It’s estimated that it will cost $183 million a year to protect the President and his family.  Let’s just build a wall.

Spies withhold information from President Trump.  They’re waiting to give it to him at the Mar-A-Lago buffet line.

For years, the President and the Republican Congress have made it their top priority to repeal Obamacare.  In fact, Congress voted 6 times to repeal it and 54 times to cripple or delay it.  Since that would leave up to 26 million Americans uninsured, they now say they want to replace it with affordable healthcare coverage for all.  Of course, they have no f’ing idea how to do that other than, well, don’t get sick.  Let’s take a look at a century of Republican Congressional obstructionist history with respect to healthcare.

We first look at Medicare.  In 1965, 69% of Democrats voted to create Medicare, while only 33% of Republicans did so.  Ronald Reagan, prior to becoming President, said Medicare would lead to the destruction of freedom.  Barry Goldwater said it was like giving the elderly vacations and free beer and cigarettes.  In 2009, 137 House Republicans voted to replace Medicare with subsidies that would lose value over time.  In 2011, a majority of House and 40 Senate Republicans voted to phase out and privatize the program.  In 2015, the Republican House voted to cut $148 billion from Medicare’s budget.

Now to the rest of the population.  In 1929, the Republican Congress allowed the expiration of an Act which provided funds to states for prenatal and child health centers.  Although Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had attempted to pass a plan for national health insurance, when the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1946, they had no interest in enacting national health insurance and failed to pass President Truman’s National Health program.

In 1974, Senator Edward Kennedy proposed a national healthcare plan that would be administered by private health insurance companies and financed by workers and employers.  Instead, Republicans proposed Medicredit, which would be financed by premiums reimbursed by a tax credit, which of course would be of no benefit to the poor, who didn’t itemize deductions.

In 1995, the Republican Congress drafted bills that would repeal tough standards for the quality of care in nursing homes, which was passed by a Democratic Congress in 1987 to address shockingly deficient care in some nursing home.  In 2015, 41 Republican Senators voted against a bill that would expand and improve health care services to veterans and their families.

Apparently, taking care of our old and sick is not high on the Republican to-do list.  The rest of us must take whatever action we can to make certain that they do not get the opportunity to reverse the progress made in the last 100 years.

(Just as an aside, in 1935 Republicans said Social Security was equivalent to slavery and dictatorship.)