Pop Quiz:
What would America look like under Rep. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) radical, Tea Party-inspired
budget?
A. A typical 65-year-old would spend $6,359 more
per year out of pocket for health care by 2022 because Medicare’s promise would
be replaced with underfunded vouchers.
B. At least 15 million people
would lose Medicaid health care.
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. The
Senate will consider it this week.
How many Senate Republicans
will vote 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?
Let’s make sure every
U.S. senator knows this “right-wing social engineering” bill—which is what
former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently called Rep. Ryan’s
budget—is not used as a starting point for a debate over America’s
future.
Here’s how you can help stop this
radical, Tea Party-inspired budget:
Forward this message to five friends—ask them to oppose the Ryan budget and make
sure it gets voted down in the Senate.
This week, the Senate is expected to vote on two budget proposals that would devastate women and their families while putting trillions of dollars in the pockets of corporations and the wealthy. Both the proposals — one passed by the House Republican majority (introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)) and one introduced in the Senate by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — would hurt women and families at every stage of their lives.
We need your help to keep these damaging proposals at bay. Ask your Senator to vote NO on these types of harmful budget proposals!
Both the House Republican budget and the Toomey budget:
•Cut, then cap, Medicaid. Seniors would lose long-term care services, women with disabilities would lose crucial services, and millions of vulnerable women would lose their health coverage.
•Cut, then cap, other core safety net programs, such as SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), which are especially important to women and children.
•Slash funding for other critical programs like child care, Head Start, education, Pell grants, women’s preventive health care, domestic violence prevention and much, much more.
•Give trillions of dollars in new tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations by cutting tax rates for millionaires and corporations on top of permanently extending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest.
In addition, the House Republican budget would end Medicare as we know it, forcing seniors in the future to pay substantially more for less coverage. Sen. Toomey did not include this proposal in his budget, because it focuses on just the next 10 years — but the Toomey budget makes even deeper cuts to Medicaid and non-defense programs over the next 10 years than the House-passed budget.
Defund Planned Parenthood? Failed. Eliminate family planning funds? Nope. Still attacking women’s health? You betcha.
Since the start of this Congress, House leadership has pursued an agenda seeking to reduce women’s access to reproductive health care services. Now they are pushing H.R. 3, a bill that proposes dangerous restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion.
It’s time to send Speaker Boehner and House leadership a message. Tell your Representative to stop the attacks on women’s health and vote NO on H.R. 3.
H.R. 3 would harm women’s health and would even raise taxes on individuals and small businesses to punish private health care decisions. Now we are hearing that this bill may come to the House floor for a vote as early as next week. We must stop them. Tell your Representative to oppose this harmful bill and protect women’s health.
H.R. 3 reduces women’s access to abortion care in many ways, but here are some of its most outrageous provisions —Raises taxes and increases costs on many individuals and small businesses with insurance plans that cover abortion, which could force individuals and employers to drop abortion coverage from their health insurance plans. It could even shut down the entire private market for insurance coverage that includes abortion.
Writes into permanent law a ban on abortion coverage for ALL women who depend on the government for their health care. This includes low-income women currently covered under Medicaid, women who will become eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, women serving in the U.S. military, federal employees, residents of the District of Columbia, women in federal prisons and women covered by the Indian Health Service.
Unbelievably, H.R. 3 contains no exceptions for circumstances where a woman faces serious health consequences, even if continuing the pregnancy could cause permanent damage to her heart, lungs, or kidneys.
We refuse to stand by as they continue their outrageous attack on women’s health. Tell your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 3 and its dangerous restrictions on women’s health care coverage today.
Thank you for helping us protect women’s access to reproductive health services. We will continue to work tirelessly to defeat this bill.
But as we seek to build an organization based outside of Washington, President Obama’s speech also provides an unusually stark contrast — one all of us can use to start conversations with our friends and neighbors about what’s at stake in this election.
He spoke about things you don’t generally hear in Washington conversations too often dominated by special interests: He’ll cut waste and excess at the Pentagon — particularly spending that is requested not by our military, but by politicians and corporate interests.
He’ll eliminate tax cuts for Americans in the highest tax brackets who don’t need them, including himself — and he will reform the individual tax code so that it’s fair and simple and so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford.
Some cuts he proposed are tough. But they’re also smart and surgical — helping us balance our books while still doing the right things to win the future. President Obama’s plan would protect the middle class, invest in our kids’ education, and make sure we don’t protect the wealthiest Americans from the costs of reform at the expense of the most vulnerable.
The other side has presented a very clear alternative: End Medicare as we know it, privatizing the program that millions of seniors rely on for health care. Make deep cuts to education. Slash investments in clean energy and infrastructure. All to pay for tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year, and all while actually raising our national debt.
In short, their plan will please a special interest donor base and those who put ideology before results rather than reduce deficits over the long term. And let’s be clear: They think they can get away with it because, fundamentally, they don’t think you’ll do anything about it.
That’s where I know we can prove them wrong. Because we can respond right now by building an organization that will stop them — not just in this deficit battle, but in the next election so they never have the chance to enact these proposals.
Here’s the first step. Join our fight for a deficit reduction plan that will actually reduce the deficit — with a goal of shared prosperity through shared responsibility. Add your name to support President Obama’s plan — and then help bring more people into the conversation:
President Obama made a promise in his speech today. He said that we won’t have to sacrifice programs like Medicaid and Social Security — programs that millions of Americans rely on — as long as he’s President. He’s committed to seeking serious solutions to the problems we face while still upholding the larger responsibilities we have to one another. So it’s our job to build the organization that’s going to keep him in the White House.
P.S. — If you missed President Obama’s speech earlier today, some excerpts are below:
1. “Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself.
“Already, the reforms we passed in the health care law will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion. My approach would build on these reforms. We will reduce wasteful subsidies and erroneous payments. We will cut spending on prescription drugs by using Medicare’s purchasing power to drive greater efficiency and speed generic brands of medicine onto the market. We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid. We will change the way we pay for health care — not by procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results. And we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services seniors need.”
2. “But let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations.”
3. “In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.”
4. “This is my approach to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next twelve years. It’s an approach that achieves about $2 trillion in spending cuts across the budget. It will lower our interest payments on the debt by $1 trillion. It calls for tax reform to cut about $1 trillion in spending from the tax code. And it achieves these goals while protecting the middle class, our commitment to seniors, and our investments in the future.
“So this is our vision for America — a vision where we live within our means while still investing in our future; where everyone makes sacrifices but no one bears all the burden; where we provide a basic measure of security for our citizens and rising opportunity for our children.”
5. “But no matter what we argue or where we stand, we’ve always held certain beliefs as Americans. We believe that in order to preserve our own freedoms and pursue our own happiness, we can’t just think about ourselves. We have to think about the country that made those liberties possible. We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community. And we have to think about what’s required to preserve the American Dream for future generations.
“This sense of responsibility — to each other and to our country — this isn’t a partisan feeling. It isn’t a Democratic or Republican idea. It’s patriotism.”
For decades, Americans have counted on a basic promise: A secure retirement is the reward for a lifetime of labor. Yet last Friday, House Republicans voted almost unanimously to break one of America’s most sacred promises that the cost of health care will not bankrupt seniors and their families once they enter retirement. Less than one year after Republicans hurled misleading claims that the Affordable Care Act‘s provisions to make Medicare more efficient would somehow deprive seniors of care, the House GOP passed a budget that will phase out Medicare and leave seniors entirely at the mercy of the large health insurance companies (ironically, while still keeping many of the Medicare cuts they once criticized). And just one year after Republicans peppered the airwaves with claims that Democrats were ramming major changes to the health system through Congress by spending just one year debating health reform, the GOP-controlled House took only two weeks to debate and pass their plan to eliminate Medicare. If the Republican budget ever becomes law, it will shred America’s contract with seniors who worked every day of their lives knowing that Medicare would be there for them in their retirement.
THE END OF MEDICARE, PERIOD: The GOP budget does not “reform” Medicare. It does not provide seniors with the same coverage Members of Congress receive. And it does not end Medicare “as we know it.” The GOP budget ends Medicare, period. The centerpiece of the House Republicans’ plan is a proposal that repeals traditional Medicare and replaces it with a health insurance voucher that loses its value over time. Because the value of the Republicans’ privatized Medicare replacement does not keep up with the cost of health care, their plan will gradually phase out Medicare as its increasingly worthless vouchers will eventually only cover a very tiny fraction of the cost of a health insurance plan. Worse, as President Obama told the nation last week, the GOP budget immediately fritters away much of the savings from eliminating Medicare with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans. The rich get richer, and America’s seniors are tossed out into the cold.
THE PATH TO MEDICARE REPEAL: Although the GOP budget phases out Medicare gradually over many years, it will deal a body blow to America’s seniors the minute it goes into effect. The GOP plan eliminates traditional Medicare and forces seniors into the private insurance market. But health insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than traditional Medicare, and they lack Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower rates from doctors and hospitals. As a result, seniors will pay more for less as soon as the GOP plan becomes a reality. According to the CBO, total health care expenditures for a typical 65-year-old “would be almost 40 percent higher with private coverage under the GOP plan than they would be with a continuation of traditional Medicare” in the very first year that the GOP plan goes into effect. As a clear sign that the GOP understands that seniors will not stand for losing their access to traditional Medicare, Republicans claim that Americans over age 55 will not lose their access to the nation’s most successful health care program, but this claim is also misleading. The GOP’s plan will shunt younger, healthier seniors into privatized plans, leaving traditional Medicare with an ever diminishing pool of the very oldest beneficiaries, and stealing away Medicare’s power to drive a hard bargain with health providers. Moreover, it’s not even clear that many health insurance companies will even be willing to offer private plans to seniors, who represent the “oldest, sickest, and least profitable demographic.”
THE GOP’S WAR ON HEALTH CARE: Lest there be any doubt, the GOP plan to end Medicare is just one part of a full-scale assault on America’s health care safety net. The GOP budget does not simply kill Medicare, it guts Medicaid, forcing states to either cap enrollment, cut eligibility, slash benefits, lower payments to doctors or somehow dig up additional funds to pay for their newly starved health care system. This assault on Medicaid deals another body blow to seniors, as Medicaid pays for nearly half of all long term care costs in the United States. Nor is the GOP’s war on the health care safety net anything new. The GOP lined up in near-unanimous opposition to the landmark Affordable Care Act, and they just as resoundingly embraced the utterly meritless notion that health reform violates the Constitution. Many GOP lawmakers go even further, claiming that Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and any other federal health care programs are unconstitutional. And the GOP’s last campaign for the White House was built upon a plan to gut state laws protecting health insurance consumers and leave them to the mercy of the insurance industry. In other words, it’s clear that the Republican Party has wanted to dismantle the nation’s health care contract with all Americans for many years — they just finally got the votes to pass this radical agenda through the House.
Pop Quiz:
Be a Seed for Change 
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