The GOP's Class War Against Their Own Base-- Bernie Is Fighting Back For Them

Many 2018 congressional candidates are delighted to campaign against Trump and to tie their opponents to him, especially the ones with big Trump vote scores. Several of the Blue America-endorsed candidates are running against far right GOP incumbents who literally have 100% pro-Trump voting records, as Doug Applegate has pointed out about Darrell Issa and Katie Hill has pointed out in the case of Steve Knight, who blatantly lies to his Santa Clarita/Simi Valley/Antelope Valley constituents in trying to pain himself as "bipartisan" and "mainstream." Randy Bryce's opponent, Paul Ryan, has a 100% Trump score as does Paul Clements' opponent, Fred Upton.

And more candidates than not are delighted to point out the glaring Putin-Gate scandals that have become a nightly staple of the #1 and #2-rated cable TV shows, Rachel Maddow's and Lawrence O'Donnell's, both of which are absolutely crushing Fox News in their time slots, with Fox News adamantly refusing to expose Trump's and his Regime's Putin escapades. Yesterday Bernie was in Morgantown, West Virginia and Covington, Kentucky, not to talk about Russia or Trump or Putin-Gate but to talk with voters in these two states Trump won in landslides (68.7-26.5% in West Virginia and 62.5-32.7% in Kentucky) about the Republican legislation they're passing off as "healthcare" that is really nothing but the Republican Party's class warfare against workers. Before the rally in Covington Bernie issued a shot across the bow of Kentucky's senior senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was implemented, no state in the country has benefited more from the ACA than Kentucky. The uninsured rate for adults in Kentucky has gone down from 20.4 percent in 2013 to just 7.8 percent in 2016-- the largest reduction in America. Today, as a result of the ACA, only 4 percent of children in Kentucky are uninsured.

Unbelievably, at a time when Kentucky has made significant progress in health care, the Republican bill being proposed in the Senate by Kentucky’s own Senator Mitch McConnell would throw over 230,000 people in Kentucky off of health insurance. It would also decimate the Medicaid program in the state which provides insurance for more than 2 million people, including 40 percent of all children.

Further, at a time when Kentucky is struggling with an opioid addiction epidemic, there is no question that if McConnell’s legislation were to be passed, thousands of Kentuckians would no longer be able to receive the treatment they desperately need.

The bottom line is that this legislation, which nationally would throw 22 million Americans off of health insurance, cut Medicaid by almost $800 billion, substantially raise premiums for older workers and defund Planned Parenthood, is a disaster for America but an even greater disaster for Kentucky and other states that voted heavily for Trump. This Republican legislation must be defeated.

Bernie's populism is as different from Trump's as their Twitter feeds are

I want to reiterate something we looked at Saturday morning. Covington is the county seat of Kenton County, Kentucky's third most populous county. And, yes, Trump won that county decisively in November-- 59.7% to 33.7% but on primary day, Kenton County told a far different story. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won Kenton Co. with 2,475 votes to Trump's 1,997. And Hillary and Bernie each beat both of them. Bernie won 4,880 votes countywide-- more than Cruz and Trump combined. Bernie was on the road punching back-- and so are the candidates who have been inspired and energized by his message. You think candidates like Randy Bryce in Wisconsin, Dave Gill in Illinois and Jenny Marshall are going to shy away from talking about how economic inequality is impacting working families in their districts? That is largely what their campaigns are about? That and how they plan to fight back against Republican efforts to tilt the scales further in favor of the top 2% of wealth-holders. This morning Randy Bryce told us that "Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that it’s not a working person’s house that he is speaking on behalf of. In addition to not wanting to have a public town hall because of his horrible policies, he is trying to steal what we have left of health care. Now that our campaign has taken off, he’s had the NRCC unleashed against me even though he won his last election by 35 points! What is he afraid of? Oh yeah-- that would be the people in the district. He can run but he can’t hide. November 6, 2018 can’t get here soon enough."

Jenny Marshall, the Blue America-endorsed progressive running against Trump/Ryan rubber stamp Virginia Foxx in central North Carolina, has a similar perspective. "As I travel the 5th district talking to people on the street," she told us, "the overwhelming issue that keeps coming up is money. It doesn’t surprise me in the least, as the poverty rate across the 5th district is 18.6% which is 4.3% higher than the nation's average. A staggering 44% of the households in the district are low-income meaning their incomes were less than twice the poverty level ($48,500 for a family of 4). People are hurting. They want a representative who understands and will fight for a better future for their family. We cannot ignore their pain any longer." Last month, a short article in The Economist about how little tax the Scandinavian super-rich pay gave them more fodder.

Of life's two certainties, death cannot be dodged even by the well-to-do. Taxes are another matter. Quantifying quite how much they manage to keep from the taxman, however, has always been tricky. One common approach governments take is to conduct randomised audits of tax returns. This methodology can give regulators a rough sense of overall tax revenues lost. But it is far from ideal. For instance, studies based on randomised tax audits are usually both too small and too crude to reflect accurately the financial shenanigans of the most egregious tax-dodgers: the super-rich.

A new study by Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman, three economists, tackles this problem by investigating two recent financial-data hoards: the “Swiss leaks,” a record of bank accounts held at HSBC in Switzerland; and the “Panama papers,” files that document the use of offshore accounts and shell companies by clients of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama. By matching the leaked information with wealth data from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the authors are able to construct the most detailed estimate to date of the extent of tax evasion.

Their research leads to two conclusions. First, tax evasion is extremely concentrated. The average Scandinavian household paid around 3% too little in taxes in 2006; the richest 1% of households, with net assets of at least $2m, underpaid by around 10%. The truly rich, though, behave truly differently. The top 0.01% of households, with net assets of over $40m, short-changed the taxman by a whopping 30%.

Second, the numbers imply that previous estimates of wealth inequality, often based on tax data, have understated the problem. And the Scandinavian statistics may provide a conservative estimate of worldwide tax-dodging: only around 2% of Scandinavian household wealth is held in offshore accounts, compared with the global average of 4%.

Globalisation has disproportionately benefited the rich in part by rewarding capital more handsomely than labour. But globalisation has also made it easier for the well-heeled to hide their wealth. In that sense, maybe the data should cause even more surprise: despite the best efforts of a lucrative global tax-evasion industry, Scandinavia’s ultra-rich are paying 70% of their taxes.

As Alan Grayson reminded me yesterday Citizens for Tax Justice has research that shows basically identical anti-social trends by the super-rich here in the U.S. Earlier today, Ro Khanna (D-CA), who has become one of Congress' top champion's of action to make economic equality and equality of opportunity attainable goals in this country, reminded is that "Picketty has shown that today's economy favors capital over labor. Our tax rules also favor shareholders over the working class. That is why working families feel that the system is rigged against them-- that they are working harder but making less. We need to restructure the economy to reward work instead of speculation and to hold the investor class accountable for the taxes they owe."

I look forward to do the day Ro Khanna is working with Dr. Dave Gill, a central Illinois House candidate, to translate these lofty goals and ideals into programs and tangible progress. "Here in IL-13," Dave told us this morning, "we've seen the impact of economic inequality for the past 20-30 years, with jobs sent overseas and reduced access to appropriate health care and educational opportunities. As I travel through the district, I see the blight of poverty everywhere, and it pains me to know that IL-13 voted for Trump by 5 points last year. There is good news on the horizon, though-- I talk with citizens throughout the district, and among those who did vote for Trump, there are huge levels of buyer's remorse. They now recognize that his 'economic populism' was a crock, and they're angry that they got deceived by him. It started with his Cabinet picks, and the anger has grown as they've come to learn more about TrumpCare. As an E.R. physician, I know all too well the consequences of a bad healthcare system, and I look forward to going to Congress and helping to lead the charge toward Single-Payer. I've been a Bernie fan since the early 90's, and I'm proud that Bernie handily won our district in the Democratic primary last year. I hope to follow in his footsteps and ultimately join him in Washington."

The Republican Party Is About To Amp Up Its War Against The Poor In A Really Big Way

As NY Times columnist Frank Bruni noted yesterday, there isn't a core of shrewdness beneath Señor Trumpanzee's antics nor a method to his madness. "Mostly, there’s a raging, pouting child... The House passed health care legislation that blatantly contradicted his incessant promises of terrific, inexpensive coverage and betrayed the hard-luck Americans whose champion he purported to be. The Senate made clear that it was going nowhere anyway. He’s not coming to anyone’s rescue, just giving the Trump-Kushner clan a loftier status and more leverage for enriching themselves. He’s not draining the swamp. He’s globalizing it... He’s 70, but if we’re talking about deeds and not digits, psychological maturity instead of epidermal sag, he’s our youngest president ever, with the frailest ego. Aides feed him his information in easily digested bites: pictures, charts. They whisper sweet grandiosities in his ear. They devise strategies to shield him from upset and work around his ever-shifting moods. They cross their fingers and they tremble. So do I. And when I picture him at that Time magazine dinner, with a portion bigger than anybody else’s, I don’t see him on a throne. I see him in a highchair, keeping his audience guessing about just how much ice cream he’ll fling against the wall."

And Paul Ryan and Miss McConnell put up with it because he'll blithely sign all their devastating toxic agenda items without even reading them or understanding them-- or caring one way or another about what kind of misery and destruction they're likely to bring in their wake. And they have some plans to bring quite a bit.

Rachel Bade made that point Sunday in a Politico posting, Republicans plan massive cuts to programs for the poor. Keep in mind that that new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday indicates that only 23% of Americans approve of TrumpCare and that the Democrats hope to use TrumpCare as the premier issue in the 2018 midterms. Bade made the point that Ryan and his crew of slash-and-burn sociopaths "just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement. Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for low-income families." Scalpel? More like an ax... or chain saw.

Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and Medicare-- and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall and tax cuts-- is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in politically-sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most vulnerable.

Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget, Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate, multiple sources told Politico.

The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs will get the ax; instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block, the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the disabled and perhaps even veterans’ benefits.

If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs-- all while juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates-- would amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.



Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea. While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”

...Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018 blueprint.

House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.

“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a Budget panel member. “[Trump has] made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. … And so people will see a process much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”

New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up all but $150 billion of that stash, mere pocket change to play with.

Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, comprise the lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all mandatory spending.

But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)

Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs: While the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to request for comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House budget writers.

The other day, we met Randy Bryce, the Democratic and union activist likely to take on Ryan in 2018. Yesterday he told me that "Aside from having complete control over every arm of the United States government, Republicans in D.C. can’t get a single thing accomplished. We are now seeing very clearly who holds the real power. It’s not the majority of voters-- it’s all special interests. We are seeing that although cats do nothing but fight, they still produce a lot of kittens. Problem is-- the 'have nots' get to take care of them while those who 'have' only seek to fill the litter box." Bryce is going to a formidable opponent for Ryan, even if the DCCC continues to pretend Ryan is invincible and not worth targeting.

In a way we are lucky. If Donald Trump had the experience or intelligence to actually sit behind the desk in the Oval Office, maybe one of his campaign promises would have been kept.

It would appear that frustration may be taking control of the legislative process. Seeing as the courts have determined that not only are corporations people, but that corporations are the only people that matter, be prepared to enjoy an abundance of less.

We saw the same thing happen in Wisconsin under Scott Walker. Just when we thought things could not get worse-- they did.

If the Republicans get their act together, we will truly be in a world of hurt. Hopefully with the legal proceedings, it will keep them weighed down and acting like a bucket of crabs-- pulling anyone back down who gets too close to the top.

2018 will be here before we know it. We need to save our Democracy. That happens by taking back Congress.

As this is being written on Mother’s Day, I just left my mother (diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis since early 80s) and my father (Alzheimer's) who probably will make it to 2018. I’d like to see them around for as long as possible. I’d also like for everyone reading this to be able to see their loved ones for as long as possible as well.

That’s going to require a government that actually looks out to “promote the general welfare.”

Neither Donald Trump nor Paul Ryan are concerned with people like you or me. They have proven that they can’t be trusted.

We need people like you or me to fill as many spots as we can.

Please join me-- save our Democracy. Let’s get momentum rolling sooner rather than later. 2018-- the year we save our Democracy. It’s not a spectator sport. If you’re reading this-- you are needed.

Please frequent this blog to find out how you can be involved no matter where you live.

Trump And Ryan Set Out To Make War On The Poor-- Take Wisconsin, For Example

This morning Carol Shea-Porter hosted a roundtable discussion at the Strafford Nutrition Program in Somersworth to highlight what her office called "the devastating harm President Trump’s budget blueprint proposal would cause to New Hampshire communities that rely on programs like Meals on Wheels." Despite Mick Mulvaney's lies on Meet the Press yesterday-- namely that the feds' cut to Meals on Wheels only amounts to 3% of their budget-- the truth is that 35% of Meals On Wheels funding comes from the federal government and the proposed cuts in the Trump budget would be catastrophic. Trump has made it commonplace for public officials-- especially his own-- to lie at will and assume there will be no accountability. Meals on Wheels, however, may be their donnybrook. Every really far right congressmen-- like Pete Sessions in the suburbs north of Dallas-- say they can't go along with Ryan on this one. But on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Ryan this:

Are you comfortable with cutting funding for Meals on Wheels which supplies food-- and seniors depend on it-- to two-and-a-half million elderly Americans?

Simple straight forward question that, in light of Trump's budget, had to be asked. Ryan said he wants spending caps because they "make us focus on cutting spending that is wasteful spending" and that started babbling about "waste, fraud and abuse." What the hell is he talking about? Meals on Wheels, which began in Pennsylvania in 1954 and turned into a national program in 1974, delivers meals to individuals at home who are unable to purchase or prepare their own meals-- the housebound elderly poor and handicapped. Research has consistently shown that these meals significantly improve diet quality, increase nutrient intakes, reduce food insecurity and improve quality-of-life among the recipients. The program also reduces government expenditures by reducing the need of recipients to use hospitals, nursing homes or other expensive government-subsidized services. Meals on Wheels provided approximately 218 million meals to 2.5 million Americans, half of whom are veterans, at an annual cost of $2,765 each. Mulvaney's claim that the program is "just not showing any results" is widely rejected by... everyone who isn't part of the Trump Regime.

Over the weekend, the biggest newspaper in Wisconsin-- a state whose 10 electoral college votes Trump won (with alleged vote machine tampering) 1,409,467 (47.9%) to 1,382,210 (46.9%)-- 27,257 votes (1% of the total)-- looked at how TrumpCare would impact Trump voters in rural parts of the state. Former reality TV personality-turned-right-wing congressman, Sean Duffy, was the first member of Wisconsin's congressional delegation to jump on the Trump bandwagon. His sprawling northern district-- WI-07-- was solidly Democratic, the home of Dave Obey, until recently, when the DCCC ceded it to Duffy. In 2014 they refused to support progressive Kelly Westlund and last year they refused to support progressive Mary Hoeft. The district, strong Bernie territory in the primary, is not on any DCCC target lists for 2018, despite the fact that Obama beat McCain there 53-45% and then lost narrowly to Romney 50.9-47.8%. Instead, the DCCC brain surgeons are only looking at Trump's 57.8% to 37.3% win over Clinton. (Bernie would have won the district.) WI-07 was Trump's strongest district in the state-- and the one that will suffer the most if TrumpCare passes. Trump won 50-60 year old Obamacare enrollees in Wisconsin by 15 points-- "and they disproportionately live in rural areas that voted for Trump and are represented by Republicans in Congress."

Take the case of a fairly typical Obamacare enrollee-- a 60-year-old with an income of $30,000.

Nationwide, this man or woman would lose an average of $4,150 per year in health care tax credits and subsidies under the GOP plan, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But those cuts would vary dramatically from county to county.

In Wisconsin, the cuts would be much smaller in the southwest and south central parts of the state. In Sauk County, for example, a 60-year-old with an income of $30,000 would lose $1,300 in tax credits and subsidies for his or her health care plan compared to current law.

But in some northern and western counties, that assistance would decrease by more than $7,000.

The main reason?

Under Obamacare, the financial aid people get to help them buy their health insurance is more generous in areas where health care costs are higher. Those areas include many rural counties where there are fewer health care providers.

“They’re getting a larger tax credit under the Affordable Care Act. And they would lose out on that under the House bill,” Cynthia Cox, an analyst with Kaiser, said of those areas.

Under the GOP plan, tax credits would not differ from county to county or region to region. There would be no boost in aid for people in places with high health care costs. That’s why those enrollees would see the biggest decline in their tax credits.

And because those areas are disproportionately rural and Republican, that complicates the politics of getting the GOP plan through Congress, where it may be voted on this week.

Republicans are weighing changes in the bill to secure the votes they need from within their own party for final passage, and those changes could include tweaks to the tax credits.

The biggest losses in tax credits in Wisconsin would occur in two mostly rural congressional districts, the northern seat held by Duffy and the western seat held by Democrat Ron Kind.

Duffy’s district has the highest number of Obamacare enrollees in the state (more than 35,000 last year) and Kind’s has the third highest.

Both areas were carried by Trump last fall. They are also the two congressional districts in Wisconsin that saw the biggest swings toward the GOP in 2016.

In both districts, a 60-year-old making $30,000 would lose an average of more than $5,500 a year in health care tax credits under the GOP plan, based on a Journal Sentinel analysis of the Kaiser data.

For older, low-income couples, the loss in tax credits would top $15,000 in parts of both districts.

“When I saw their plan ... I immediately said, ‘This is not going to be good for rural Wisconsin or rural America generally,’ which is ironic, given where (Trump’s) base of support came from,” said Kind, who voted against the GOP plan when it was approved along party lines by the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Without the means to pay for (plans), they won't be able to get covered,” said Kind.

Duffy said Saturday he has concerns about the ability of some older people to purchase a health care plan with the GOP tax credit as it is currently designed.

“The final page hasn’t been written” on the bill, he said. “Maybe we can improve the amount of money that an individual in their 60s gets in regard to their refundable tax credit.”

But Duffy said he did not favor the approach under Obamacare of offering bigger tax credits to people in higher-cost counties (though that has meant more generous subsidies in his rural district). And that view appears to be the prevailing one among House Republicans.

Duffy said that is the kind of government “micromanaging … we’re trying to get away from.”

More broadly, Duffy argued that Obamacare was unpopular in his district and was making health care more costly. He argued the GOP plan would create more competition, lower costs and, as a result, “my communities will get helped far more than what they have under Obamacare.”

While northern and western Wisconsin would see the biggest losses in tax credits under the GOP plan, parts of southern Wisconsin would be hurt a lot less.

The district that would see by far the smallest cuts in tax credits for older enrollees is one that voted heavily against Trump: the seat anchored by Madison and represented by Democrat Mark Pocan.

In Pocan’s district, the average loss in tax credits for a 60-year-old with a $30,000 income would be less than $2,000 a year-- a much smaller reduction than in northern Wisconsin.

And a 40-year-old enrollee in Pocan’s district with the same $30,000 income would actually get more assistance, not less, under the GOP plan, which treats younger and higher-income enrollees more favorably than the current system.

There were roughly 240,000 people enrolled in health plans on the federal marketplace under Obamacare last year in Wisconsin. The analysis in this story is based on just one measure (premium subsidies and tax credits) of how those Obamacare enrollees would fare under the GOP plan.

For example, it does not take into account the loss of cost-sharing subsidies for lower-income enrollees, the impact of Medicaid changes and cutbacks, or the potential of higher premiums for older enrollees.

A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the GOP plan would save more than $300 billion over 10 years but would result in an additional 24 million people being uninsured.

You hear a lot of this from Trump voters in the Midwest: "Originally the president said he wasn’t going to do nothing to Medicaid. Now they say he wants to take $880 billion out of Medicaid. That’s going to affect a lot of people who can’t afford to get insurance." That may account for his steadily plummeting favorability ratings-- down at 37% now. The NY Times reported yesterday that "As Republicans in Washington grapple with how to meet their promise of undoing the greatest expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society, they are struggling with what may be an irreconcilable problem: bridging the vast gulf between the expectations of blue-collar voters... who propelled Mr. Trump to the presidency, and longstanding party orthodoxy that it is not the federal government’s role to provide benefits to a wide swath of society. If they push forward the House-drafted health bill, which could come to a vote as early as this coming week, Republicans may honor their vow to repeal what they derided as Obamacare, but also risk doing disproportionate harm to the older, working-class white voters who are increasingly vital to their electoral coalition."

A new Pew Research Center survey indicated that the number of Republicans making below $30,000 a year who believe the federal government has a responsibility to ensure health coverage for all had risen to 52 percent from 31 percent last year. And while just 14 percent of Republicans who make between $30,000 and about $75,000 last year said the government bore responsibility for health care, now 34 percent of such voters do.

“This is a function of Donald Trump engineering a takeover of the Republican Party,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “It was takeover more than assimilation, and this is the eminently predictable result.”

But now that it is Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, those who elected him will expect him to fulfill his campaign commitments.

2018 should be a good electoral year for Democrats in Wisconsin-- if only there was no DCCC. The DCCC isn't targeting any Wisconsin GOP-held districts and plausible candidates don't want to run because they don't trust the DCCC not to interfere with their fundraising efforts and undermine their campaigns. So, even with the popular Tammy Baldwin at the top of the ticket, it now looks like Sean Duffy, as well as sociopaths Glenn Grothman, Mike Gallagher and Paul Ryan will all get free tickets to reelection courtesy of Nancy Pelosi and Ben Ray Lujan. well... at least Green Day will be on with Stephen Colbert tomorrow night. And even if no one at the DCCC understands their resistance, normal voters do-- in Wisconsin and everywhere else.

How Badly Has Paul Ryan Screwed Up The GOP's Chance To Repeal Obamacare?

The other day, Alex Samuels reported in the Texas Tribune that Barbara Bush, the daughter of George W. Bush, was the keynote speaker at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Ft. Worth on Wednesday, where she insisted that the work the organization is doing is especially important after the ascension of the Trump Regime. She told the thousand guests at the Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas' annual luncheon that "In October when I was asked to speak, I said yes and I was thrilled, but I was under the assumption that history was going to go differently. That was not meant to be a political statement; I just thought the cards were going to fall in a different way. I’m so happy I said yes because this work could not matter more... Our belief that health is a human right is not reflected in today’s reality. Millions of people's potentials and futures are undermined simply because they do not have access to the health care that they deserve. We have these incredible tools to solve problems, yet health systems are weak, and we need new leaders to fix them... To me, Planned Parenthood is a one-stop-shop for everything that has to do with women’s health and all social problems that don’t have to do with women’s health. I hope you all realize the incredible investment that you’re making for both women and also their kids, their kids' education and their income level. And that is unique and incredible. It’s a silver bullet, if you ask me."

And Barbara Bush isn't the only Republican uncomfortable with their party's bizarre jihad against Planned Parenthood. The idea of tying it to repealing Obamacare looks, in fact, like a poison pill of some kind. I doubt it will matter that much among House Republicans-- from where the idea comes-- but it could kill the package in the Senate. In 2015 Susan Collins (R-ME) voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act precisely because defunding Planned Parenthood was in the bill. There's no reason to think she's changed her mind and recently she was quoted saying that she doesn't think it makes sense to link the two issues. "If the House Republicans want to bring it up, it should be in a separate bill. I would oppose that bill, but it further complicates the negotiations to have it included in this bill."

And it's not just Collins. Ever since the national GOP stabbed Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK) in the back in 2010-- supporting Tea Party sociopath Joe Miller instead of her-- she's felt pretty independent for a Republican. Miller has the official Republican Party ballot designation, but she beat him-- and a weak Democrat-- as a write-in candidate (with 39.5% of the vote). Ever since, she's been one of the half dozen Republicans most willing to cross the aisle-- thumbing her nose at Miss McConnell on the way-- and vote with the Democrats. A couple of weeks ago, she addressed the state legislature and told them she's likely to vote against repealing Obamacare for two reasons-- the rollback of Medicaid expansion that the legislature had approved and which is extremely popular in Alaska, and the defunding of Planned Parenthood.

"As long as Alaska wants to keep the expansion it should have the option," Murkowski said. "I will not vote to repeal it."

Other parts worth preserving, Murkowski said, are provisions that prohibit insurers from discriminating against pre-existing conditions, aim to ensure mental health parity and allow young people to remain on their parents’ health insurance up to the age of 26.

Murkowski also stood in support of Planned Parenthood, which she said has no place in the ACA debate.

"Taxpayer dollars should never be used to pay for abortions, but I will not vote to deny Alaskans access to the health services that Planned Parenthood provides," said Murkowski.

Planned Parenthood provides health care for 7,700 Alaskans annually. Yesterday Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told Chris Cuomo and CNN viewers yesterday that she had been "very forceful in repeatedly saying that the expansion of Medicaid is tremendously important to 184,000 West Virginians. That is something-- every time we talk about how has it moved to change-- I am constantly talking about." When Cuomo pressed her about whether or not Medicaid expansion is preserved in Ryan's secret bill, she said "it better be." That, of course, is at odds with GOP extremist who would just as soon abolish Medicaid altogether. One more Senate Republican bails-- for whatever reason-- and Obamacare repeal goes back to the drawing board... if it even gets off the drawing board. No one knows at this point because Ryan has "the plan" under lock and key. He wouldn't even allow Senator Rand Paul-- who says he's inclined to "leave it," not take it-- to look at it Thursday.



Kansas' gigantic, empty 1st congressional district takes up most of the state-- 61 full counties and part of two others. There are no actual cities although in includes Dodge City (pop- 27,340), Salina (pop- 47,707), Manhattan (pop- 52,281), Emporia (pop- 24,916), Liberal (pop- 20,525), Hutchinson (pop- 42,080) and gets into the western suburbs of Topeka. With a PVI of R+23, it's one of the most reliably Republican congressional districts in the country. Romney beat Obama there 70-28% and last November Trump beat Hillary by an even great margin-- 69.3% to 24.3%. And at the same time they elected a new congressman, replacing radical right lunatic Tim Huelskamp with... radical right lunatic Roger Marshall. With the surreptitious help of Paul Ryan, Marshall beat Huelskamp in the primary 58,808 (56.5%) to 45,315 (43.5%).

It isn't likely you've heard of Marshall, a natural born back-bencher destined to have no impact on anything ever, unless you live in one of the farms or towns that make up KS-01. He seems right out of the 1950s, a small town obstetrician delivering babies in a 79% white district, harboring frightening and antiquated ideas about healthcare. In an interview in Stat Friday, that ugly, mind-numbing, narrow-minded ignorance was on full display.

The law’s Medicaid expansion, which Kansas has not adopted despite support from many hospitals, including some of Marshall’s former colleagues, is one of the big sticking points for Republicans. Many GOP-led states adopted it and want to see it preserved in some form.

Marshall doesn’t believe it has helped, an outlook that sheds light on how this new player in Washington understands health policy.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.

“Just, like, homeless people… I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said. “The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.”

...“Our vision was that we would look more like a hotel with customer service that delivered five-star health care,” he said. “So our cafeteria looks more like a coffee shop than it does a sterile hospital dining room. We have bright windows everywhere, and outside of every window there’s a garden. Thinking that healing is more than just a knife and a needle.”

Ugly, Anti-Christian Republican Hatred Of Poor People-- From Wisconsin To Arizona

Ending the chapter of my life called "College," brought two major changes: I moved abroad and, soon after-- following an incredible months-long binge in Afghanistan-- I stopped using drugs… forever. I lived overseas close to 7 years, much of it in Amsterdam, where I had a wonderful life working in a government-funded meditation center, the Kosmos. When I moved back to America in the late '70s I had to start all over again. Along with my friend, Chris, I started an independent record label from scratch. We had no money, none at all but we built a company that CBS bought and that led me to Warner Bros and, eventually, to paying millions of dollars in income taxes. I didn't celebrate writing those mammoth checks but I never begrudged paying them-- not once-- because I always knew that without this great country I was paying taxes to, I would never have earned the income that resulted in those big tax bills.

But at one time, those taxes might have gone to Holland and not America. At a time long before I was paying any taxes, I was struggling trying to keep my company afloat. Every week at least one or two days I would have to chose between eating and putting gas in my car. Someone turned me on to the idea of food stamps, which helped get me over the hump in a big way. It was a fantastic investment for the government. Without those few thousand dollars in food stamps for a couple of years I would probably have had to move back to Holland's easier life. The jobs generated by my company and the taxes paid by it and by me, would have been Dutch jobs and Dutch taxes. I'm so glad it worked out the way it did.

Today Republicans are-- as always-- negative and condemnatory about fellow-Americans who need a hand. In his gubernatorial reelection platform, Koch-backed right-winger Rick Scott, promises to discourage and severely limit, arbitrarily, assistance to people in need. In his crabbed little world people who need a hand are "the other," not "us," not potential resources but a burden. He's telling Wisconsin voters that he will "require a drug test for those requesting unemployment and able-bodied, working age adults requesting Food Stamps from the state." If Wisconsin voters are smart, they'll unemployed Scott Walker.

But Republican contempt for the less fortunate isn't just a Wisconsin story. It's a pillar of the conservative world view and the disease is everyone. Do you remember the Mormon neo-nazi sympathizer state Senator in Arizona Russell Pearce? Long the ugly face of the Arizona Know Nothing movement, he was elected by right wing extremists president of the state Senate in January of 2011 and then recalled by the voters-- the first Arizona state legislator in history to ever be recalled 10 months later. He lost the recall election, 54-46%, and several of his top campaign staffers were charged with felonies for vote fraud during the election. A horrible, corrupt and ignorant man, he ran again in 2012 and was rebuffed by the voters with an even greater margin, 56-44%. At that point, the ultra-racist Arizona Republican Party hired him as First Vice Chairman.

Pearce was forced to resign on Sunday, not because of the racism and xenophobia, his trademark issues but because of his hatred of poor people and, especially, poor women. Republican Party candidates didn't want to be associated with him after he made some typically right-wing remarks on a Hate Talk Radio show on KKNT-AM. Like Scott Walker, he doesn't want to lend a helping hand-- he wants to sever outstretched hands asking for assistance. "You put me in charge of Medicaid," he boasted, "the first thing I'd do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations… Then we'll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job."

Mark Brnovich, the Republican running for Attorney General was only one of many GOP candidates worried that Pearce's extremism would harm is own chances at the polls in November. "The notion that government would force sterilization upon anyone is counter to everything I believe about individual liberty and contrary to the founding principles of a free nation. Comments that demean the plight of the poor, including women in the dual role of mother and economic provider, are not conservative; they're cruel. And I reject them."

The Republican Party's top hope for winning a Democratic-held seat, Martha McSally, who has been making progressive against Blue Dog Ron Barber, also feared Pearce's comments could hurt her in the extreme southeastern part of the state, especially in Tucson and the Pima County suburbs where Barber beat her in 2012 52-48% and providing his margin of victory in one of the country's tightest races. She took to her Twitter account as fast as she could:

Maybe McSally should have thought more carefully about which party she joined and what they really do stand for at their core. Pearce, after all, has long been at the heart of the Arizona GOP and his comments are consistent with his career-- and with what the party espouses across the entire country.

Detroit: Water, Water, Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

There's a horrible drought in California and I'm going to rip out my lawn and replace it with a rock and cactus garden, as several neighbors and friends already have. The city even offers a cash incentive for doing so. There are also serious drought conditions on northern Texas, western Nevada and southeastern Colorado. But not in Detroit-- nor anywhere in Michigan or Ohio (which is closer to Detroit than lots of Michigan itself is). Plenty of water there... except for people to use. Well, not all people. Poor people are the ones who have no water-- tens of thousands of them.

A few months ago the Detroit Water and Sewerage District sent out something like 46,000 shutoff notices-- after jacking up the price of water so that it's prohibitively expensive for many families. People in Detroit are charged an average of $75 a month for water, comapred to a national average of $40. By summer, the District was talking about 150,000 households they consider delinquent and plan to stop serving. John Conyers, the congressman who represents most of the poor people living in Detroit, flat-out declared the District management's policy "inhuman" and the UN reminded Detroit (and I hope Lansing) that "Disconnection of services for lack of means to pay may constitute a violation of the right to water. Disconnection due to non-payment is only permissible if it can be shown that the householder is able to pay but is not paying-- in other words, that the tariff is affordable."

Conyers is working on legislation to keep the District from being able to cut people off from water. what do you think Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy will have to say about that? How about predatory Michigan Republican leaders like Fred Upton, Dave Camp, Candice Miller, and Tim Walberg? They don't care-- especially because gold courses that don't pay still get to waste massive amounts of water while poor families have no water for drinking or sanitation. The GOP wants to see the system privatized and kicking poor families off their books, makes that look a lot more attractive for corporate buyers.

In a city where the median household income is less than half the national average, 38 percent of residents live below the poverty line and 23 percent are unemployed, it comes as no surprise that at least 40 percent of customers are delinquent on their bills.

The water shut-offs have taken no prisoners. Since this year's shut-offs started at the end of March, at least 15,000 Detroit households have had their water turned off. But the campaign, a tactic designed to pressure Detroiters into paying their water bills, began with little or no publicity last year, when 24,000 homes had their water shut off, says Darryl Latimer, the deputy director of the water department.

The frequency of shut-offs gained momentum in the fall, shortly after the city’s bankruptcy was filed, and just a few months after the city contracted shut-off services out to Homrich, a demolition company. The city agreed to pay Homrich at most $6 million for work over 730 calendar days. Delinquent customers were given a grace period in December for the winter months, with shut-offs resuming upon the arrival of spring.

With the city’s average of just under three people per household, these numbers mean that roughly 100,000 Detroiters out of a total population that hovers just under 700,000 have already been affected by the shut-offs, with tens of thousands more awaiting their turn.

Clampdowns can seem to arrive out of the blue, as residents don’t receive any formal notification that their services are to be shut off... Residents targeted by the shut-off campaign have been reluctant to speak up. Some have stayed quiet because they’ve resorted to illegally hiring plumbers, and others—who are without water and relying on neighbors and friends for drinking water and showers—are afraid child-protective services may intervene, as a lack of running water is grounds for social services to immediately take children out of parents’ care.

Even those without children remain reticent. Some feel tarred by a general notion of shame and culpability for not being able to meet such a bare necessity as water. Last week, a headline in one of the local newspapers, the Detroit News, described delinquent customers as “water scofflaws.”

This stigma is enhanced by the painting of blue lines in front of those houses that have just had their water turned off-- lines painted by Homrich’s employees after a job is completed... Monica Lewis-Patrick, a community organizer who has been going door to door with fellow activists in order to raise awareness and distribute water, says she has come across old-age pensioners who-- not knowing where to turn after their taps were closed off-- have gone without running water for almost a year.

...“This is a public-health emergency,” says Peter Hammer, a law professor at Wayne State University and director of the school's Center for Civil Rights. But Hammer takes it further. Beyond the likely prepping of the water department for privatization, the law professor states these measures are just one part of a larger process of moving people out of neighborhoods the city wants to see emptied out. “They are also shutting water off not wishing people will pay necessarily, but implicitly hoping people will move,” he says.

Geographical relocation is a controversial issue in a city like Detroit, which is 83 percent African-American and has a painful history of housing segregation. The Motor City’s financial woes are also often associated with decades of white flight, which left its population depleted by almost two-thirds and its tax base in tatters.

The city’s racial makeup plays a role in the way this is being dealt with too, Hammer says: “If this was not an impoverished African-American community that was getting the brunt of this, people would be up in arms.”

Ah... yes-- which is why we don't hear Fred Upton, Candice Miller, Dave Camp, Tim Walberg speaking up-- nor Bill Huizenga, Dan Benishek, Mike Rogers, Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio.

When Wealth Controls The Agenda… Opportunity For Economic And Social Advancement Dries Up

This weekend's "must read" was Trip Gabriel's NY Times piece, 50 Years Into The War On Poverty, Hardship Hits Back. He writes that "much of McDowell County looks like a rural Detroit, with broken windows on shuttered businesses and homes crumbling from neglect." Ironically, "beginning in the 19th century, the rugged region produced more coal than any other county in West Virginia, but it got almost none of the wealth back as local investment." Today "nearly 47 percent of personal income in the county is from Social Security, disability insurance, food stamps and other federal programs… The poverty rate, 50 percent in 1960, declined-- partly as a result of federal benefits-- to 36 percent in 1970 and to 23.5 percent in 1980. But it soared to nearly 38 percent in 1990. For families with children, it now nears 41 percent."

McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed-- Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others-- lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living.

But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment.

Fifty years after the war on poverty began, its anniversary is being observed with academic conferences and ideological sparring-- often focused, explicitly or implicitly, on the “culture” of poor urban residents. Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem.

Of the 353 most persistently poor counties in the United States-- defined by Washington as having had a poverty rate above 20 percent in each of the past three decades-- 85 percent are rural. They are clustered in distinct regions: Indian reservations in the West; Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; a band across the Deep South and along the Mississippi Delta with a majority black population; and Appalachia, largely white, which has supplied some of America’s iconic imagery of rural poverty since the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans.

Friends of Democracy wasn't focusing just on McDowell County or on West Virginia or on the rural counties that account for so much of America's poverty when they issued a report on how progressives can run against Big Money in politics and win. "Washington," they wrote, "is broken. Faith and trust in Congress is at a historic low. Issues that matter to the American people are falling to the wayside. You’re not running for office to perpetuate the status quo, you’re running to change it. To improve your community, strengthen your state and fix our country. The good news is running on fixing our broken campaign finance system is good for you as a candidate as much as it is good for the country. 7 out of 8 congressional candidates who ran on this issue in 2012 won-- we’re looking to double that number in 2014."

Just 11 percent of voters think that they are the priority of members of Congress. Too many voters have little faith that their needs factor into decisions that politicians make, believing that politicians instead cater to big donors and special interests instead.


Voters view Washington’s inability to address major issues of the day, like getting the economy back on track and solving our national energy policy, as the result of a broken political system that rewards the best fundraisers rather than those who can move ideas forward. The issue of money in politics is, in most voters’ minds, inextricably linked to addressing the major challenges confronting all of us, rather than a separate policy area on which to make yet another set of promises.

…Two bills in Congress are gaining great traction. In February 2014, two bills were introduced-- the Government By the People Act (H.R. 20), introduced by Leader Pelosi and Rep. Sarbanes (D-MD) with 130 original co-sponsors and the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 2023), introduced by Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin with 16 original co-sponsors. Both bills have unprecedented support from Democrats in Congress, political campaign donors, the traditional reform community as well as the larger progressive movement.

Polling shows that almost two-thirds of voters support passing an election law that would couple small donations with matching funds in exchange for taking no large campaign checks and an even bigger number of independent voters say that a candidate's position of campaign finance reform will be an important factor in their choice on election day. Voters don't like the idea of feeling disempowered by Big Money buying up democracy. Even voters in the reddest areas of the country. You may have read that Kansas-- which hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1930s-- has a radical right governor, Sam Brownback, who just signed a bill guaranteeing that there will be no Medicaid Expansion in his state this year. Brownback is also the most hated governor in America and is very likely to lose his reelection bid-- to a Democrat-- in November. This month a poll showed Paul Davis beating Brownback 45-41%-- and by 48-35% among Independents. (Point of reference: Romney beat Obama in Kansas 60-38%, the Republican winning all but two of Kansas' 105 counties.)

Wisconsin is a much wealthier state than West Virginia. The medium household income is $50,395 as opposed to West Virginia's $38,482. But WI-07, the northwestern part of the state, has had a tougher time that most of the rest of the state. The medium household income is $45,868 and voters there see the connection between distorted wealth inequality and political power. The progressive Democrat running for Congress in the district this year is Kelly Westlund, who has been endorsed by Blue America. This morning she explained the connection:

"I knew our political process was broken when I decided to run for Congress, but I underestimated just how bad it really is. In a representative government, citizen voices ought to speak louder than campaign contributions, but as wealth consolidates at the very top, so does political power. The fact is, organizations on both sides of the aisle have embraced the money-driven approach to campaigning, and that means that the wealthy few can buy access to candidates and elected officials that regular people just can't afford. Equating money with free speech leaves the vast majority of middle- and working-class people at a serious disadvantage when it comes to engaging effectively in our shared democracy. I think that's wrong, and it's time we change it."

And speaking of disempowered voters, lets go back to West Virginia for a moment. In 2012 McDowell County also went for Romney and by an even greater margin than West Virginia as a whole-- 64-34%, two points better for the Republican than his statewide landslide. However, on the same day, Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin took 66% of the county's vote for governor and Democrat Joe Manchin took a startling 72% for the U.S. Senate seat. Democrat Nick Rahall was reelected to the House against Republican Rick Snuffer 65-35%. Short of kicking mass drug addiction, will getting Big Money out of politics turn things around for McDowell County? It's worth trying.

As Adam Liptak reported for the NY Times yesterday, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says "the court had made a disastrous wrong turn in its recent string of campaign finance rulings. "The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate," he said. "It’s really wrong."

He talked about what he called a telling flaw in the opening sentence of last month’s big campaign finance ruling. He filled in some new details about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to the Citizens United decision. And he called for a constitutional amendment to address what he said was the grave threat to American democracy caused by the torrent of money in politics.

Was Ebenezer Scrooge One Of Boehner's Childhood Role Models? Or Did He Pick That Up From Paul Ryan?

You've probably heard by now that Boehner and his caucus are screaming bloody murder over a loophole in the bill they passed to cut almost $9 billion in nutritional assistance to the poorest families in America, one of the Republican Party's biggest legislative priorities for the current session. Their base was ecstatic when it passed. But now 8 states and Washington DC have already figured out how to use the loophole to keep food stamp assistance flowing. Now the House Republicans circulated a memo claiming they will thwart the states' plans to save their people from starving

Under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, low-income families can qualify for additional food stamp benefits by showing a heating bill, but some states also allow those without a heating bill to qualify simply by showing they receive even the smallest amount of payment from the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Seventeen states had been sending the nominal LIHEAP payments, often amounting to just $1 per year, to trigger additional food stamps for those residents without a heating bill, but the farm bill set a new minimum of more than $20 to try to discourage the practice, commonly referred to as “heat and eat.”

The seven states that have announced they will not let the farm bill disrupt “heat and eat” this year have vowed to send $21 to households to make sure they don’t lose the additional food stamps.

Media attention to the growing number of states preventing food stamp cuts intensified after House Speaker John Boehner railed against the states’ actions.

“Since the passage of the farm bill, states have found ways to cheat, once again, on signing up people for food stamps,” the Ohio Republican told reporters March 12. “And so I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing.”

…“Various media outlets have reported on the announcements of these states,” says the memo, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “The press reports assume that the change in behavior of these states eliminates the savings estimated from the reforms included in Section 4006 [of the farm bill]. This is false and fails to recognize CBO [Congressional Budget Office] considerations included in the savings estimate.”

Among the states Boehner and the Greed and Selfishness Party are ready to go to war with are Vermont, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New York. The Hill is reporting that the states' "governors appear to have the upper hand in a fight with House Republican leaders over a change to federal welfare policy." See that video up top? Those are the people who Boehner was talking about when he said “I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing. I mean, listen. The American people work hard for their money; they send it here because we impose taxes on them, and they expect us to spend the money wisely. And, we just passed the farm bill, and then we find states finding ways around the law, and, frankly, perpetuating the fraud that we were trying to stop.”

The NY Times editorial noted that the work-around by the states to save their citizens "has infuriated a party that doesn’t believe that poor families should get public assistance in buying groceries." Republican leaders, according to the Times are in shock.

The cut involved the so-called heat-and-eat program, in which food stamp benefits are increased for those who qualify for a small amount of state heating assistance so that they do not have to choose between heat and food. Several states were providing only a token amount of fuel aid, as little as $1 a year, to prompt the extra benefits of $90 or so a month, and many lawmakers saw that as gaming the system.

So negotiators on the farm bill agreed that states would have to pay a minimum of $20 a year in fuel aid to prompt the benefits. Republicans thought this would save more than $8 billion over a decade, because they assumed the states wouldn’t want to pay $20. Democrats went along because it was better than the original Republican plan to cut $40 billion from food stamps.

…Cheating? The states are doing exactly what the farm bill-- which Mr. Boehner supported-- encouraged them to do: pay more to some of the poorest families in America so they neither freeze nor starve during a brutal winter. Mr. Boehner seems unaware of it, but millions of families have never recovered from the recession, and his chamber has not only refused to help them by stimulating the economy but is trying to push them through the safety net.

In a letter to Mr. Boehner, Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut said it was “shameful” to describe the states’ efforts as cheating. “Your demonization of states that have elected to provide this benefit impugns the children, the elderly, the disabled, the low-wage workers and veterans who receive such aid by implying that they are a party to something criminal,” he wrote. “To the contrary, I think most would argue that denying residents of my state $112 a month in nutrition assistance is morally wrong.”

If Mr. Boehner really wants to crack down on cheating, he might look to the carried-interest tax loophole, which allows hedge fund managers to mischaracterize their income as capital gains and costs the Treasury $11 billion a year-- far more than extra dollars for food stamps. In his world, fraud occurs only when the government helps those who need it the most.

Unemployment Extension Fails In The Senate-- Big Victory In The Republican Party War Against Working Families

Just a few minutes ago, the Senate failed, unlike last time, to shut down the persistent Republican filibuster of the bill to extend unemployment benefits. This time Reid's attempt at cloture failed, 52-48, when the Senate rejected a proposal that would have extended benefits through November and pay for it by extending the sequester’s mandatory spending cuts into 2024. Every Republican voted NO and they were joined by Marc Udall (D-CO), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Michael Bennet (D-CO).

As Paul Krugman explained in his OpEd Sunday, Enemies of the Poor, Republicans hoping to run for president-- or vice president-- in 2016 are making circuitous arguments about how to "help the poor," without, of course, spending any money and keeping intact the GOP brand as "the party that takes from the poor and gives to the rich."

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast additional harm if they had won the 2012 election. Moreover, G.O.P. harshness toward the less fortunate isn’t just a matter of spite (although that’s part of it); it’s deeply rooted in the party’s ideology, which is why recent speeches by leading Republicans declaring that they do too care about the poor have been almost completely devoid of policy specifics.

Let’s start with the recent Republican track record.

The most important current policy development in America is the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. Most Republican-controlled states are, however, refusing to implement a key part of the act, the expansion of Medicaid, thereby denying health coverage to almost five million low-income Americans. And the amazing thing is that they’re going to great lengths to block aid to the poor even though letting the aid through would cost almost nothing; nearly all the costs of Medicaid expansion would be paid by Washington.

Meanwhile, those Republican-controlled states are slashing unemployment benefits, education financing and more. As I said, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the G.O.P. is hurting the poor as much as it can.

What would Republicans have done if they had won the White House in 2012? Much more of the same. Bear in mind that every budget the G.O.P. has offered since it took over the House in 2010 involves savage cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other antipoverty programs.

Still, can’t Republicans change their approach? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is almost surely no.

First of all, they’re deeply committed to the view that efforts to aid the poor are actually perpetuating poverty, by reducing incentives to work. And to be fair, this view isn’t completely wrong.

True, it’s total nonsense when applied to unemployment insurance. The notion that unemployment is high because we’re “paying people not to work” is a fallacy (no matter how desperate you make the unemployed, their desperation does nothing to create more jobs) wrapped in a falsehood (very few people are choosing to remain unemployed and keep collecting benefit checks).

But our patchwork, uncoordinated system of antipoverty programs does have the effect of penalizing efforts by lower-income households to improve their position: the more they earn, the fewer benefits they can collect. In effect, these households face very high marginal tax rates. A large fraction, in some cases 80 cents or more, of each additional dollar they earn is clawed back by the government.

The question is what we could do to reduce these high effective tax rates. We could simply slash benefits; this would reduce the disincentive to work, but only by intensifying the misery of the poor. And the poor would become less productive as well as more miserable; it’s hard to take advantage of a low marginal tax rate when you’re suffering from poor nutrition and inadequate health care.

Alternatively, we could reduce the rate at which benefits phase out. In fact, one of the unheralded virtues of Obamacare is that it does just that. That is, it doesn’t just improve the lot of the poor; it improves their incentives, because the subsidies families receive for health care fade out gradually with higher income, instead of simply disappearing for anyone too affluent to receive Medicaid. But improving incentives this way means spending more, not less, on the safety net, and taxes on the affluent have to rise to pay for that spending. And it’s hard to imagine any leading Republican being willing to go down that road-- or surviving the inevitable primary challenge if he did.

The point is that a party committed to small government and low taxes on the rich is, more or less necessarily, a party committed to hurting, not helping, the poor… Republicans are in a deep sense enemies of America’s poor. And that will remain true no matter how hard the likes of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio try to convince us otherwise.