Stop Calling This Bill Beautiful

For the first time in years, Congress did the absolute minimum required of them and passed a budget. An “accomplishment” so meager it should be farcical. Unfortunately, instead of some rousing triumph, whereby Congress takes back its powers from Trump’s authoritarian overreach,  Republicans in Congress simply back-filled and legalized much of Trump’s madness. It is one of the worst pieces of legislation in decades and explodes the wealth disparity gap in this country. As Joni Ernst, the hopefully soon-to-be-former Senator from Iowa remarked:  We're all going to die.  Now millions of Americans will be dead sooner as a direct result of this horrific legislation.

Putting aside the >50% budget cuts to agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the EPA, and the National Science Foundation whose decimation will likely be felt years down the road in diseases not cured and scientific breakthroughs not found (at least in America). This bill has $300 billion cut from the SNAP lifesaving program ( food stamps )- affecting more than 2 million children, with the possibility that states could end the program entirely. This bill cuts a trillion dollars from federal spending on healthcare, throwing tens of millions of the most vulnerable people in our society off of Medicaid.  Simply tossed aside and denied the basic right of healthcare that the rest of the developed world believes should be extended to their citizens.

If budgets are values, then what does this bill, a triumph for Republicans, supposedly say about them? What kind of values cheer at closing more 300 hospitals, in mostly rural areas? Or which values are those celebrating the 18 million children who will lose school lunches? This isn’t an oversight, one GOP congressman bragged about it on Twitter!

And what was all this cruelty and budget cutting necessary for? Why did we have to devastate air traffic controllers, or FEMA or the National Weather Service? We’ve already seen the deadly effects of undermining these agencies. Just this past weekend in Texas torrential rainfall leading to massive floods weren’t forecast properly, and now dozens are dead, including many young girls at summer camp. What was so important that the Republicans needed to trade for that?

It certainly wasn't the deficit. Despite using it as a constant bailiwick, crying Chicken Little and acting as if any increases in spending, even to address childhood poverty are unacceptable and would destroy the country, Republicans added  3.3 trillion dollars - maybe higher - to the deficit over the next 10 years! A growing deficit is secondary to the misery, death, disease this bill will cause, but it highlights what hypocrites all these, so-called conservatives are, using deficit hawkery as a smokescreen to make major cuts in the social network. 

It turns out that no matter what you call them: MAGA, Tea Party, or Neocons, Republicans can always unite behind taking from the most vulnerable to give to the most prosperous and advantageous in our society. Trump and the Republicans have extended the Trump 2017 tax cuts, funneling ever-more money to the wealthiest and most powerful individuals, while squeezing the bottom 40% of the country harder than ever.

These sorts of tactics are not popular, in fact only 30% of Americans support the bill.Republicans are counting, however, on American’s short attention spans to shield them from blame. Many of the worst and most costly provisions will take 2 years to come into effect, after the 2026 midterms. While the pain and misery brought by Trump’s bill can’t be completely ignored, Republicans will try to direct people’s increased desperation and anger at their common scapegoats: immigrants, people of color, and any other vulnerable minority and away from those who really deserve the blame the wealthy and powerful who have stolen and ransacked this country and twisted its laws.

The other main priority as we can see from this bill was the massively increased funding of the modern American Gestapo aka ICE, leaving Trump with far more executive power and an army of masked thugs roaming the streets to do his bidding. It might be called immigration enforcement/unlawful kidnapping/or just insane cruelty but not deportation. Because deportation legally means a person is tried and if convicted, is then sent back to their country of origin. It does not mean snatching darker skinned people off the streets perhaps wearing certain jerseys or having tattoos and sending them to prisons filled with death and torture but no hope.

This sort of “enforcement” doesn’t leave communities safer; it only terrorizes them. And maybe that is the point. Perhaps Trump and the Republicans think that if people do remember who is really responsible for the theft and destruction we are experiencing these masked thugs will scare everyone enough to stay silent.

It’s up to us to make sure everyone does remember. We need to build the economic and political power to help each other through the storm. This ugly, devastating bill is going to hurt so many and take so much from Americans. It will divide us if we allow that.. We need to be better and stymie their diversionary tactics. We must see each other as fully human. We need to stand side by side building political power and economic might so we can support each other against this authoritarianism, this suppression, this betrayal by our government. So, join us each Tuesday in growing solidarity we fight for a freer fully funded tomorrow, not this sick joke of a bill.

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