Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) voted for the House GOP tax cut sham bill. And she’s flaunting that fact. She thinks we’re stupid.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Annie to come clean about what she actually voted for – there’s lots of undeniable details that she will try to deny apparently doen’t want you to know.

First, this bill is a veritable cornucopia of goodies for the 1%. It gives big tax cuts to rich folks – some permanent since it abolishes the estate tax, the Alternative Minimum tax that insures rich folks pay some taxes, and changes rules for pass-through income and investment income. It cuts corporate tax rates permanently from 35% to 20% without closing many of the loopholes that allowed most big corporations to actually pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 0 – 18%. Can you imagine how much less they’ll pay since they”ll be applying a plethora of tax breaks to an even lower rate?We’ll probably end up paying them.

Second, although the bill does give a few breaks to middle and lower income taxpayers with one hand, it mostly takes them away with the other. Many of the deductions and credits that are eliminated under the rubric “simplification” are those relied upon by middle class families. Some middle income earners will see higher tax bills right away, but even those who end up with a lower tax bill now may ultimately end up getting the shaft. GOPers usually neglect to point out that many of the goodies designated for the middle class are, for the most part, temporary.

Oh – crucial fact, given Rep. Wagner’s former concern for the national debt – the sham tax cut bill also adds $1.5 trillion dollars to the deficit. That’s why middle class folks don’t get permanent tax cuts and lose lots of exemptions and tax breaks they rely on – they can’t let that deficit go past the aforementioned $1.5 trillion and still pass the bill with only GOP votes.  It’s all smoke and mirrors (albeit thin smoke and murky mirrors) that lets rich investors make out like the proverbial bandit on the backs of those of us who aren’t rich enough to invest in a pet congressman. Or woman.

It’s hard to touch on all the mischief the sloppily written grab-bag of crony pleasing giveaways manages to do in its effort to please the more vicious members of the far right. It does away with the individual mandate of the ACA, a feature that will likely result in premium increases for all of us and eventually deprive 13 million people of insurance coverage. In a bid to convince dumb-as-dirt evangelicals (i.e. those who still try to excuse Roy Moore) that big gifts to GOP cronies a good thing, it does away with the provisions of the Johnson Amendment that stipulated that churches could retain tax-exempt status only by refraining from political advocacy from the pulpit. Now thanks to the corrupt GOP, we get to subsidize the efforts of some more authoritarian religious types to impose their religious views on the rest of us.

Another thing Republicans like Wagner aren’t telling us is that sooner rather than later, there will almost certainly be a $25 billion cut to Medicare:

Thanks to laws created by the Tea Party’s infamous 2010 sequester showdown over government spending, automatic cuts spring into action anytime Congress passes a bill that balloons the federal deficit, as the tax bill would. The approximately $136 billion in cuts spurred by the GOP tax bill would hit a number of government programs—including farm subsidies and the Border Patrol—but would cut most deeply into Medicare. Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps are protected.

So if Wagner’s keeping quiet about what the GOP tax sham bill really does, what has she actually said about this travesty to justify her vote? Two words: mendacious fantasy (a.k.a. lies). Here’s an excerpt from her floor speech (I assume that the presentation of the word “yes” in all capitals means that our Annie is still screeching every time she votes for something that is bad for her constituents – her tell maybe? :

I vote YES to fix our broken tax system; I vote YES to help reignite the American economy; I vote YES to make it a little bit easier for that single mother of two, that firefighter, that teacher, shop owner, family of four, that Veteran; I vote YES for bigger paychecks, better savings and a more secure future. I ran for Congress to fight for the people of Missouri and to ensure that every hard-working American can realize their own American Dream,”

Broken economy? Not to hear economists tell it. And that nonsense about cutting corporate taxes to fix this “broken economy,” create jobs and raise wages? No one believes that trickle-down nonsense anymore. For example, when asked recently to affirm that the tax cut would inspire them to invest more, even a panel of CEOs of major companies bluntly shot that idea down. As for rich-folk goodies like eliminating the estate tax, write-offs for private jets? Like to hear how Wagner thinks that’ll help that “single mother of two” that she’s so worried about.

But hey! Annie’s has got a middle-class card up her sleeve. In her latest email newsletter she enthused about one feature of the bill that she voted for in particular: “This bill also protects the Adoption Tax Credit which I fought to protect. For decades this pro-family provision has helped provide children with loving families and stable homes.”

So that leaves us with the Adoption Tax Credit.  All this misery, but we get to keep a small-potatoes adoption tax credit that wouldn’t be in danger if Rep. Wagner and her GOP pals didn’t desperately need to please their donors in order to keep the money flowing.

Whoopee!

CORRECTION: The House Bill that Wagner voted on did not, as implied above, eliminate the ACA’s individual mandate – that provision is currently only included in the Senate version although many GOP House members have indicated that they will support its inclusion in the final legislation.

Anyone watching the election campaign picked up pretty fast on the fact that Donald Trump has no real policy beliefs or understanding of the policy process, but rather relies on emotive slogans and the insights of whomever is momentarily ascendant among his inner group of sycophants. We’ve gleaned from bits and pieces of what he has told folks that he doesn’t intend to get his hands dirty with actual presidential work. Which means that when it comes to policy, we’re likely going to be dealing with co-presidents-in-all-but-title, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence.

And for House Speaker Ryan that means that he may finally have the means to put the social safety net out of the misery the GOP has tried to inflict on it over the years. It looks like Medicare is going to get the ax first. As TPM reports, Ryan has “proposed to privatize the current Medicare system, within the earliest days of the impending Trump administration.”

Ryan’s hoping to phase out our highly efficient Medicare insurance system in favor of a voucher system which, in the long term, is not likely to cover the cost of buying comprehensive insurance in an uncontrolled private market. Though Ryan touts the savings to be realized from privatizing Medicare, economics journalist Michael Hiltzik shows that that the savings would be “illusory,” with costs “shifted from government to seniors.”

Ryan’s new strategy seems to be to phase Medicare out as part of the process of fulfilling The Donald’s promise to kill Obamacare. Ryan’s already started a propaganda blitz tying the two together as part of a deceptively titled “reform.” As Hitzlick points out:

Ryan has surrounded his Medicare proposal with a bodyguard of lies. In his Fox News appearance, he said Medicare is “going broke” and ascribed its problems to the Affordable Care Act. Neither is true.

Medicare faces fiscal problems, but it’s not going broke, and according to both the Medicare trustees and the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act has in fact alleviated those problems rather than caused them. The trustees reported in 2010 that passage of Obamacare had postponed the projected exhaustion date of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years — to 2029 from 2017. Projections of Medicare spending growth have consistently come down, year after year, at least in part due to changes in the program imposed through Obamacare.

The program’s fiscal situation would be “substantially improved,” the trustees said, because the ACA instituted new cost controls and provided new tax revenues for the program. Both those features would disappear if the GOP repeals the ACA, as is its intention.

Voila – Ryan guts Medicare while simultaneously deep-sixing another of the social welfare programs so despised by Republicans.

But Ryan can’t do this all on his lonesome, you say – and you’re right. It’ll take a majority of the congress to make it happen, but, with Republicans dominant in both houses, he has a very good chance. And don’t forget, he’s got The Donald.

So, comes the next question. How does our Missouri congressional delegation stand on the issue of killing the Medicare program?

Fortunately for us, Danielle Keeton-Olsen of TPM is keeping a list (and updating it regularly) of who’s naughty and nice. And so far, none of our Missouri delegation is definitely on either list. Instead, the two who’ve been contacted to date, GOP Senator Roy Blunt and Rep. Sam Graves (R-6), are listed with those who have refused to commit either way or, as Keeton-Olsen wryly notes, claim they didn’t even know it was an issue. Yeah, right.

Blunt has been on record as opposing Medicare in the past, although he has also tried to pose as a savior of aspects of the program when it has been expedient. If his past behavior is any indicator, he will hem and haw and say nothing as long as he can, and then come down firmly on the side of the GOP Senate leadership of which he is a junior member. The guy knows where his bread is buttered, and we know what that means as far as Medicare goes. And I would guess that Sam Graves isn’t going to go to any great lengths to save Medicare either since he voted yes on an earlier Ryan Budget that included the same privatization plan.

If, like me, you’re concerned about your Medicare and whether or not the program will be around for your children and their children – and there’s no objective, fiscal reason it should not be – call or write your congressmen or women today to find out where they stand and let them know where you stand.

Making your point of view known will be especially important when it comes to our only Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill. The Senate may well be our only bulwark against Ryan’s attack on Medicare, and Senator McCaskill, who now finds herself representing a blood-red constituency, has never been a profile in courage. She’s up for re-election in two years. We’ve got to let her know that if she doesn’t defend Medicare with all she’s got, this time we really won’t forget.

Meanwhile, you can check TPM for updates – and also consider letting them know what you find out when/if you call your congressman or woman by using the “Send Comments & News Tips” link on the TPM Masthead. And I’ll update here on SMP as I learn more about the Medicare druthers of our shy Missouri pols.

That’s so republican.

In 2011:

Health Care Front Group Provides New Clothes for GOP Medicare Privatization Plan
By Wendell Potter on September 25, 2011 – 9:37pm

If you think Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is dead, think again.

Last week, the insurance industry and its allies began what I predict will be a massive campaign to sell the public and policymakers on the idea of moving forward with the Ryan plan — albeit with a few tweaks and new a new sales pitch to make it seem more consumer-friendly.

An outfit called the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) announced in a press release a scheme that could be called Ryan-lite, but don’t be fooled: the plan would — to use a favorite industry term — take us down the “slippery slope” toward a complete corporate takeover of the Medicare program. (Insurers and their allies for years have warned Americans that enacting sweeping health care reforms they don’t like would lead us down the slippery slope toward socialism.)

After Ryan unveiled his Medicare privatization plan earlier this year, there was such widespread criticism that it briefly became a political liability for the Republicans.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives approved the plan, which would replace the existing Medicare program with vouchers that beneficiaries could use to buy coverage from private insurance. But Ryan’s blueprint never made it out of the Senate. It’s not hard to figure out why: the vouchers would have required most future Medicare recipients — many of whom like today’s recipients will be on fixed incomes — to pay far more out of their own pockets for coverage than in the existing government-run program.

I wrote at the time that the Ryan plan had the strong support of private health insurers, who would like nothing more than to have the federal government hand the Medicare program over to them. The congressman’s proposal would represent a vast new revenue stream guaranteeing profits forever….

You think you’d get more and better health care for your dollar under that system?

Today, via Twitter from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r), sworn enemy of affordable healthcare in the form of that evil socialist Obamacare and those other icky socialist health programs:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler
Honored to be named a “Champion of a Healthcare Innovation” by @HealthInFocus today at the #HLCExpo [….] 10:37 AM – 3 Nov 2015

Wait, the organization which gave Representative Hartzler (r) their “healthcare innovation” award is the same one that is shopping now Speaker Paul Ryan’s (r) bogus Medicare privatization scheme? How convenient. That’s like the Bank Robber’s Guild giving a bank teller their “Most Courteous and Efficient at Facilitating Large Withdrawals from a Depository” award.

My introduction to the Tea Party involved a Town Hall meeting where several Tea Party seniors were waving signs inscribed “Save our Medicare.” They had been told – and believed – that the goal of Obamacare was to take their Medicare away from them to pay for healthcare for undeserving poor, probably black, folks. That was when I understood that this was not a movement that merited respect.

This impression has been borne out over the last few years as the GOP, which was the sole beneficiary of misinformed Tea Party ardor, has, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, gone after Medicare while basking in the support of the predominantly middle- and senior-aged Tea Partiers. Although Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, for example, has never exactly been a Tea Party favorite, he gets their votes. This is the same Roy Blunt who has voted again and again for Republican budgets that would voucherize Medicare while shifting much of the cost onto the shoulders of the recipients. Almost all GOP members of the Missouri House delegation, overtly Tea Party or not, have also consistently voted to support Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plans, all of which seek to voucherize or otherwise decimate Medicare under the rubric of “reform.”

Now one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Jeb Bush, has put the issue on the table front and foremost, proposing to “phase out” Medicare. How does he plan to sell this “phase out”? By persuading the gullible that the Medicare sky is falling. Medicare, he claims, is too expensive and will eventually run out of money. Bear in mind that Bush, as Governor of Florida, went all out to cut taxes for the wealthy. It’s no wonder that he can’t imagine that Medicare solvency could be addressed from the revenue side – that’s not the Republican way; instead GOPers all want to reform it out of existence.

Nor, as a Republican, can Bush acknowledge the fact that savings realized through Obamacare have added years to Medicare’s stability, ensuring that the program is financially secure through 2030 – and proving that there are better ways to address the future of the program than to destory it through privatization. Ironic isn’t it? Medicare-baiting was a major mechanism used to rile up Tea Party seniors against Obamacare; now it looks like Obamacare is adding years to Medicare’s solvency. The voice of the Tea Party, the Republican Party, won’t “Save our Medicare,” but Obamacare might help us reach that goal.