The Law of Intended Consequences

If your Congressman or Congresswoman is a Rethuglican, unless that person is Brian Fitzpatrick or Thomas Massie, or a Rethuglican Senator other than Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, or Rand Paul, and if you earn less than $500,000/year, he or she voted to make your life worse than however it is now. You can answer the questions at this link and find out the immediate impacts to you. We will circle back to look at the impacts of any “gifts” you may receive now, and how they will hurt you in the long run.

But as most of us know, there will be other consequences, when those morons made the critical error in judgement to vote for fealty as opposed to voting for you, their constituents.

The burden will fall to the states, and each state will have three options, albeit, they can can use a combination of all three:

• Cut funding for Medicaid and SNAP

• Cut funding to anything else to salvage what they can for Medicaid and SNAP

• Raise state taxes

Most state budgets were due for fiscal years beginning 1 July, and while some states have not yet completed the process, other states that have may need to call special sessions to make adjustments.

The day the bill passed the house, a hospital in Nebraska announced it was closing, and that five other hospitals in the state would likely also close. That’s 6 out of 110 hospitals. Think about the fact that even if Medicaid is saved, to whatever extent, in Nebraska, there may be no nearby hospital to treat patients. If you live near a hospital that closed, you know the burden on other local facilities. Albeit, in rural areas, there is no other local facility. If you need a hospital for a heart attack, a stroke, because you are in labor, and the nearest hospital is an hour or more away, your outcome is less than optimal. At best.

While no one knows for sure, the guestimate is that about 300 rural hospitals will close. Starting with maternity wards, even if other services are available.

While there is a $50 billion dollar fund for “saving” rural hospitals, that’s like saying you need $100/week (or $5,200 a year) for food for your household, and the feds will offset that by giving you a $10 bill. Once.

You may think that because you don’t live in a rural area, or you’re not on Medicaid or SNAP, this doesn’t touch you directly. But hey, PAYGO. This is from a 2010 piece of legislation that says that any mandatory tax cuts or mandatory spending increases (for the latter, think of the immigration monies allocated) must be offset by cuts to other mandatory spending. PAYGO = “Pay As You Go”.

First PAYGO cut on the table, starting in January? Medicare. And so, if you answered the questions in the link in the top paragraph in this post, and you thought “WOW! I’m over 65 and I’m going to pay less in Federal taxes”, well, will you get enough to cover additional out of pocket medical costs that Medicare would have paid for? Hope you’re healthy.

If you live in a high-tax state and you thought “Great! They have put back my $40,000 SALT deduction”, well, because of a change hidden in the bill, that deduction may well make you have to pay AMT, the alternative minimum tax, and you likely won’t be getting the tax relief you think you will.

The one actually good thing in the bill is that you can now take a $1,000 deduction ($2,000 for couples) for charitable donations, even if you do not itemize starting in 2026. And if you can afford to give, you’re going to need to (from a moral perspective) give to food banks, or to pay off medical bills for the now 11 - 15 million people who will lose their health insurance. OH! And you’ll need to do that even though your premiums (whether through the ACA, corporate insurance, or Medicare) go up astronomically.

While it’s not in the NYT question group, if you’re a gambler, well, a professional gambler, you got harmed too, since you can now only deduct 90% of your losses.

I could go on…but the bottom line is that both directly and immediately, as well as problems down the line (like the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will deplete more quickly) - this is singularly the worst financial bill ever passed into law. THE VERY WORST.

Things you can do:

First, start writing to your state reps. All of them (I think all of them, at least most of them) send newsletters to all of their constituents talking about what they’ve accomplished. Make sure they know to mention in their upcoming newsletters where they are announcing cuts to programs and services, and tax increases, that this is due exclusively to the Rethuglican Congressional cuts. Not enough people know.

Also, think about whether you are willing to pay more state taxes so that people don’t go hungry and die from a lack of healthcare. If so, let your reps know that you’d rather pay more than keep more as others suffer. This link shows tax rates in all the states. So whether you live in a state with no income tax, a flat tax, or a progressive tax, think about whether you would be wiling to pay more.

Take Pennsylvania. The flat tax is 3.07%. So if you earn $100,000/year (chosen since it’s an easy number to work with) you currently pay $3,070/year. If the tax was raised to 3.15%, you’d pay an additional 22 cents a day, or $80/year. At $50,000/year, that’s 11 cents a day. To feed a child. To allow a pregnant woman to give birth in a hospital. You get the idea.

Then, get involved with your local Democratic Party apparatus. Go to meetings, meet this year’s candidates, and get inside dope on next year’s candidates. Work to get Democrats elected. Yeah, yeah, messaging. Yeah, yeah, Elmo Muskrat’s wet dream of a third party. Yeah, yeah, infighting.

IT

DOES

NOT

MATTER

We need to replace every elected Rethuglican with a Democrat, and keep all Democratic-held seats. From the local offices, through the counties, the states, and then the House and Senate.¹ Remember, EVERY DEMOCRAT voted AGAINST the bill. The worst Democrat is better than any Rethuglican they’d replace. Honest.

It only works if we are ALL involved — and that means both working with candidates this year and next, and working the election polls as election workers to make sure the votes are counted correctly.

Of course, keep protesting and talking to voters because the more of us who are out there, the more other voters hear about what is really going on.

That’s all I’ve got for today.

1. If you live in Pennsylvania, and want to talk about Fetterman, leave a comment and we can converse there.