For a long time, there's been an abundance of badmouthing, including in these pages, of the Affordable Care Act.  The opposition had seven years to come up with an alternative.  Now the rubber meets the road.

During the last campaign, the Great Dealmaker told us that he'd replace Obamacare with something "really great", it would provide more coverage at a lower cost, and nobody would lose their coverage.  Such a succinct concentration of lies!  We forgot that if something sounds too good to be true, it is.  Now we've seen the actual (failed) bill:  It provides LESS coverage (repealing required basic essential benefits), costs would skyrocket for older Americans, and 24 million people may lose coverage.  Perhaps that's the Republican idea of "really great", but it's only great for high income types who'd be handed another nifty tax cut from it; otherwise, the bill was a turkey.  That's the way the GOP does business, so I knew it would turn out like this.

And I knew the budget priorities would turn out the way they did, too.  They plan to eliminate practically everything that benefits real people, like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, afterschool programs, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Legal Services Corporation, and Americorps.  They'll even take food out of the mouths of elderly disabled!

Budget Director Mulvaney said we can't keep paying for programs that don't work.  I guess he's right.  You give food to someone, that doesn't solve the problem-- why, they'll just have to eat again tomorrow.  Epic failure, there.  All of this is being done so they can steer an additional $54 billion to the Pentagon, as if the relative pittance on social spending ($3 billion) being cut even comes close to balancing that amount.  Since we already have the world's biggest military, spending more won't make our deterrent any more credible.  It's really just extra corporate welfare for Defense industries.  You know, folks who can buy politicians even more easily thanks to Citizens United.

Mulvaney said he can't ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mother in Detroit to pay for the things he plans to kill.  I could.  They should have no problem paying a penny for them, not when they're being asked to pay extra dollars for a Defense Department that famously wastes money better than anyone.  For my part, I'd rather have Bert & Ernie, and small regional orchestras than even more bombers, missiles, and subs that are useless in fighting global jihad.  I'd rather feed a lonely person in a wheelchair than a badly bloated Pentagon in need of a diet.  A Pentagon that tried to hide its own report that suggested steps they could take to save $25 billion in bureaucratic waste.  That's more than 8 times the cost of the programs the Administration sees fit to terminate.  But it's just too much trouble for them, I guess, to stop wasting billions.

Only in America can an approach this skewed actually make sense to enough voters to keeps the Scrooges in office.  Like the saying goes, in a Democracy you get the leadership you deserve.  But the punishment for our folly will end up affecting a lot of the wrong people.

Sincerely,