URGENT! SAVE MEDICAID AND OUR RETIREMENT! VOTE TUESDAY!

Well, the rancid Senate budget is done and on its way to the House.  We could not stop it in the Senate, but we have a serious chance in the House.

Determined to cut $800-plus billion from federal spending, the budget slashes basic programs including Medicaid (in California it’s Medi-Cal) that is a major lifeline for many working families and for the poor.  It also has daggers set toward changing Social Security and Medicare that are NOT take supported and are not in the federal master budget.  Those are savings plans to which each of us contributes per paycheck. The money is deposited to OUR accounts in OUR names for OUR retirement.  

The rationale for cutting SSA is based on lies.  Greedy opponents of SSA claim, without foundation, that people well over 100 years old are collecting, so it’s obvious fraud.  Claims that people who are 200-360 are on the rolls.  First, that’s impossible.  We started paying SSA in 1937, 88 years ago. Very few who collected then were 100 plus, and certainly not 272 years old in 1937!  Hyperbolic lies do not make a case.  Are there names of people who now would be very, very old?  Yes. Historic records of everyone exist. But they obviously can’t collect.  That’s all they found.  Nobody much is abusing SSA because death notices are always sent by officials, not the family, to SSA. So let’s not worry about the miniscule times someone’s icky nephew managed to collect fraudulently.  

SSA is fiscally stable, and Medicare as well.  Yes, they need replenishment, but not for many years yet.  That’s a different story.  Some who opposed all social supports want access to our money to invest. No way!

Medicaid was revolutionized via the Affordable Care Act allowing adults without children to enroll.  It was literally life changing for the working people with no benefits and particularly for the homeless with no children.  People could get treated beyond “charity care” that was always too little to afford anything but rationing. Now people had access to care and medication that saved their lives. With the specter of avian flu hanging over us, we cannot afford as a society to let significant numbers be hurt by removing Medicaid or for us to be hurt by letting people be carriers of a contagious disease.  Medicaid is also what keeps our elders in nursing homes when their own resources have dried up.  Killing or cutting the program is a horrific way to find funds to allow further tax cuts for the rich.

How can we stop these cuts?  

The House margin of pro-cut votes to anti-cut votes is tiny. There are fewer than the 218 needed to pass anything. We need to take advantage of this moment to prevent the harm such cuts to basic programs would do.

Please call your House member every day regardless of party to emphasize how much we need Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare to keep our society functioning.  Call all Reps – never mind party – to express your support for Medicaid and also for Medicare and SSA.  

PLEASE CALL THE CAPITOL TODAY AND EARLY TUESDAY.  202-224-3121 and ask for your Representative.  Our voices are needed NOW!

Thank you!!