If It’s August, The Tea Party Wants To Take Away Your Health Care
In August of 2009, the Tea Party tried to run the health care bill off the rails. Flash forward two years and the Tea Party is at it again, but this time they are dead set on pushing through the GOP’s spectacularly unpopular plan to end Medicare. And, according to Reuters, it looks like we’re in it for the long haul:
But FreedomWorks, which helped found and shape the Tea Party movement, sees its campaign as the opening salvo in a long battle to secure a place for the Ryan plan in the 2012 debate and the legislative session that will begin in January 2013.
Here’s a refresher course on the GOP (which is indistinguishable from the Tea Party these days) plan to end Medicare:
- Ends Medicare: Period. The GOP could pass a bill to hand out potted plants to every American and call it Medicare, but it wouldn’t be the same affordable package of guaranteed benefits that Americans have depended on for decades — and have been promised will be there in the decades to come.
- Doubles Health Care Costs For Seniors: As this chart from the Center for American Progress shows, by doing nothing to actually control long-term health costs and then simply giving seniors a coupon to go buy private insurance, the GOP plan just shifts costs off the government’s books and onto the backs of seniors. It would increase their annual health care costs by about $6,000 a year in 2022:
Tea Party Majority Leader Eric Cantor Says Promises, Schmomises When It Comes To Entitlements
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was accidentally honest during an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he said the GOP wanted to “put people on notice” that it is coming for their entitlements. Cantor openly acknowledged that “promises have been made that, frankly, are not going to be kept for many.”
Check out the video, via ThinkProgress:
In One Sentence: The GOP voted — repeatedly — to end Medicare but they refuse to listen to the American people who have repeatedly told them and their Tea Party friends to “Keep Your Hands Off Our Medicare” once and for all.
BREAKING: FAA Shutdown Showdown Ends — For Now
Late this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced a deal to re-open the FAA:
Under a deal Reid made with House Speaker John Boehner, the Senate will pass the House bill that includes cuts to rural flight service to airports in Nevada, West Virginia and Montana. But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will use his authority to waive the airports from the cuts, ending a 13-day impasse that left 4,000 FAA workers and about 70,000 construction workers out of work.
In short, the livelihoods of more than 74,000 Americans will not fall prey to Rep. John Mica (R-FL) and the GOP’s extreme ideology — for now. The FAA will only be re-opened on a short-term basis and a fight over the GOP’s anti-worker, job-killing agenda will continue into the fall.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
Fox News is not interested in how hot the pineapple gets — Spongebob has a “global warming agenda.”
Marcus Bachmann’s favorite ex-gay has been using her high profile to enshrine homophobia in schools.
Millionaires are paying 25 percent less in taxes than they did 15 years ago.
What the debt ceiling deal reveals about the emergence of the “anti-state state.”
The ACLU is fighting Michigan’s pay-or-stay policy, which it argues creates debtor’s prisons targeting the state’s poor.
Calling all “26-year-old geeky males.”
How many secret wars is the United States currently fighting?
Nearly a third of residents in Appalachian communities experience psychological depression.
Nancy Pelosi says the GOP isn’t interested in deficit reduction; they just want to destroy government.
Sign Here: ThinkProgress Launches Petition Asking Reid And Pelosi To Hold The Line
ThinkProgress launched a petition yesterday aimed at bolstering Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as they make their nominations to thenew “super committee” created in the debt deal. Take a look at the language and PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SIGN:
Dear Leader Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid:
We have a jobs crisis in America. Unfortunately, the debt limit deal that was signed into law yesterday goes straight in the wrong direction. We are writing to urge you to ensure that we immediately change course.
Specifically, we ask that you only appoint members to the “super committee” who agree in advance they will only support a package that includes:
1. New revenues that exceed any additional cuts
2. A job creation package
If these components are not included, your appointees should agree to oppose the package, even if the result will be that the so-called “trigger” cuts go into effect. It’s time to hold the line.