This Bill Will Do You Harm

By Barack Obama, Barack Obama's Facebook Page

23 June 17

ur politics are divided. They have been for a long time. And while I know that division makes it difficult to listen to Americans with whom we disagree, that’s what we need to do today.

I recognize that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what’s really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did.

We didn’t fight for the Affordable Care Act for more than a year in the public square for any personal or political gain – we fought for it because we knew it would save lives, prevent financial misery, and ultimately set this country we love on a better, healthier course.

Nor did we fight for it alone. Thousands upon thousands of Americans, including Republicans, threw themselves into that collective effort, not for political reasons, but for intensely personal ones – a sick child, a parent lost to cancer, the memory of medical bills that threatened to derail their dreams.

And you made a difference. For the first time, more than ninety percent of Americans know the security of health insurance. Health care costs, while still rising, have been rising at the slowest pace in fifty years. Women can’t be charged more for their insurance, young adults can stay on their parents’ plan until they turn 26, contraceptive care and preventive care are now free. Paying more, or being denied insurance altogether due to a preexisting condition – we made that a thing of the past.

We did these things together. So many of you made that change possible.

At the same time, I was careful to say again and again that while the Affordable Care Act represented a significant step forward for America, it was not perfect, nor could it be the end of our efforts – and that if Republicans could put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we made to our health care system, that covers as many people at less cost, I would gladly and publicly support it.

That remains true. So I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win, that there’s a reason we all chose to serve in the first place, and that hopefully, it’s to make people’s lives better, not worse.

But right now, after eight years, the legislation rushed through the House and the Senate without public hearings or debate would do the opposite. It would raise costs, reduce coverage, roll back protections, and ruin Medicaid as we know it. That’s not my opinion, but rather the conclusion of all objective analyses, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that 23 million Americans would lose insurance, to America’s doctors, nurses, and hospitals on the front lines of our health care system.

The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions. Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.

Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.

I hope our Senators ask themselves – what will happen to the Americans grappling with opioid addiction who suddenly lose their coverage? What will happen to pregnant mothers, children with disabilities, poor adults and seniors who need long-term care once they can no longer count on Medicaid? What will happen if you have a medical emergency when insurance companies are once again allowed to exclude the benefits you need, send you unlimited bills, or set unaffordable deductibles? What impossible choices will working parents be forced to make if their child’s cancer treatment costs them more than their life savings?

To put the American people through that pain – while giving billionaires and corporations a massive tax cut in return – that’s tough to fathom. But it’s what’s at stake right now. So it remains my fervent hope that we step back and try to deliver on what the American people need.

That might take some time and compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But I believe that’s what people want to see. I believe it would demonstrate the kind of leadership that appeals to Americans across party lines. And I believe that it’s possible – if you are willing to make a difference again. If you’re willing to call your members of Congress. If you are willing to visit their offices. If you are willing to speak out, let them and the country know, in very real terms, what this means for you and your family.

After all, this debate has always been about something bigger than politics. It’s about the character of our country – who we are, and who we aspire to be. And that’s always worth fighting for.

The Future Without John Birch

By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News

23 June 17

“With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end forty years of Democratic rule of this House.”

– Democratic Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, January 4, 1995
on the Floor of the House of Representatives

hen Alabama governor George Wallace stood on the steps of the Alabama Statehouse and spoke the words that would define him until the day he died, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, he spoke as Democrat, not as a Republican.

As Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, another Alabama native with deep ties to the Confederacy, uses his power as attorney general of the United States to roll back decades of advancements in civil rights law, he is doing so as a Republican, not as a Democrat.

For 100 years after the end of the Civil War, white believers in the Confederacy refused to vote for Republicans. Lincoln, of course, had been a Republican, and that’s all they needed to know. The South voted as a solid, reliable block for the Democratic Party well into the 1960s.

The Democratic party and the U.S. commercial media disarmingly called southern Democrats “Dixiecrats.” All too often they were Klansmen, white supremacists, and segregationists.

When Gephardt handed Gingrich the gavel, major media political pundits called it a “Republican revolution” and a backlash against First Lady Hillary Clinton’s attempts at healthcare reform. In reality it was the embodiment of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy. White southern segregationist voters were shifting their allegiance away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party.

Nixon, Goldwater and like-minded Republican conservatives understood two things: the Republican party was and always had been more demographically white, and with the Democratic Party working hard to help Black leaders achieve political power, the Republican Party was a better fit for the segregationists. The passing of the gavel in 1995 was really a passing of the Confederacy from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

When fingers get pointed on the American political left at the “corporate Democrats” or the “progressives,” the fingers often miss the point. The Confederacy is gone, and with it the historic Democratic Congressional majorities. Tweaking the message won’t fix that. It’s going to take more.

In the 1930s, the Democratic Party was the party of Eleanor Roosevelt; it was also the party of Strom Thurmond. A marriage of political convenience between natural political adversaries. In historical terms, an often disagreeable partnership between slavery defenders and abolitionists, the John Birch/Jim Crow crowd, blacks, and those they referred to as “high-minded white people” (progressives).

Today the Democratic Party, while remarkably diverse, leans in ideological terms mostly on white progressives, along with Labor and African Americans. Those are the two largest and most politically significant blocks in the party.

This leaves the Democratic Party with uphill climb and a weight on their back. The Republican Party today is the party of white voters, by far the largest electoral block in the country. The Democrats need a viable white strategy, an argument, a rationale that white voters can grasp to comprehend the injustice and futility of Republican neo-segregationism.

Which leads us to the core of Democratic Party’s dysfunction. The inability of African Americans and progressives to collaborate. African Americans don’t trust white progressives, even when their political fortunes and often their lives depend upon it. The Sanders/Clinton split put the rift on full display. No fingers pointed.

Sure, the Democratic Party needs to consider whether they can, as Jill Abramson put it, “Turn the party over to the donors” and still have any voters left. They also need to understand that marketing is not ideology. (Note: Jon Ossoff failed to grasp that.)

But the biggest hurdle for the black and white/progressive party base is to accept that their very political survival is absolutely, positively tied to their ability to collaborate and achieve consensus.

The Democratic Party can make it without John Birch, but not while fighting like children amongst themselves.

Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.