Republicans, Their AHCA, aka "Trumpcare", at Last

Cut health insurance coverage for 23 million Americans?

Slash Medicaid?

Make it harder for the elderly to get health insurance?

Make it harder for the disabled to have health insurance?

Make it harder for America's Veterans to have health insurance?

Make it harder for women to have health insurance?

Make it harder for families to have health insurance?

Take away the mandate for those with pre-existing conditions to get and have health insurance?

But give yet more tax cuts to the already-wealthy?

Really?

This is who we are?

This is who we want to be?

Tell us how this isn't oligarchy and plutocracy, both.

Fortunately, there is this.

Four GOP senators say they can't vote 

for Republican health care bill

And it only takes 4 Republicans defecting to kill it. There's no telling how many more won't be able to back it, as word of this nightmare gets out.

One last note. Check out what happened at the very cowardly and heartless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office today, too.

Capitol Police drag disabled protesters out of wheelchairs during Trumpcare protests

This is not going to go well. It's not going to go well for them. How every Republican in Congress isn't already running from this thing, this health care nightmare, is anyone's guess.

I will be very, very surprised if this bill of theirs, the Republicans, isn't DOA.

Already.

Links:

Here's the simplest takedown of the Republican scheme to take away health care from millions

Senate's health care bill shreds Medicaid 

and essential health benefits

The people who will be hurt the most 

by Trump's Medicaid plan

Many Republican senators are unhappy about the AHCA draft

One More Thing Congress Needs to Act On

Sure, Congress needs to act and is doing precious little besides legislating to get the wealthy and corporations yet more money or curb women's reproductive rights instead of, say, writing, proposing and passing a jobs/infrastructure bill.

Here's one more thing they haven't yet acted on but need to:

Social Security disability payments 

will be cut by a fifth 

Not only do they need to act on this or risk Americans' payments being cut, they also, this year, made 

On the first day of the new Congress, Republicans symbolically bound themselves to what is certain to be a controversial reform of the federal disability insurance program, which would probably occur near the height of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Social Security has two components, the disability insurance program and the much larger Old Age and Survivors Insurance program, for which almost all Americans become fully eligible when they reach retirement age. Congress has historically treated them as one system, moving money between one pot and the other if one is running short on funds and the other has plenty of money.

That's the situation now, as the disability pot is expected to be empty late next year. There is enough money in the larger pot to last until 2034, or to keep both programs solvent through 2033, according to the Social Security Administration.

Here's where they made the/our situation worse, and recently:

On Tuesday, however, the House adopted a parliamentary rule that adds a procedural obstacle to reallocating the money.

If Republicans do decide that a transfer is necessary, they can change the rules again easily enough. Still, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) said that a reallocation would be only a temporary solution that would avoid making real changes to "the fraud-plagued disability program."

"It will actually make the retirement program worse off, and it does nothing to fix the disability program," he said in a statement.

Fraud appears limited to relatively few cases in the disability program, although it is difficult to know precisely how many beneficiaries could be working.

So not only are they doing very little but one of the few things they recently did has made their work possibly even more difficult, more complicated. Terrific.

Meanwhile, check out this information on the elderly in America lately:

Number of seniors facing hunger has doubled 

since 2001

And then, on the heels of Memorial Day when we otherwise honor our nation's Veteran's, there's this:

Bernie Sanders Rips Republicans For Cutting 

Social Security Benefits for 1 Million Disabled 

Veterans

Republicans' nerve and even hypocrisy seem to know no bounds.

So on this, as with so many things, this Congress needs to act.

And they need to do what's right for America and Americans. They need to make certain these cuts in Social Security payments don't occur, at least, and as soon as possible.

First Texas---next, Kansas and Missouri?

Let's hope so. It seems the US Department of Justice ruled Texas' Voter ID laws discriminatory and so, has thrown them out. Good for them. That's a good start. Now, hopefully, as said above, maybe it can come this way and disavow Kansas' and Missouri's useless, discriminatory, un-American voter ID laws since they're only really created to get fewer Americans voting. Link: http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2012/03/13/texas-voter-id-law-deemed-discriminatory/

Quote of the day--The Tea Party

"You have to understand the" Tea Party "mindset. They have this nostalgia for the America that they think was stolen from them, the used to be, that was better. It's really the 1950's, okay? That's what they think was 'Shangri-La' and you know what they never get is that it's kind of insulting to a lot of Americans to pine for this era because it wasn't that good for a lot of people. It was good for you if you were a white man. It wasn't that good if you were a Mexican. Or Black. Or Jewish. Or Disabled. Or Gay. Or a woman." --Bill Maher, from his latest HBO special "But I'm Not Wrong"