Congressional Budget Office

Republican Skeptics On Ryan Health Care Plan: John Kasich, Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Darrell Issa, And Many Others

Ronald 8 Comments

The Republican Party has an increasing number of skeptics about the Paul Ryan alternative bill to ObamaCare, which has now been scored on its effect on the budget by the Congressional Budget Office, and it is a total disaster.

All of the following are unhappy with the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, as it is, but warn against the House sponsored plan:

Governor John Kasich of Ohio
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Congressman Darrell Issa of California
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio
Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado
Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
Senator Susan Collins of Maine
Senator Dean Heller

But also there are the right wing extremists, the Freedom Caucus House Republicans who oppose the Ryan bill, as do the following groups:

Freedom Works
Club For Growth
Heritage Action

And the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Association Of Retired Persons, and many other groups are also totally against the legislation.

So in the midst of control of both Houses and the White House, the Republican Party is in a crisis as to how to appeal to their base, as they work to deny them health care–elderly, sick, disabled, and poor.

The Growing Inequity Of Wealth In America: Unconscionable!

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The Congressional Budget Office confirmed this week what has been well known for quite some time: America has seen a concentration of wealth in the past thirty years as never before in American history.

Income for the top one percent increased 275 percent, while the top 20 percent went up 65 percent. At the same time, the 20th percentile to the 80th percentile went up about 40 percent, and the lowest fifth 18 percent.

The top one percent of income earners control as much of the nation’s total income as they had on the eve of the Great Depression. They had 23.94 percent of the national income in 1929 and 23.5 percent in 2007.

When one looks at the top one tenth of one percent, the richest of the rich, they controlled 2.8 percent of national income in 1913, when the income tax amendment was put into the Constitution. In 2007, the top one tenth of one percent earned 6 percent of national income.

One major difference today is that the wealthiest usually have it from being financial and corporate executives, while in earlier times, they were mostly living off inherited wealth.

These figures cry out on why the “Occupy Wall Street” movement resonates among many Americans, and calls for some kind of action to tax the wealthy more to help resolve the budget crisis and deal with the many social and economic problems we face today in 2011.

Irony Of Republican Attempt To Repeal Obama Health Care Plan: It Would Add To National Debt, Raise Health Care Costs, and Be A Job Killer! :(

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The House Republicans are attempting to repeal the Obama Health Care legislation, which will fail, in any circumstances, with the Democratic controlled Senate and President Barack Obama standing in the way!

But the irony is that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office makes it clear that doing such a repeal would add to the national debt, raise the cost of health care for everyone, and be a job killer to boot! 🙁

Medical spending would go up by $125 billion by the end of this decade; add $2,000 annually to each family’s health care premiums; and destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade.

As Democrats have also pointed out, it would help promote more deaths of people who have no access to health care; would take away coverage of young people to the age of 26; would restore pre-existing conditions as a method insurance companies could use to deny health care coverage to millions, including many children; and open up the “donut hole” for medications for seniors, which is starting to close up, with 50 percent cut in the cost of brand name prescriptions newly instituted.

The truth about the Republicans is that they have no concern that millions have been denied health care coverage! They also have no concern that transplant patients in Arizona are being denied the ability to survive, with two already having died because the Republican Governor, Jan Brewer, has no compassion or interest in helping sick people, all over budget issues, when one can be sure there are other ways to cut budgets besides setting up what are the equivalent of “death panels”! 🙁

It is extremely ironic that Republicans argued about so called “death panels’ in the Obama Health Care legislation, which did not exist at all, but yet now REAL “death panels” are occurring in Arizona, and probably soon elsewhere! 🙁

Where are these Republicans now, including Speaker of the House John Boehner, Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl. and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin? Why is it that they are not outraged by this, and feel the need and moral standing to speak up for LIFE, particularly when they are all supposedly PRO-LIFE for fetuses, but not apparently for sick people of all ages?

The Republican Party should be condemned for their lack of compassion, empathy, and concern for those who are sick!:(

They forget: “There but for the grace of God go I!”!

The Congressional Budget Office: Growing Inequality Of Wealth Since 1979!

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The Congressional Budget Office has released research that shows the tremendous inequality of wealth that has occurred since 1979, coinciding with the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s and the Bush II tax cuts of the 2000s!

38.7 percent of the income growth went to the top one percent, with 15.6 percent going to the next four percent, and 9.4 percent to the next five percent! That means that 64 percent of the income growth went to the top ten percent of the American population, based upon income! 🙁

The bottom 90 percent received the remaining 36 percent of the income growth, with the 80-90 percentile gaining 11.5 percent, meaning a grand total of 75 percent of all income growth was among the top 20 percent of earners! 🙁

Is there any way that, in a country which promotes “equality of opportunity” and a so called “level playing field”, we can justify such outrageous inequities, and feel that it is wrong to expect those most successful to contribute more to the betterment of American society through higher taxation rates? 🙁

How much wealth and materialism is too much, and how much lack of concern for those less fortunate can a democracy sustain, without wondering about the so called “American Dream” being phony and just a myth? 🙁

If the average American, particularly those in the bottom 80 percent fully understood what has been going on in the past 30 years, they would refuse to back a party which promotes MORE inequity and MORE greed and MORE materialism for the wealthy! 🙁

The problem again is ignorance is NOT bliss, but rather destructive of the social order and the future economic stability of the United States! 🙁