On March 13, 2017, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “scored” the proposed Republican sponsored Congressional bill, The American Health Care Act. The CBO document is here and I would encourage you to read it for yourself and not rely on others (no matter who they are) to tell you what the CBO actually said. However, this post is not about 24 million people losing their existing insurance coverage or the reduction of the Federal debt by $337 billion over the next decade
. This post is about the fact that this is exactly what the 2016 Republican Platform Document called for.
A copy of the 2016 Republican Platform Document is located on this site and at the National GOP website. This document is important because it doesn’t matter what a candidate tells you he’s going to do, the platform document says what he and his political party will do. Making yourself smart about this document is extremely important if you didn’t vote for the current administration and serves as a benchmark if you did.
To make things a little easy for you to find, permit me to point out some key highlights, but first a caveat. You won’t find words like “cut Social Security” or “privatize Medicare””,” but you will find words like “We reject the old maxim that Social Security is the “Third Rail” of American politics, deadly for anyone who would change it;” or “Guarantee to every enrollee an income-adjusted contribution toward a plan of their choice, with catastrophic protection.”
Words do matter regardless of which Thesaurus you use.
The 2016 Republican Platform is the playbook that the Republican led 115th U. S. Congress is following and it includes:
– Defunding Planned Parenthood – page 13
– Medicare / Medicaid Cuts – page 23-24
– Privatization of Social Security – page 24
– Reduction of Federal employee pay and retirement benefits – page 8
– Dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency – page 20-22
– Providing Constitutional Religious protection for Businesses as well as individuals – page 11
– Removal of the McCain-Feingold Act and support of Citizens United – page 12
– Refusal to fund or subsidize “any healthcare that includes abortion coverage” – page 13
– Statehood for Puerto Rico, but not for the District of Columbia – page 30
– Requiring teaching of the Bible as an elective in High School – page 33
– Repealing Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) regardless of cost because it is a tax – page 36
(Page numbers refer to the actual number on the document page and not the PDF page number.)
As I said above, if you voted for the current administration and didn’t know what was contained in the platform – shame on you for not doing due diligence. If you didn’t vote for the current administration, at least now you are informed as to their direction. For some, it doesn’t matter, but for me, it did.
