The Postal Workers Union is gearing up for a battle with the Trump Regime. The Trump/Ryan budget, if it passes, will be devastating for the U.S. Post Office. It calls for a $47 billion cut (over 10 years) to retirement benefits and mail delivery costs. The budget forces postal workers to pay an additional billion dollars in contributions to their health and life insurance plans.
A couple of months ago AARP ran TV ads warning of the dangerous to seniors inherent in TrumpCare. Now, they're about to spend over a million dollars to run more ads, this time targeting key Republican senators-- the 5 they ran ads against in May-- Jeff Flake (AZ), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Dan Sullivan (AK), Cory Gardner (CO) and Dean Heller (NV)-- plus 6 more: Chuck Grassley (IA), Joni Ernst (IA), Rob Portman (OH), Lamar Alexander (TN), Bob Corker (TN) and Shelley Moore Capito (WV).
The CBO sums up their report on the new version of TrumpCare with one sentence: "CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the American Health Care Act would reduce federal deficits by $119 billion over the coming decade and increase the number of people who are uninsured by 23 million in 2026 relative to current law." The original version would have kicked 24 million off their health insurance but it would have reduced the deficit by $150 billion.
On February 1, 2016, the day of the Iowa caucuses, Trump was still just a joke. He was sputtering that Iowa Republicans had brain damage from too much fertilizer after polls started showing him losing to Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. On the day of the caucuses Cruz won-- with 51,666 (27.6%). Trump came in second with 45,429 votes (24.3%), much closer to Rubio's 43,228 (23.1%) than to Cruz.
A new poll of GA-06 voters is a dire warning to congressional Republicans. Paul Ryan's SuperPAC has put more money into the campaign on behalf of Karen Handel than any outside group has ever spent on any congressional race in history. And those millions and millions of dollars appear to have been wasted as Jon Ossoff has pulled ahead:
The short version is that the budget proposal cuts vital programs including Social Security and Medicaid in order to pump money into tax cuts for the very richest Americans and for money cash for the bloated and wasteful Pentagon. Trump was always consistent and insistent on the campaign trail that he would not ever, under any circumstances cut Social Security.
As NY Times columnist Frank Bruni noted yesterday, there isn't a core of shrewdness beneath Señor Trumpanzee's antics nor a method to his madness. "Mostly, there’s a raging, pouting child...
This morning, David Brooks seemed genuinely surprised-- even shocked-- that the Trump Regime is turning into a standard Republican class warfare operation against working families. And he blamed it on the loss of clout that has befallen poor Steve Bannon.
Yesterday the Maine Beacon reported that 8 Democrats-- 2 in the state Senate and 6 in the House-- signed on to Paul LePage's plan to roll back a just-passed minimum wage increase. And by "signed on," I mean co-sponsoring a bill that would target restaurant workers.
