Even though they pretend they care about all of their constituents, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress are only interested in serving the interests of the people who give massive contributions to their campaigns and help assure they get reelected.
Such is the case with the American Health Care Act (AHCA)–aka Trumpcare–which drastically cuts healthcare benefits for the neediest so that money can be redistributed to millionaires in the form of massive tax cuts. A person making $1 million a year would receive a tax cut of some $50,000.
On AM Joy Saturday, host Joy Reid had New York Republican Congressman Tom Reed as her guest, and she wasted no time taking Reed to task for the true intent of the AHCA, referencing a memo written by Reed’s colleague, John Faso (D-NY) in which Faso stated:
“GOP health care bill would bar New York from charging upstate counties for Medicaid meaning no money would come from upstate counties to go into the Medicaid program.”
Reid used Faso’s comments to make a larger point about the Trumpcare bill:
“He tweeted this new ACHA bill, ‘includes my provision to eliminate New York medicaid mandate and save New York 19 millions of dollars.’ If this is reforming Medicaid, why is it you and your colleagues are talking tax cuts? You are praising tax cuts.”
Congressman Reed replied:
“I wholly support the amendment because our property taxpayers in western New York are leaving in droves because they can’t pay their bills. They can’t pay their tax bill, they can’t take care of their homes. we should put the burden back on the state capitol.”
That’s when Joy took the New York Congressman to school and told him:
“The point you’re making in the amendment that you supported is it essentially you are saying you don’t believe that taxpayers should pay into that which is not going bankrupt. Just empirically, there is no empirical evidence, right? It’s not — what you’re saying is you want to take the money out of Medicaid. The plain fact here is that this is not about Medicaid reform. You, sir, believe that Medicaid should just receive less money and that it shouldn’t be getting its money from taxpayers.”
A few minutes later, the MSNBC host reiterated her point and left her guest in the dust, looking like the greedy fool he is:
“So we understand what you guys want to do, you essentially want to give a very substantial tax-cut, in your case, you don’t want the tax payers in your district to fund Medicaid. Rolling that back making it unlawful for your taxpayers in your district to fund Medicaid, cut overall the cost of Medicaid, it gets less money, and then give individual people tax credits — that’s the plan.”
Cut medical care for the poor and access to affordable health insurance so the rich can have tax cuts. Make no mistake, this is what the debate is really about. And Republicans could not care less about anyone who isn’t a millionaire.
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org