as they can.
“We’re going to have an awful lot of opportunity over the course of the next five or six weeks in the Senate to really expose what this does, and the Medicaid effect, and then the other effect that I’m really focused on is massive cuts to family nutrition programs, the SNAP program. Those are just things that we’ve got to oppose vigorously,” Kaine said.
Meanwhile, back in fantasyland:
“This fight is personal to me,”: Wittman said in the statement put out by his office. “I was adopted at eight months old from the Children’s Home Society of Virginia in Richmond. I know firsthand what access to care means for families like mine, and I’ve made it clear to House leadership that we must stand up for those who often don’t have a voice. I’m proud to say our advocacy was successful.”
This, from a guy who just voted to send needy kids like he once was to bed without dinner, and to make it harder for them to have access to basic healthcare, so that rich people like he now is can get even richer.
Just call it what it is: Robin Hood in reverse.
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
