President Vetoes Health Care Repeal To Protect Millions

(Chart made from information in recent Gallup Poll.)

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not perfect. But it has cured some of the ills in our health care system -- and it has significantly reduced the number of Americans without health insurance coverage (from 17.1% to 11.9%). That's a reduction of 5.2%, or about 16 million people. And it could be even more if Republican governments in nearly half of the states would just expand Medicaid.

But the Republicans have no interest in helping Americans get health insurance coverage. They don't seem to care that 17,000 people die each year for lack of coverage. For them, Obamacare is nothing but a political football to be played to please their ignorant base. And because of that, they have tried to repeal Obamacare several dozen times.

It's hard to believe that they still consider depriving millions of Americans health insurance to be a political winner, but they do seem to believe that -- in spite of the fact that poll after poll has shown that a significant majority of Americans do NOT want the program repealed. Most people do think Obamacare needs some changes, but they don't want it repealed.

In the past, Democrats in the Senate have been able to block repeal with a filibuster, and Republicans could get the 60 votes needed to stop the filibuster. But this last time, the GOP got sneaky and included the repeal in a Budget Reconciliation bill (which cannot be filibustered, and must pass or fail with a simple majority). That allowed the repeal effort to clear both the House and Senate, and be sent to the president.

As expected, President Obama wasted no time in vetoing the repeal. Here is the statement he issued in vetoing the bill:

I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 3762, which provides for reconciliation pursuant to section 2002 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2016, herein referred to as the Reconciliation Act.  This legislation would not only repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, but would reverse the significant progress we have made in improving health care in America.  The Affordable Care Act includes a set of fairer rules and stronger consumer protections that have made health care coverage more affordable, more attainable, and more patient centered.  And it is working.  About 17.6 million Americans have gained health care coverage as the law's coverage provisions have taken effect.  The Nation's uninsured rate now stands at its lowest level ever, and demand for Marketplace coverage during December 2015 was at an all-time high.  Health care costs are lower than expected when the law was passed, and health care quality is higher -- with improvements in patient safety saving an estimated 87,000 lives.  Health care has changed for the better, setting this country on a smarter, stronger course. 

The Reconciliation Act would reverse that course.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million after 2017.  The Council of Economic Advisers estimates that this reduction in health care coverage could mean, each year, more than 900,000 fewer people getting all their needed care, more than 1.2 million additional people having trouble paying other bills due to higher medical costs, and potentially more than 10,000 additional deaths.  This legislation would cost millions of hard-working middle-class families the security of affordable health coverage they deserve.  Reliable health care coverage  would no longer be a right for everyone:  it would return to being a privilege for a few.

The legislation's implications extend far beyond those who would become uninsured.  For example, about 150 million Americans with employer-based insurance would be at risk of higher premiums and lower wages.  And it would cause the cost of health coverage for people buying it on their own to skyrocket.  

The Reconciliation Act would also effectively defund Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood uses both Federal and non-federal funds to provide a range of important preventive care and health services, including health screenings, vaccinations, and check-ups to millions of men and women who visit their health centers annually.  Longstanding Federal policy already prohibits the use of Federal funds for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the woman would be endangered.  By eliminating Federal Medicaid funding for a major provider of health care, H.R. 3762 would limit access to health care for men, women, and families across the Nation, and would disproportionately impact low-income individuals.

Republicans in the Congress have attempted to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act over 50 times.  Rather than refighting old political battles by once again voting to repeal basic protections that provide security for the middle class, Members of Congress should be working together to grow the economy, strengthen middle-class families, and create new jobs.  Because of the harm this bill would cause to the health and financial security of millions of Americans, it has earned my veto.

GOP House/Senate Pass Non-Sensical Joke Budget

(This caricature of the GOP elephant is by DonkeyHotey.)

The Republicans in the House and the Senate have passed budget proposal for 2016. While the budgets differ a little, neither of them is a serious effort at reaching a budget agreement. Both of them cut huge sums from all domestic programs (going far past what the sequester did), while adding billions to the already bloated defense budget. And neither of them has a snowball's chance in the Mojave Desert in mid-summer of passing and becoming law.

The president has already said he would veto this kind of ridiculous budget -- a budget that puts GOP ideology above the needs of the American people. Before these budget proposals were even passed, the White House had already released the following statement:

Budgets are about priorities. This evening the House Republicans made clear that once again their priority is to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires and return our economy to the same top-down economics that has failed the American people before. House Republicans voted in favor of locking in draconian sequestration cuts to investments in the middle class like education, job training, and manufacturing. House Republicans also failed to responsibly fund our national security, opting instead for budget gimmicks.

The Republican priorities stand in stark contrast to the President’s plan to reverse sequestration and bring middle-class economics into the 21st Century. Through critical investments needed to accelerate and sustain economic growth in the long run, including in research, education, training, and infrastructure, the President’s Budget shows what we can do if we invest in America’s future and commit to an economy that rewards hard work, generates rising incomes, and allows everyone to share in the prosperity of a growing America.

The President has been clear that he will not accept a budget that locks in sequestration or one that increases funding for our national security without providing matching increases in funding for our economic security. The Administration will continue to abide by these principles moving forward.

The Republicans knew this, and they passed the budget proposals anyway. Then, just to make sure their budgets could not become law, they added a couple of other things. The Senate added deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and the House decided to privatize the Medicare program (and turn Medicaid into just block grants to the states. And both the House and Senate vote to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) -- taking health insurance away from more than 16 million Americans.

They know the president will veto these budgets, and they didn't care. They didn't care because these were not serious budget proposals. They were political theater -- aimed at pleasing their base. They were just playing politics.

The question now is when they are going to get busy on a real budget proposal -- one that can be agreed to by both Congress and the president. Are they going to get it done by September, or will they force another government shutdown before finally doing it? Will they really want to shutdown the government just as the 2016 campaign gets going? It doesn't make sense -- but then making sense is not a strong suit among this current crop of GOP officials.

President Obama Stops Huge New Tax Giveaway To Rich

The congressional Republicans thought for a while they might not even have to wait for the new Congress to give the rich and the corporations a huge tax giveaway. It involved some temporary tax breaks that will soon expire.

The Republicans wanted to make those temporary tax breaks for the rich a permanent thing -- a move that would have added about $450 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade (which I'm sure they would have tried to cover by cutting programs that help ordinary Americans). And it looked like they might be able to do it, because they had talked some "blue dogs" (many of them defeated in the last election) into voting with them.

But their joy was short-lived. President Obama made it clear that if such a ridiculous tax break for the rich bill was actually passed, he would veto it without delay -- and there are enough real Democrats in the House and Senate to prevent an override of his veto.

I'm starting to like this tough new President Obama a lot. He issued an executive order on immigration when it became clear the Republicans would allow no reform. Now he has stopped a huge new tax giveaway to the rich. And next week, his EPA is set to issue new rules on greenhouse gases. He seems to have made up his mind that he is not going to be pushed around by the Republican Congress.

The Republicans thought after the last election that they now had the numbers to force the president to bend to their will. It looks like they may well have been wrong about that.

(The caricature of the tough new president above is by DonkeyHotey.)

It's Going To Be A Tough Couple Of Years

Election night was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats (and other democracy-loving people). Wall Street and the giant corporations opened their pocketbooks and bought themselves both Houses of Congress -- moving us extremely close to being an out and out oligarchy.

The Republicans now control both the Senate and the House, and while that's wonderful for the rich and the corporations, it's not going to be so good for any other Americans. In fact, I think most Americans will have a tough couple of years. Here's some thing we can expect from the Republican Congress:

* They will try again to abolish Medicare, and put America's seniors at the mercy of the private insurance companies (who have shown repeatedly they have no mercy).

* They will try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and take health insurance coverage away from millions of Americans.

* They will try to cut benefits for the millions of Americans subsisting on Social Security (even though the average benefit is already below $1100 a month) -- and may even try again to privatize it. I expect they will also try to raise the retirement age to 70.

* They will try to defund the EPA, letting corporations pollute our soil, water, and air as much as they want.

* They will try to cut food stamps and other social help programs, even though inflation is causing the working poor to fall further into poverty with each passing month.

* They will not pass any bill to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, or any other kind of job creation program.

* They will try to cut the taxes of the rich and the corporations -- and call it job creation (even though numerous studies have shown the level of taxation has no effect on job creation).

* They will try to further diminish the right of women to control over their own bodies (and their access to contraceptives).

* They will try to further restrict voting rights (especially for minorities and young people).

* They will try to cut education funding for public schools (and will probably try to pass a voucher program so private religious schools can get much of the funding left).

* They will protect the subsidies and loopholes that allow many profitable corporations to avoid paying taxes (including the tax break given to corporations that outsource American jobs).

There is no doubt in my mind that they will attempt to do all of those things, and if you doubt that then you are living in a dream world. They have made no secret of those intentions.

There are two things that give me a bit of hope -- that President Obama is still in the White House and has the power of veto, and that there are enough Democrats left in the Senate to misuse the filibuster rule like the Republicans have done the last few years. Will the president and the Senate Democrats have the political will and courage to use their power? I honestly don't know, but I hope so. If they don't, the next couple of years won't just be tough -- they'll be a nightmare!

(From the Facebook page of Boing Boing.)

Brewer Vetoes Arizona's Religious Bigotry Law

(This caricature of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is by DonkeyHotey.)

I wrote the other day about Arizona's "cover your bigotry with religion" bill. The bill had passed both houses of the Arizona legislature and had been sent to the governor. It would have allowed businesses in that state to refuse service to members of the LGBT community by claiming it violated their religious beliefs. It was nothing more than an attempt to use religion as a justification to discriminate.

Well, that bill is dead now. On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill. In issuing the odious bill, Brewer said:

"To the supporters of the legislation, I want you to know that I understand that long-held norms about marriage and family are being challenged as never before. Our society is undergoing many dramatic changes. However, I sincerely believe that Senate Bill 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve. It could divide Arizona in ways we cannot even imagine and no one would ever want.

"Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value. So is non-discrimination."

Brewer's veto has upset right-wing fundamentalists across the nation. They were upset that their attempted end run around anti-discrimination laws had failed (just like their similar attempt to use religion as an excuse to continue discrimination against African-Americans had failed a few decades earlier).

But whether they want to admit it or not, Governor Brewer did the Republican Party a big favor by vetoing the bill. While the bill may have made the GOP's teabagger base happy, most Americans opposed the bill (considering it to be legalized discrimination) -- and the Republicans have enough problems appealing to most voters without another reminder of how out of step they are with the beliefs of most Americans.

And this bill was out of step with the general public. A new Rasmussen Poll (taken on February 25th and 26th of 1,000 nationwide adults, with a margin of error of 3 points) showed that about 66% of the public (or two out of every three Americans) opposed the bill, while only about 20% (or one out of every five Americans) supported it. Another 14% weren't sure what to think of it.

Bush Vetos Bill - Approves Torture

Congress recently acted to bring the United States in compliance with the Geneva Convention opposition to torture. The rest of the civilized world adheres to the torture ban, but although it agreed not to torture, the United States has violated this ban repeatedly during the Bush administration. Even worse, this torture has been done on the orders of high-ranking White House officials, probably even including the president.

To stop the illegal use of torture by this country, and to protect our own soldiers from being tortured, the U.S. Congress passed and sent to the president a bill that specifically outlawed the use of torture by federal agencies, including the CIA.

The bill would allow only the 19 interrogation techniques that are currently allowed in the Army Field Manual. According to the AP, the following torture techniques would not be allowed:

—Hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes.

—Stripping prisoners naked.

—Forcing prisoners to perform or mimic sexual acts.

—Beating, burning or physically hurting them in other ways.

—Subjecting prisoners to hypothermia or mock executions.

It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

But waterboarding is the most high-profile and contentious method in question.

It involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world and human rights organizations as torture.

The truth is that even if it was legal, torture does not get the truth from a tortured person. All it does is get that person to tell you what you want him to say. This is probably not even close to the truth.

Worse yet, if it is OK for the United States to torture its prisoners, then it has to be OK for others to torture Americans held as prisoners. Bush's use of torture has put our own soldiers in danger all over the world. As long as we are using torture, we don't have the moral authority to ask others not to use torture techniques.

But Bush doesn't care about our soldiers, or even common decency and international laws and treaties. He just wants to give himself the same dictatorial powers he condemned in others such as Saddam. On Saturday, Bush VETOED THE ANTI-TORTURE BILL.

Once again, the Torturer-in-Chief has shamed America. Republican candidate John McCain also voted in favor of allowing torture to be used -- just more proof that if he were elected, the policies of the Bush administration would be continued.

The Democrats in Congress are going to try to override the torturer's veto, but they probably will not be able to muster the two-thirds majority needed to do that. This is one more compelling reason to vote for Democrats in November. We must elect enough Democrats to Congress to stop this nonsense.