February 3, 2023
Last night, former vice president Mike Pence came out and said it: “I think the day could come when we could replace the New Deal with a better deal.”
Pence was talking about Social Security—a centerpiece of the New Deal—saying: “Literally give younger Americans the ability to take a portion of their Social Security withholdings and put that into a private savings account.”
Privatizing Social Security is his plan to address the growing national debt by cutting expenditures, at least in domestic spending. “It’s absolutely essential that we generate leadership in this country that will be straight with the American people, that will take us off this trajectory of massive debt that we’re piling on the backs of those grandchildren,” Pence said at the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors summit in Washington, D.C.
Another way to reduce the debt would be to raise taxes on corporations and the very wealthy, even to where they were before the massive tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017, but current-day Republicans oppose taxes, claiming they redistribute wealth from hardworking people to those who want a handout. They believe that cutting taxes to enable those at the top to accumulate wealth will enable them to invest their money in businesses, creating more jobs. Wealth will trickle down, and everyone will do better.
Republicans like Pence believe the federal government should stay out of economic affairs, letting individuals make their own decisions in free markets (although the concept of a “free market” has always been more theoretical than real). Any federal attempts to regulate business or provide a social safety net are “socialism,” they claim, although they have largely forgotten how that argument was established in the United States.
This argument is what gives us the story Kayode Crown reported yesterday for the Mississippi Free Press: thirty-eight of Mississippi’s rural hospitals, more than half of them, are in danger of collapsing because Governor Tate Reeves refuses to allow the state to accept an expansion of Medicaid. The hospitals are required to treat all patients who need care, but since many patients are uninsured, without the expansion of Medicaid the hospitals don’t get paid.
On Monday, Reeves warned Republican lawmakers not to “cave under the pressure of Democrats and their allies in the media who are pushing for the expansion of Obamacare, welfare, and socialized medicine.” “Instead, seek innovative free-market solutions that disrupt traditional health-care delivery models, increase competition, and lead to better health outcomes for Mississippians.” Last month, in a poll from Mississippi Today/Siena College, about 80% of Mississippi voters wanted Medicaid expansion.
This theory also says that the government should also stay out of the business of protecting civil rights, because state governments are the centerpiece of American democracy. That’s the idea behind yesterday’s decision by a panel of three judges of the right-wing Fifth Circuit. They ruled that a federal law prohibiting people who are under a domestic restraining order from owning a gun is unconstitutional.
In the 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, the Supreme Court said that the government must prove that any gun regulation is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and because the Constitution’s Framers didn’t stop domestic abusers from possessing guns, we can’t either. As Ian Millhiser points out in Vox, it was not until 1871 that a state court determined that “a husband has no right” to beat his wife.
Slate’s legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern notes, “There is no real doubt that the 5th Circuit's decision is going to lead to more abusers murdering their wives and girlfriends. It will also increase mass shootings. Domestic abuse[rs] are vastly more likely to commit heinous acts of gun violence.” Millhiser says it is very likely the Supreme Court will take up the case.
Under the Republicans’ theory, the country has seen wealth move upward dramatically, hollowing out the middle class and leaving it vulnerable to leaders who have attracted voters by telling them that minorities and women who want “socialism” are to blame for their loss of power.
Today an audio file from November 5, 2020, just after the presidential election, was leaked that shows members of Trump’s campaign staff in Wisconsin acknowledging Trump’s defeat before Andrew Iverson, who led the Wisconsin team, said, “Here’s the deal: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull.”
Iverson now runs operations in the Midwest region for the Republican National Committee.
In contrast to the Republican theory, President Joe Biden and the Democrats have revived the theory embraced by members of both parties between 1933 and 1981. That theory says that the federal government has a role to play in the economy, regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, investing in infrastructure, and protecting civil rights. Rather than freeing capital for those at the top, Democrats want to invest in ordinary Americans who will, they believe, spend their paychecks, thus building the economy as they move money directly into the hands of their neighbors.
Today at a Democratic National Committee finance event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden explained that “when we build from the bottom up and the middle out, poor folks get a shot, the middle class does well, and the wealthy still do very well.” We have to invest in ourselves again, he said. “How…can you be the most successful, powerful nation in the world and have third-rate infrastructure?... How can you attract business and commerce and keep things moving?”
“[W]e used to invest 2 percent of our G[ross] D[omestic] P[roduct] in research and development…. But about 25 years ago we stopped.” Investment dropped to 0.7 percent of GDP, he said, but now the CHIPS and Science Act will jump-start that research and development again. The administration is also bringing supply chains home and rebuilding foreign alliances. And Biden told the wealthiest people in the room today that they were paying an average of 3% in taxes and needed to pay their fair share. “I don’t want you to pay 90% again”—the top marginal income bracket in the Eisenhower years—but at least 15%, he said.
From the White House, Biden noted that the “strikingly good” new jobs report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning proved that his vision of society works. It showed an astonishing 517,000 new jobs added in January, the twenty-fifth straight month of job growth. Unemployment fell slightly to 3.4%, a low last seen in May 1969 (not a typo).
Between 1933 and 1981, Americans of both parties shared the idea of using the federal government to level the social, economic, and political playing fields. The current Republicans are rejecting that vision, reclaiming that of the business-oriented Republicans in the 1920s. Under Biden, the Democrats are trying to rebuild that shared vision, returning the parties to fights over the kinds and limits of government policies, rather than fights over whether they should exist at all.
Biden told his audience that “once every three, four, or five generations, there’s a fundamental shift in world politics and national politics” and that we are in such a shift now.
“What will happen [in] the next three or four years [is] going to determine what this country looks like for the next four or five decades…. We’re laying down a foundation, because the world is changing—dramatically changing. And we have a choice.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/03/january-jobs-labor-market/
https://flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/Fulghamv.State_.pdf
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-02-03/trump-campaign-wisconsin-promote-election-lies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/03/january-jobs-labor-market/
We are finally getting down to business; that is the lives Americans are leading in the richest country on earth.
To pick up The Letter's thread about Mississippi:
‘Every Medicaid expansion bill dies without debate or vote’
‘More than 15 bills that would have expanded Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor died on Tuesday night without debate or a vote.’
‘No committee chair in either the Senate or House held a hearing on those Medicaid expansion bills. The House Medicaid Committee, where Speaker of the House Philip Gunn assigned all of the his chamber’s expansion bills, did not even meet a single time before the Jan. 31 deadline to consider general bills.’
‘Legislative leaders killed the bills as a worsening hospital crisis grips the state and Mississippi continues to be among the unhealthiest states with the highest percentages of uninsured residents.’
‘State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told lawmakers in late 2022 that 38 hospitals across the state are in danger of closing, and all are facing financial hardships. ‘Physicians and hospital leaders have said expanding Medicaid, which would result in more than $1 billion annually in additional federal health care dollars coming to the state, would help hospitals pay their bills. Beyond just helping hospitals, expanding Medicaid would provide health care coverage to many more Mississippians — up to 300,000, according to some studies.’
‘But many in the Republican leadership of the state, primarily Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves, have been adamant in their opposition to expanding Medicaid as 39 other states have done, including many led by Republican politicians.’
‘Meanwhile, data shows that support for Medicaid expansion is growing among voters. A Mississippi Today/Siena College poll conducted in early January indicated that the vast majority of the general public, including 70% of Republican voters, favor expansion.’ (MississippiToday)
READ MORE: Poll: 80% of Mississippians favor Medicaid expansion
'As hundreds of thousands of working Mississippians struggle to afford healthcare, state lawmakers have again decided not to consider Medicaid expansion and do not seem poised to do so anytime soon.'
'States have had the option to expand Medicaid eligibility to most people with incomes under a certain level — about $30,300 annually for a family of three — since 2014. Mississippi remains one of 12 states not to expand despite profound financial benefits and an increased federal matching rate under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.'
PS Take a look at the mortality rate for Americans.
'The Number One Health Story From 2022 Is The Troubling Decline In Life Expectancy'
'The biggest health story from 2022 isn’t Covid-19. It isn’t RSV or influenza, either. It isn’t cancer, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. It’s something that encompasses all these diseases and much more. It’s the troubling decline in U.S. life expectancy.'
'Life expectancy in the U.S. is at the lowest point in 26 years. To solely blame this on Covid-19 is wrong. U.S. life expectancy was stagnant between 2012 and 2019. And, prior to 2012, beginning around 1990, the upward slope was much flatter in the U.S. than any of our peers. Washington DC, we have a major life expectancy problem that needs to be taken much more seriously.'
'This is not about healthcare expenditures per se. The U.S. spends much more per-person on healthcare than any other large wealthy country, yet its residents die an average of at least four years younger. For decades the gap has been widening. This damning statistic “never seems to sink in with the public and policymakers.” (forbes)
The greatest danger to this country is the imbecilc, retrograde republican party and climate change.