This is Not the Democratic Party’s Finest Hour

By:

Dave Kingsley

Democrats Have Both House of Congress & A President’s Proposed Budget We Badly Need: And They Are Blowing It!

Last night I heard an interview with Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar – a Democrat – in which he said that he’s insisting on “means testing” for eligibility in President Biden’s proposed medical care and other programs benefitting ordinary Americans. I’ve heard Senators Manchin and Sinema say the same thing. In other words, people needing child care, medical care, and home based care must prove they are worthy of receiving government assistance to see a doctor, have a place for their child while they work, or need assistance to stay in their home and out of a nursing home.

If past is prologue, this means that American citizens in many states badly needing these humane programs must suffer the humiliation of proving that they are not taking drugs, looking for work if they are unemployed, and too poor to buy these services on their own. This is an anti-worker, anti-people attitude that Democrats need to lose.

As someone who spends a lot of my waking hours researching finances of corporations benefitting from privatized, taxpayer funded, medical programs, I can say with certainty that corporate executives and investors are becoming fabulously wealthy by diverting an excessive amount of Medicare and Medicaid revenue into family and individual trusts for the purpose of avoiding taxes. They undergo no universal character test and yet fraud committed by low and middle income people pales in comparison to what clever CPAs are able scam out of the system on behalf of their high net worth clients.

It is interesting that so many Democrats think that spending a piddly few trillion on its non-rich citizens is excessive in a nation with a $25 trillion economy and a federal budget providing trillions in tax benefits to its wealthiest citizens. In a government funded, privatized health care system, corporations and wealthy investors and their families are able to capture trillions they don’t deserve through dark money and an ability to fund political campaigns.

If conservative Democrats think that catering to the wealthy and demeaning the wage/salary workers of this country is a formula for success, they are delusional. Furthermore, they are weakening a president with a program crucial for staving off crises the likes of which we can’t imagine. This country, this economy, this planet cannot sustain the perverse, toxic, corrupt form of economics and politics exhibited by medical care, agriculture, finance, real estate, energy, and other industrial sectors – it is not capitalism, rather it is a corrupt, debauched economic system in which government and businesses collude at the expense of the public.

2 thoughts on “This is Not the Democratic Party’s Finest Hour

  1. You’re right Dave – absolutely and positively right! And, I am so concerned and worried and scared and Dems are not helping – It’s as if they too, have been nipping the KoolAid. Mother Earth is screaming and suffering and her patience is wearing thin. What will the criminals do when MONEY IS NO LONGER POWER?

    I have to remind myself often that I have been so very fortunate to live in the USA since 1940 – the best of times – a world at peace – economy soaring, the people just happy to have survived WWII and be with their loved ones. I also have to remind myself – as I stomp around wondering HOW we got to this terrible time – verging on fascism – that I’m at the end of my path – I have done all I can do. Now, as Justice Breyer said last week, it’s up to the high schoolers and college kids now to save THEIR world.

    • Good to hear from you Kettie! I think we are at a crossroads. I also think the American people want what President Biden is trying to get through congress. If Senators Manchin and Sinema keep gumming up the works, they will rue the day they failed to help get the infrastructure bill and reconciliation bill through the the senate. What goes around comes around. I have more faith in “the people” than most people. The aggressive, violent, right wing doesn’t represent a very large part of the U.S. Time and numbers are on our side.

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