Tag: affordable care act

Yes, Virginia, There is a Trump Clause

I am damned angry.  The democrats once again appear prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on promises of talks later. Coming off great results in Virginia and New Jersey and California in last week’s elections with national consequences, it did not take long for the Democrats to deflate like a pricked ballon once again at the national level.

My first thoughts on hearing a number of Democrats defecting on the shutdown showdown:  Mother Fuckers!  (not really, it was longer and more expressive) Why, after 40 days of standing up to, and resisting Trump and his autocratic agenda, did Democrats cave on their supposed principles?  Why?  Senator Kaine, what were you thinking?

You claimed to stand fast with American workers who were going to get slammed with extreme health insurance premium increases because subsidies were cut by Trump’s big, beautiful bill.  You lobbed the health insurance ball firmly into the Republicans court — who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court — in order to extend the subsidies, hoping to provoke a compromise.  They held fast.  

In this standoff, the only power left to the Democrats was solidarity and the senate filibuster to force negotiations.  But no, you give up that last bastion of protecting minority rights in Congress to force negotiations and compromise.  So, after 40 days you have nothing to show if you cave in.

You gave up the two hallmarks of democracy with a half assed fight. Can you be trusted to fight Trump’s trespasses when he invokes the insurrection act or martial law or challenges the results of the 2026 mid-terms; to fight for the working and middle classes?  I think you will be halfway to the hills with your tail between your legs, that’s what I think, leaving state and local democrats holding the proverbial bag of shit.

No wonder Democrats in national polls  aren’t trusted to do the right thing at the national level.  The public, given the asymmetric power relationship in Congress, blamed the Republicans for the shutdown and associated pain. I think virtually overnight that blame will shift to you. 

I supported the principled stand on health care subsidies, but I also thought it was about resisting Trump’s autocratic gains, protecting the rule of law, and our constitutional system of checks and balances.  Apparently not.   You now own the shutdown. For taking a stand, you were essentially unwilling and incapable of following through on.  

Come on man, get some balls, some chutzpa, some spine.  Why all the pain and suffering and angst endured by millions when you collapse like a mud hut in a rainstorm?  All for promises of future talks in December, exchanging your principles for a bag of magical beans.  The Republicans have chutzpa at least. They lie to the Supreme Court that they don’t have the cash to pay out full SNAP benefits yet a day or two later, after the Court agrees with Trump, Trump announces taxpayers will get $2000 each from a so called tariff divided. What don’t you get about them? Did you not read the fine print under the Trump Clause?

Trump Clause:  Any and all agreements made with Donald Trump are conditional, subject to change, lies, misrepresentations, and omissions.  You take his word at your own peril and risk.

I don’t know whether this round of spending bills will pass the hurdles before it, but I do predict that should the spending bills pass to reopen the government, that promise to have December talks to extend the ACA subsidies will vanish like a cheese burger on Trump’s lips.  The House and Senate will adjourn without passing the subsidy bill, and you know it.  The Republicans have stolen Christmas from millions of Americans and you are his accessory after the fact if you give in. 

15 Minutes Past Midnight: Virginia Votes

Many of us recall the doomsday clock during the Cold War.  It was always minutes before midnight:  Nuclear Armageddon.   Today there is another clock ticking away as our democracy ebbs.  If midnight was the hour when democracy ends, the clock today would read 15 minutes past midnight.  Yes, we have crossed that line into the shadow of autocracy.  We can, however, reset that clock, but we must do it quickly and the first step is to vote.  

Election day is upon us here in Virginia and we have an opportunity to reset that clock.  It will be a consequential election with generational impacts for Virginians.  Think of the world your child, or grandchild, or great grandchild will be born into if Trump has his way. 

First and foremost, your vote will help keep Virginia from following several Republican states down the rabbit hole of one-party authoritarian rule.  Texas is the architype of such a state: Texasistan.

 A neo-theocratic state where women are surveilled and reduced to second class citizen.  A state where race equates to citizenship; a state where people of Latino ancestry are subject to constant local, state and federal police stops and detentions for simply having a certain physical appearance, speak Spanish, and work in low wage jobs.  Guilty!  

Texas is a state that happily offers to deploy its national guard soldiers to occupy cities in Democratic lead states as Trump’s armed enforcers.  A state where Christianity is foisted on folks’ children in public schools who worship differently or choose not to believe.  Ones relationship to your god is between you and your creator and the state has no place in that relationship.  We don’t want to be that kind of state, Winsome Earle-Sears does.

Second, Sears wants to turn the clock back to the 19th century regarding women’s rights.  She spent her whole campaign using trans kids as political fodder, ostensible as a women’s rights issue.  Meanwhile, she voted ‘no’ on a tie-breaking vote as Lt. Governor on a bill that would have given Virginia women reproductive choice rights, in particular access to contraception.   

She claims to protect your daughter from supposed predators while whole heartily supporting a president found by a civil jury to have sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room.  And then Sears has the temerity to tell a woman that she has no right to reproductive choices or contraception, the right to choose when and how to have a family.    

Third, a medical and insurance crisis is in the offing after the passage of the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which Sears endorsed.  Many Virginians will lose Medicaid coverage starting in 2027 as part of the bill’s multibillion dollar cuts to Medicaid.  Three rural health clinics have already closed or plan to close because of the bills impacts.

Approximately 400k Virginians get medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Given the lapse in ACA insurance subsidies under the bill’s provisions, many of these Virginians will have to give up medical insurance given that premiums will double and even quadruple as subsidies for low-income folks lapse under the bill by the end of this year.  Health care insurance will once again become unaffordable to average Virginians.  

Spanberger has a plan.  According to the Virginia Mercury, Spanberger said, “It’s essential that we be able to strengthen access to health care, improve affordability, and recognize that for so many Virginians, they’re one medical event away from really substantial ruin,” Spanberger adding. “But for so many, (health care cost) is just one more worry that keeps them up at night.”  Sears on the other hand has no plan, except to support the big, beautiful bill.

Fourth, Spanberger will return our schools back to the people, and rid us of the Youngkin and Sears Orwellian thought police.  Remember Governor Youngkin’s attempt to turn our schools in to Stasi-like institutions where teachers and students were under constant surveillance for utterances that contradict sacrosanct Republican notions of history.  Youngkin even started an informant hotline one could call or email to report thought transgressors.  Is that how we raise our children? Turning them into government snitches. 

Youngkin’s education policy was a flop at best.  Under his administration, standardized test scores that remained essentially the same after four years of his administration, and well below pre-pandemic scores.  In short, a failure to achieve one of his top priority goals. Winsome Earle-Sears won’t do much better, I suspect, since she is an advocate for reducing public school funding in favor of private charter schools.

Fifth, Spanberger will be a voice for Virginia’s farmers who are hard hit by Trump’s self-inflicted tariff wars (see last week’s post).  Virginia farmers are losing overseas markets, losing income, and being weighed down by unsustainable debt.  Bail outs aren’t an answer, the preferred Republican solution.  It’s the coward’s way out of not confronting Trump head on.  If you are a afraid to criticize Trump, you already live in your own mental dictatorship.  

Spanberger will speak truth to power, I believe. Nor cower before Trump like so many Republicans in Congress and state governments.

Sixth, Spanberger will fight for Virginian’s serving in not only our military, but our civil and foreign services as well.  Our foreign and civil service Virginians are patriots and deserve much better than mass illegal firings, the constant dehumanization and criminalization, the threats and intimidation.  

They, along with the men and women who serve in our armed forces, are the frontline against Trump’s extra-judicial and unconstitutional attempts to turn America into a police state, an autocracy.  Congress is AWOL, the lower courts are fighting a brave rearguard action, only to be undermined repeatedly by the Supreme Court in yet another opinionless shadow docket ruling.  

States are the bulwark against a tyrannical central government.  It’s how our founders envisioned our federal alliance in 1787.  States need to stand up to Trump and his federal maladministration. Virginia needs to be one of those states.

Things will get worse for America and Virginia under Trump in the next few weeks, months, and years.  We need a strong democratic coalition in Virginia to weather the coming constitutional tempest and damage that may prove fatal to the rule of law.  We must fight, and fight to win.  A Spanberger win in November will set the tone for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s keep Virginia democratic and its people free: Vote.