Focused Read in 3-4 minutes,
the full report is 24 pages but it's a quick 24...
"The Republican Record on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security:
Attacks on Benefits Seniors Have Earned and Deserve
Prepared by Seniors Task Force Co-Chairs Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky & Congresswoman Doris Matsui
Introduction
On December 20, 2017, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, sending it to President Trump who signed it into law on December 22, 2017.
More than 80% of the law’s tax cuts will go to the top 1% wealthiest people when it is fully phased in by 2027, providing those households with an average tax cut of $51,000 in 2018 alone.
Corporate tax rates are permanently slashed by the law from 35% to 21%.
The Republican tax scam is not only unfair, but irresponsible:
it creates a $1.9 trillion hole in the budget over next ten years.
No Democrat supported it – not just because of its contents but because of how Republicans have said they intend to pay for it: massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Even as Congressional Republicans were debating and voting on tax breaks for the wealthiest among us, they were vocal in their plans to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Their assaults are not new, however. They are part of the consistent Republican budget approach that rewards wealthy donors and corporations at the expense of older Americans, people with disabilities, working families, and children.
Over the past decade, Republicans have consistently offered budget resolutions that included tax cuts for the wealthiest families and corporate CEOs, while gutting Medicare and Medicaid.
In the 115th Congress, the Republican majority took a phased approach.
Step one: provide tax cuts.
Step two: cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The result would be the same as their budgets:
tax breaks for the wealthy paid for by cutting essential benefits for everyone else.
Ever since taking control of the House in 2011, Republicans have advanced budget resolutions that would drastically cut federal funding and benefits for older Americans as well as people with disabilities, children and families who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The two Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 budget resolutions offered by House Republicans this year provide the most recent evidence of that approach.
H.Con.Res. 128, the FY2019 budget resolution...was passed by the Committee on a straight party line vote on June 21,
would cut $2.1 trillion from health programs
(including $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and $537 billion from Medicare over 10 years)
and reduce Social Security spending by $4 billion.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the budget resolution:
“…would retain the costly tax cuts enacted last year – which primarily benefit the well off – while making deep cuts in health care and basic assistance for struggling families and severely cutting funding over time for investments that can boost the nation’s productivity and thereby foster economic growth.”
The more than 150 members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) have called for even more extreme versions of the GOP’s Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefit cut proposals.
While the RSC does not set policy for the entire Republican Caucus, it does represent more than half of current Republican House members, including 17 out of 22 Republican members who serve on the House Budget Committee.
Their “Fiscal Year 2019 Budget: A Framework for Unified Conservatism,”
would cut Social Security by $259 billion and
Medicare by $1.35 trillion,
while slashing $3.78 trillion from Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Affordable Care Act assistance over the next 10 years.
This report looks at four specific benefit cut policies that would affect older Americans and that are found in Republican budget resolutions:
• Medicare premium support;
• Medicaid block grants;
• An increase in eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare; and,
• Repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which destroys protections for people with preexisting conditions, imposes an age tax and raises prescription drug costs.
In addition, the report provides:
• A brief summary of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid provisions in recent Republican budget proposals;
• Statements from Republican lawmakers on those efforts;
• A sampling of comments from aging organizations on the possible impacts of those provisions; and,
• State-by-state data on the number of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. ... "
You can read more here
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"Stacey Abrams Always Knew They’d Try to Cheat
But here’s her plan to win anyway.
(By Joan Walsh)
As she campaigns across all of Georgia’s 159 counties—from Fulton to Brantley, Gwinnett to Chatham, Glynn to DeKalb—Democrat Stacey Abrams’s pitch comes down to this: I’m one of you. “I’m not running to be governor of Atlanta; I’m running to be governor of Georgia” is one way she often puts it.
If elected, Abrams would become the state’s first black and first female governor, so it’s understandable that her political gamble has a personal edge to it...And will this be enough to bridge Georgia’s deep fissures of race, gender, and culture?
“Well, she’s gonna have a tough time, being black,” a white suburban retiree tells me flatly as we sit down for lunch at Savannah’s historic Olde Pink House restaurant. His candor about race, which I appreciate, isn’t the only thing that surprises me. David (a pseudonym) is a lifelong conservative and Trump voter who nonetheless plans to vote for Abrams.
He thinks her Republican opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is “an idiot.” Trump’s administration has turned out “worse than I even imagined,” he confesses. And in an age when we suffer at least 10 school shootings a year, “I’m sick of the NRA,” he tells me, even though he’s a gun owner and former member.
“I’m an angry Republican, and I’m trying to give my party a kick,” he declares. Even though David doesn’t want me to use his real name, he says he’s extremely vocal about his plans to vote for Abrams when talking to fellow Republicans in his affluent white retiree community. “And, honestly, I don’t get a lot of push back,” he adds.
Years before she decided to run for governor, Abrams had famously banked on an unprecedented surge of black voters, along with other nonwhite voters and progressive whites, to win state elections. In 2013, she began the New Georgia Project, a voter-registration-and-mobilization group focused on Georgians of color. Her overwhelming victory in the Democratic primary this past May...was a powerful demonstration of this strategy.
Now, in campaign speak, she needs to mobilize “low-propensity” black voters, who sometimes vote for president but rarely turn out for the midterms. Campaign officials are cautiously optimistic: According to Georgia Votes.com, 42 percent of the early voting has been done by African-American voters, who make up 30 percent of registered voters, a surge that Georgia hasn’t seen since Barack Obama’s election in 2008.
Unfortunately, Abrams’s opponent is, as secretary of state, also the man in charge of overseeing the mechanics of voting. A recent investigation by the Associated Press found that Kemp has held up 53,000 new voter-registration forms. Seventy percent of the registrants involved are black, but Kemp—who has long tangled with the New Georgia Project—says that this racial disparity is the group’s fault for submitting inaccurate or incomplete paperwork.
The New Georgia Project rejects this assertion, and lawyers are trying to force Kemp to process the forms. “As he has done for years, Brian Kemp is maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters—the majority of them people of color,” says Abigail Collazo, spokeswoman for the Abrams campaign. “This isn’t incompetence; it’s malpractice.” Abrams has since renewed her call for Kemp to step down as secretary of state, a demand he has repeatedly rebuffed.
But in a race in which the polls have the two candidates essentially tied, Abrams also needs to pick up some “white persuadables,” by and large suburban independents turned off by Trump and Republican extremism. ...
The bad news is there may not be that many white persuadables left. Only 6 percent of the electorate is undecided, ... The good news is that a white retiree like David, who by no means fits the definition of a “white persuadable,” is against all odds in Abrams’s corner. He’s a bonus vote, and if she gets a lot of bonus votes, Abrams will be the next governor.
Abrams is not merely the lucky beneficiary of this unprecedented surge in women’s political participation. In Georgia, she’s one of its original and prime sponsors. “She’s been at the center of it for a long time,” Johnson tells me.
When Abrams became Democratic leader of the State Legislature in 2010, Republicans held all statewide offices and were on the verge of attaining a legislative super majority that would prevent any checks on their plans to curtail women’s rights, labor rights, or voting rights. So Abrams began working around the state to groom a new generation of Democrats, many of them black women.
“It was part of my mission to build the capacity of new voices to enter the political arena,” she tells me. “I had a very intentional focus on women and people of color.” This behind-the-scenes recruitment, many Democratic activists believe, was part of the reason she enjoyed that lopsided primary victory, despite opposition from some white Democrats who didn’t believe that Georgia was ready for a black, female governor. “They had no idea of the reach and the groundwork Stacey had put in,” DuBose Porter says.
... Abrams takes nothing for granted, believing the race is essentially tied despite internal polling showing her ahead.
When I tell her that I’m surprised to have met white suburban ladies and Republican men who support her, Abrams replies that she isn’t. “Part of my approach to this campaign is to build on the work I’ve done the last decade, and I’m constantly engaging with communities that are not seen as natural supporters of mine…. It’s why I won so many counties in the primary; I won every major demographic,” she reminds me with pride.
What about my white progressive sisters, I ask: Are they finally starting to see the light and get behind the campaigns of black women? Abrams smiles and says, “There are anecdotal moments where women tell me they are surprised they’re supporting me. But I’m not surprised. The scenario for me for victory has always been multiple communities to engage and step up. And they are.”
... It’s not surprising to find such passion for Abrams among the activists in suburban Atlanta—but to win the state, she’s got to get votes beyond the metro area.
In mid-September, I watched her address the Georgia Economic Developers Association convention in Savannah and saw how she put another aspect of her variegated biography to work. For a statewide, business-oriented gathering, it was a fairly diverse group. Whether they’re county staffers or local businessmen, these folks tend to be the do-gooders in their communities—but they are not necessarily liberals.
Here Abrams promotes herself as not just the daughter of ministers or a pioneering state legislator, but also as a small-business owner—one business failed, another is thriving—and a tax attorney. She immediately dives deep into the weeds of so-called tax-allocation districts, which funnel local tax revenue into economic development, and describes one widely hailed project that she worked on in the Atlanta mayor’s office back when she was deputy city attorney. And in case they worry that she’ll look out only for Atlanta, Abrams talks about her time in the State Legislature working with rural colleagues on similar issues ...
As she does at every stop, Abrams promises that her top priority will be expanding Medicaid. “Georgia loses $8 million a day in federal Medicaid funding,” she tells the room. Someone in the crowd gasps; another whistles in amazement. The state provides $1.7 billion in uncompensated care annually, Abrams adds, usually through emergency-room visits. Her pitch is bipartisan: Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown expanded Medicaid, but so did Vice President Mike Pence in his days as Indiana’s Republican governor. “If Jerry Brown and Mike Pence can agree on anything in politics, then it’s the right thing to do,” she says to laughs and applause.
... After Abrams’s address, one economic-development professional (speaking off the record because his agency works closely with the state) says that he was impressed. “Abrams was clear and had a plan,” he tells me. “She wasn’t afraid to mention her failures in business as well as her successes. The consensus from my group of peers is that Abrams outperformed Kemp.”
... In the end, Abrams and her campaign know that her real opponent isn’t Kemp—it’s the isolation and alienation of many Georgia voters, especially the low-income voters of color she’s bet the race on. While she’s doing an extraordinary job, it’s still an uphill climb. ...
Abrams believes she can do this, despite the obstacles of race, class, gender, and a pervasive voter alienation that’s part fatalism, part deliberate disenfranchisement.
In addition to the 53,000 voters whose registration forms he’s so far failed to process, Kemp is also being sued for purging almost 700,000 voters, many of them minorities, from the rolls in the past two years without notifying them. Activists are trying to make the list of purged voters public so people can see if they’re on it. The Abrams campaign is also spearheading an effort to help people make sure that they’re registered and to get them to vote early or use absentee ballots, which provide more security than the state’s traditional paper-free voting system. There’s no doubt that Democrats are concerned about ensuring that every vote is counted.
... Abrams knows what she’s up against, but she trusts her campaign and its plan for victory. Watching her in large crowds, in small groups, and with her staff, I can see how this quiet confidence might strike some as aloofness. “I’m naturally an introvert,” Abrams confesses. Her whole approach in this campaign—excavating her biography to make the case that “I’m one of you”—doesn’t come at all naturally, she says. “But being governor is one of the most personal jobs you can have. Because, done right, the governor of a state helps guide the future of your family: your access to education, to a job, to health care, to housing—all of these things. People should trust who that person is.” ...
Focused Monthly Inspiration
( #itsNovember2018now )
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What's in the book:
→ Direct sources & resources for Democrats:
* ( Personal favored and most informative follows are also shared here with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify -- even if it's me. I am using a star rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
The Democratic Party Website
Also, NOT exactly a Democratic Party specific source under a GOP majority but a good place for to hear and to watch speeches & hearings directly C-SPAN
Democratic National Committee's Team Blue!
"The Blue Wave 
🌊 won't happen unless we all pitch in to help elect Democrats across the country. We've partnered with a number of organizations to make sure we're covering ground in every single community 👣. Join Team Blue to volunteer to get out the vote 
🗳️ in your community..."
🌊 won't happen unless we all pitch in to help elect Democrats across the country. We've partnered with a number of organizations to make sure we're covering ground in every single community 👣. Join Team Blue to volunteer to get out the vote 🗳️ in your community..."
You can email your two Senators and your Representative in Congress in one email here
"Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.
What started on March 11, 2017 with sharing 5 addresses apiece to 5 volunteers on Facebook...
Now, we consist of over 20,000+ volunteers in every state (including Alaska and Hawaii) who have written close to 3 million postcards to voters in over 100+ key, close elections."
You can find Postcards to Voters here
→ Some of my favorite, most active organizations -- some existing & some developing to elect Democrats:
Born from conversations between Governor Howard Dean and Secretary Hillary Clinton in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Onward Together was established to lend support to leaders — particularly young leaders — kicking off projects and founding new organizations to fight for our shared progressive values. here
Since #StandOnEveryCorner has grown, it’s become a stand by all of us to protect our democracy from corruption and treason...A stand not at your State Capitol, but in your own backyard. Not once every few months, but as often as you can here
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of my favorite, highly credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
📰📰📰📰 The Washington Post
→ Some of my favorite Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
→ Some of my favorite media/panelists -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
✅✅✅✅ Joan Walsh national affairs correspondent for The Nation; CNN political contributor
✅✅✅ Heidi Przybyla USA TODAY Senior Political Reporter
✅✅✅✅ Jennifer Rubin Conservative blogger at @ WashingtonPost's Right Turn,MSNBC contributor
✅✅✅ Natasha Bertrand Staff writer @ The Atlantic covering national security & the
intel community. @ NBCNews/@ MSNBC contributor
→ Some of my favorite Democrat Party Leaders to follow on Twitter, not in elected office but proving knowledge & experience are positives & not negatives are:
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former Labor Secretary/Today's DNC Chair Tom Perez
Note: I rarely get involved in primary races -- outside of those in my own area and unless there is a glaring reason that can not be ignored, I support Democratic Party nominees in general elections. I don't support bashing Democrats.
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(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
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Owned, Created and Curated by Gail Mountain, this blog is often gently edited and/or excerpted for quick reading, with occasional personal commentary in the form of the written word and/or in the form of emphasis noted. Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( You can find me on Twitter
( You can also find me on Facebook
at https://www.facebook.com/ProgressDems/)
*
See the League of Women Voters website:
Vote411 here
*
...for Networking for Democrats today!
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
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