The Deeply Immoral Values Of Today’s Republican Leaders

Republican leaders declare that they’re the birthday celebration of circle of relatives values. They aren’t. They additionally declare that they perceive and admire hardworking Americans. They don’t.

The Republican elite’s immorality is going way past Donald Trump, who has bragged about sexual attack, and has certainly been accused of it by means of over a dozen girls. It is going way past Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who used to be banned from a shopping center to stop him from preying on minors, and who has been credibly accused of the conduct for which he used to be banned.

The immorality and disdain of nowadays’s Republican elites shine thru within the insurance policies that they embody. They are embodied within the Republican funds, of their tax law, and of their relentless assaults on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Those Republican insurance policies get advantages those they in reality worth – their tremendous rich donors.

Republicans in each chambers of Congress have now handed tax expenses, which, when the smoke clears, contain the upward redistribution of source of revenue and wealth. As if nowadays’s obscene stage of source of revenue and wealth inequality weren’t unhealthy sufficient, Republican elites wish to build up it.

Both the Senate and House variations require hundreds of thousands of center category Americans to pay extra, whilst requiring the richest of the wealthy to pay much less. In 2027, taxpayers with earning between $40,000 and $50,000 will, as a bunch, pay $five.three billion extra in taxes, whilst the ones with annual earning of $1 million or extra pays $five.eight billion much less!

Moreover, hardworking Americans will probably be harm in alternative ways. The build up within the deficit led to by means of the tax rip-off will mechanically cause $400 billion in cuts to Medicare. And even that isn’t sufficient for the birthday celebration of immorality.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) have made it transparent what comes subsequent. Rubio lately claimed that we wish to alternate the construction of Medicare and Social Security (code for making massive cuts) as a result of the deficit. Ryan used to be even clearer, announcing that he’s making plans to push law to “reform” (code for break) Medicare and Medicaid as a result of “it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt.”

Republicans have made this bankrupt argument for many years, however it’s particularly audacious of them to do it at the very same time that they’re making plans so as to add a minimum of $1 trillion to the debt to pay for his or her tax giveaway to the rich. The introduced plans to move after Medicare and Medicaid, in addition to Social Security, are along with the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s person mandate, a linchpin to the workability of the legislation. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the repeal of that key provision will lead to an added 13 million Americans with out well being care, whilst hundreds of thousands of others will see their medical health insurance premiums cross up by means of ten % or extra.

Taking away well being care from disabled youngsters and aged Americans, amongst many others, with the intention to give an enormous tax handout to billionaires and massive companies is likely one of the maximum immoral insurance policies conceivable. But that’s precisely what the self-proclaimed “moral values party” is proposing to do.

The reality is that Social Security does now not upload a unmarried penny to the debt. Medicare and Medicaid are way more environment friendly than their personal sector opposite numbers. Gutting them would make well being care prices upward push extra briefly, now not rein them in. It would, then again, switch the prices from the government to aged, impoverished, and disabled Americans who can’t come up with the money for them. It would imply the wealthiest amongst us, who aren’t paying their justifiable share now, would pay even much less. Like the tax rip-off, reducing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will switch wealth upward.

Why are Republicans so hypocritical in regards to the debt, continuously the usage of it as an excuse to call for cuts to important advantages whilst they fortunately upload a thousand billion bucks or extra to it by means of giving massive tax cuts to the rich? Because they by no means cared in regards to the debt in any respect. It’s only a handy bludgeon for them to make use of of their decades-long conflict in opposition to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Indeed, they’ve hostile those methods ever since they got here into lifestyles.

That opposition comes from the elemental immorality on the middle of the Republican Party. It is a political birthday celebration united round the main that simplest the rich have any worth. It is a celebration that has disdain for everybody else. A birthday celebration that believes hardworking Americans doing backbreaking paintings at lower than subsistence wages are lazy freeloaders.

Republican politicians are normally cautious sufficient not to expose their true perspective publicly all through election seasons. But in unguarded moments, they are saying what they in reality imply.

In case the insurance policies are too refined or opaque, their immorality and their contempt for the remainder of us were made totally clear by means of contemporary public feedback from Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA.)

Hatch, in a heated change with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), defined why Republicans have did not renew CHIP, which supplies medical health insurance to deficient youngsters. Shockingly, he stated: “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”

Social Security and Medicare are advantages which are earned, similar to Senator Hatch’s executive wage. But his feedback needed to be referencing their beneficiaries. There is not any different solution to get to trillions of bucks.

Similarly, Grassley, explaining why the GOP desires to get rid of the property tax, which simplest affects the wealthiest zero.02 % of Americans, mentioned: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Apparently, if running and middle-class Americans didn’t invest in alcohol, girls (who Grassley tellingly refers to as commodities fairly than other folks), or leisure, they might have $five.49 million to go away to their heirs! And, as a result of Donald Trump has led this kind of puritanical existence, he must be freed from paying taxes towards the typical excellent!

Grassley and Hatch’s feedback are each woefully out of contact and deeply immoral. But they don’t seem to be out of step with their birthday celebration. Ryan often talks about “makers and takers.” He has claimed that “we’re going to a majority of takers versus makers in America…They’ll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.”

Ryan insists that Social Security and Medicare, earned advantages that he dismissively calls “safety nets”, are at risk of changing into “a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency,” turning them into slothful and lazy “takers.” More crudely and succinctly, former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) asserted that Social Security is “a milk cow with 310 million tits [sic]!”

These feedback expose the utter contempt Republican politicians have for hardworking Americans. It is ironic that the Republicans who’re pushing to get rid of the property tax it seems that don’t believe the heirs of billionaires to be “takers” however save that pejorative label for hardworking Americans who’ve the audacity to say the Social Security and Medicare advantages they’ve earned.

Republican politicians talk of financial expansion, “saving” Social Security and Medicare, and the wish to rein within the deficit. But actually transparent to somebody who’s prepared to in reality glance. Today’s GOP is simplest in doing the bidding in their billionaire donors in order that they are able to retain energy. It is a celebration of politicians who, regardless of their declare on the contrary, are disdainful of hardworking Americans.

The American other folks didn’t vote for this morally bankrupt philosophy. None of the applicants in remaining yr’s election ran on gutting Medicare and Medicaid, denying well being care to deficient youngsters, or offering an enormous tax switch to billionaires. Republicans by no means do. Instead, they center of attention on trumped up scandals, persona, and divisiveness.

But subsequent yr, they’re more likely to to find that their tax rip-off (without reference to if it in the long run turns into legislation) used to be a step too a ways — particularly if Ryan acts on his plans to practice it with additional assaults on Medicare and Medicaid. Voters will probably be livid, and they are going to now not be distracted from their anger.

Democrats wish to channel that anger by means of promising to control in the complete opposite method that Republicans have. They must run onerous on a pledge to offer protection to and amplify Social Security and Medicare. If they do, citizens will know that the Democratic Party is the birthday celebration of circle of relatives values; they are going to know that Democrats are the politicians who admire all Americans, even those who occur to not be rich.

Nancy Altman is President of Social Security Works, and Linda Benesch is Communications Director. Sign the petition to all individuals of Congress hard that they reject a tax plan that cuts Medicare, and that they forestall their conflict on seniors and dealing households.