Last week both our U.S. senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, joined 40 other Republican senators in voting against an expansion of the child tax credit that would have raised 400,000 children out of poverty. The bill had already passed the House with a large bi-partisan majority. Considering that Republicans claim to be the party of families their vote seems counter-productive. In reality they are more interested in denying Joe Biden a victory than helping hungry children.
It’s not just Republicans at the federal level who are heartless. 2.9 million Texas children are going hungry this summer because Gov. Abbott rejected around $350 million in federal funds that would have gone a long way to reduce childhood food insecurity. Abbott joined a dozen other Republican governors who refused to participate in a $2.5 billion program created by Congress, in which eligible low-income households will receive about $1.33 per day for food per child over the three summer months when school-based free and reduced-price lunch programs aren’t available.
Not satisfied with just letting poor kids go hungry, recently the Republican Study Committee – which represents 100% of House Republican leadership and nearly 80% of their members released plans to cut Medicare, Social Security, and increase prescription drug, energy, and housing costs. Their plan would even raise the Social Security retirement age. All this so they can provide tax giveaways for the very rich.
The Republican Study Committee plan calls for over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, including an increase in the retirement age to 69 and cutting disability benefits. If you work an office job working an extra couple of years before retirement might not seem too bad, but if you work a physical labor job like my dad did as a pipe-fitter adding two more years of lifting heavy materials and suffering through Texas summers outdoors is asking a lot. Years of hard labor have often damaged joints making it increasingly difficult to get the job done and suffering even when they can accomplish the task.
The Republican plan also raises Medicare costs for seniors by taking away Medicare’s recently gained authority to negotiate prescription drug costs, repealing $35 insulin, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Republican plan includes transitioning Medicare to a premium support system which means that it would simply provide a fixed amount of money for seniors to use to purchase private insurance from the same for profit providers that gouge Americans now. The Congressional Budget Office has found that such a premium support plan would raise health care costs for many seniors.
Other aspects of the Republican plan cut Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $450 billion a year, taking away health insurance away from millions of people, including seniors, children, and people with disabilities. Republicans would have us go back to the days where people could be denied care for pre-existing conditions and charged more for health insurance simply for being a woman.
In return for the harm to children and seniors Republicans want to give $5.5 trillion in tax cuts mostly to the wealthy and large corporations, including permanently extending the Trump era tax cuts which increased the budget deficit that Republicans only complain about when Democrats are in office. The Republican plan also calls for repealing the minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations the President Biden signed into law.
Clearly Republicans care more about satisfying their wealthy benefactors than they do about children, families, and people who work for a living.
Tell them what you think by voting in November.
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