General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWarning: Once the tax bill is passed, Medicare will be on the chopping block
Having Doug Jones in the Senate SURE helps to protect against them having a majority to cut Medicare. But they can still do it, if all Repubs vote for it. I believe that, after Jones is seated, Repubs will have 51 seats in the Senate, enough to cut Medicare.
We desperately NEED to win seats in the 2018 elections. In the meantime, thank goodness Jones won! Even if only Susan Collins doesn't vote for steep Medicare cuts, they can't do it.
(I can't imagine they'd get the votes to cut Social Security; they'd need 60.)
Oops, I forgot the link. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/will-the-new-tax-plan-mean-the-end-of-social-security-and-medicare-as-we-know-it-2017-12-13
Sneederbunk
(14,291 posts)Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I don't know how the rank & file Repubs will feel about that, though. Their feelings about the tax cut bill don't seem to matter, and some believe whatever Trump says.
Even with the tax bill coming, almost all voting Repubs in AL voted Republican. Those who didn't show up didn't show because of Moore, not because of anger at the party.
Clarity2
(1,009 posts)They've been waiting for this opportunity for years.
Unless a huge Russian hack/gerrymandering fix is in for the next election or they are planning on staging a coup of the repub party/Trump dictatorship, I don't see how it's a sane move. Which sends up red flags to me. Goes without saying they are insane in general, and many factors may be in play here. Such as the evangelical extremists in the GOP who think we are all going to die anyway, and they are the chosen ones, so *who cares what they take away from us*. Or perhaps some that Russia/Trump have kompromat on are being blackmailed for votes.
As soon as they start talking about cutting medicare, medicaid & social security, we must march en masse, and think about a serious economic walkout, and buying only essential needs. I don't think the response to this tax bill was enough, although they timed it around the holidays, so of course an economic walkout is not feasible.
haele
(12,660 posts)The people typically voting in mid-terms over the past two decades are low-information driven by the pulpits and Faux news. The "tax cuts" in the tax bill won't affect them in 2018; it will take effect in 2019.
Any cuts to Medicaid next year won't affect them in 2018, and they can always believe the spin that only "those people" - the moochers, undocumented folks and welfare cheats - will be affected; Grandpa and Gramma will still be covered.
The only thing that might hurt the Republicans in 2018 if there's no GOTV would be not funding CHIP; while people with employer-covered health care won't see the cost, some of their rural voters will be feeling the pain - don't know how much one can spin "Little Johnny's broken arm would have bankrupted us, so Dad went down the way to get some of Mr. Brown's moonshine to knock him out while Grandpa set it after Mom went down to Hobby Lobby for some plaster of Paris and craft sticks to make a cast."
And all the convenience store "change jars" with sad pictures across the county can't save those dozen or so kids who had depending on cancer treatment due to decades of industrial waste in the ground water who now got their funding cut.
They'll only put up with "Gawd's Will" health care and infrastructure for so long. And then they'll realize what those taxes were actually paying for, after they really experience "bootstrap living" survival mode and they're facing foreclosures and evictions because there's even less in the way of jobs to support them and their families.
They think various "Homestead" acts will save their land for subsistence living once they can't pay taxes, court fees, or any number of corporate health "care" liens on their property anymore, when bankruptcy is placed beyond the reach of any household without an income of over $150K a year or so?
By the time they realize they've been conned, and their bigotry has been used against them, it will be too late.
Haele
Eliot Rosewater
(31,112 posts)traitors are replaced by patriots.
SS will also go but will take a little longer.
This is what they want, it is what they write books about, Paul Ryan has admitted it.
The only silver lining will be the fun we will have when 200 million of us go to the streets ALL at the same TIME!
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)BY NICOLE GOODKIND ON 12/1/17 AT 6:00 PM
http://www.newsweek.com/tax-plan-social-security-medicare-welfare-republicans-rubio-729133
Oh wait................
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)subterranean
(3,427 posts)That's because Pence has the tie-breaking vote.
I am hopeful that their efforts will fail, though. If they thought repealing Obamacare was hard, wait until they try to gut Medicare and Social Security!
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)and know he won't have a political future, if he's successful.
Orrex
(63,216 posts)Trump's idiot racist fuckhead supporters know this, and they're ok with it because they believe that their dimwitted god-king is doing what's best for the country, and anyway it'll hurt those uppity brown people more, so it's all good.