Lawmakers in Texas are altering leadership and classes at UT Austin. By Vimal Patel The New York Times AUSTIN, Texas
In a state dominated by conservatives, the University of Texas at Austin stood out. Its leadership had often been a thorn in the side of the state’s politicians, resisting efforts to erode faculty power and championing diversity.
The university defended its race-conscious admissions policy all the way to the Supreme Court in 2016. It has long been a magnet for liberal students and student activism.
Today, the conservatives are winning. State Republicans have passed laws to curtail what is taught in college classes and installed new university administrators with partisan affiliations, among a host of new strategies to remake a public higher education system that they argue has been held hostage to left-leaning ideas and become hostile to conservative ones.
The University of Texas is one of their main targets. The campus is no longer led by an academic, but a Republican lawyer who worked for the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.
The president has promised curricular changes, and the system is now conducting an audit of all gender studies courses, after a state House bill passed in May enshrined in state law that there are effectively only two genders.
Another piece of legislation, Senate Bill 37, gutted faculty control of universities, tightened a grip on what can be taught and gave appointed boards the power to approve academic leaders.
The Austin campus has opened the School of Civic Leadership, one of many such new schools on college campuses with the goal of attracting more conservative students. The university laid off several dozen employees last year after a state law made diversity and inclusion offices illegal at public colleges.
A similar story is playing out across Texas. This fall, the firing of a Texas A&M instructor teaching a gender studies course after a student complained put the university at the center of a national debate over a crackdown on professors’ speech. The instructor’s department head and dean also lost their administrative posts, and eventually, the Texas A&M president resigned.
Last month, the university system’s regents went further than Texas lawmakers, approving a policy that requires courses that teach “race or gender ideology” to have presidential approval.
The Texas Tech University System has also sought to limit how race and gender are taught in its schools and created a new course approval process.
But perhaps no campus embodies the depth of the change in Texas higher education more than UT Austin, located blocks from the Texas Capitol.
The Austin campus is one of a handful of universities that has responded warmly to a Trump administration offer to give funding preferences to schools that adhere to its list of policy prescriptions.
The proposal was widely panned by advocates of academic freedom. The handful of other schools that embraced it are right-leaning schools, such as New College in Florida. Some faculty and students worry lawmakers are trying to turn the University of Texas — a selective school with students from across the country — into a conservative campus.
But state officials and the university’s new leaders, along with the Trump administration, say their goal is to restore balanceto universities. “Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in October. “We must end indoctrination.”
Right-wing, fascist indoctrination is OK, however.
In a “state of the university” speech in October, Jim Davis, the University of Texas president, said changes on campus are meant “to create balance.” “We don’t want degree programs that are so narrow they develop only one perspective,” he said.
Right-wing perspective is allowed. The left-wing perspective that created Social Security, Medicare, poverty aids, and equal rights legislation is not allowed.
The Trump administration this year has led an aggressive attack against higher education, threatening to strip a set of mostly private institutions of large sums of money if they don’t conform to the president’s policies. But it is public university systems that are seeing the biggest changes.
For years, Florida, which, like Texas, has unified Republican control of state government, served as a lab for conservative changes. Other conservative states like Indiana, Ohio and Alabama have also demanded changes at their schools that have led to quick acquiescence, most notably the closure of diversity programs and new limits on professors.
But the main energy is in Texas, where Republicans who learned from Florida are going even further. The changes over the last year have been rapid fire, leaving students and faculty members reeling.
At a coffee shop across the street from the Austin campus last month, five students spoke of fear and helplessness. Sofia Gomez, a rhetoric and writing major, said a history professor told her of pulling a book about the experiences of a transgender man, a move the professor described as the toughest decision of her career. “I considered transferring out of UT,” said Gomez, “because if my professors are unable to teach me, and I’m not able to have candid conversations to get a proper education, what am I here for?”
The idea is that if we pretend gay people don’t exist, then they won’t exist.
A poll by the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, found 40% of faculty respondents are changing their syllabus or teaching approach to comply with state legislation. “I take classes that are supposed to be about politics, and a lot of professors are scared to even apply anything we learn to the modern day,” said Mia Reballosa, a junior majoring in government.
Next, we’ll get rid of vaccination and teach prayer instead. That should protect our children against disease.
“There’s this large looming fear on campus.” The university is exploring consolidating many liberal arts departments, an effort many faculty members believe is aimed at eliminating politically controversial departments.
Teaching religion instead of science is not controversial.
The university said the academic reviews will explore factors like student demand and academic rigor. “The university,” its statement read, “is also encouraging academic units that have allowed some of their hiring, programs and course offerings to become excessively politicized to instead recommit themselves to balanced inquiry, depoliticized curricula and welcoming a diverse range of views (especially on controversial issues).”
Balanced? Depoliticized? Deverse? Sure, as long as we get rid of immigrants, because they are replacing us. Right?
Mary Neuburger, head of Slavic and Eurasian studies, another department under threat, said she remained quiet until she had trouble sleeping at night. Then she began talking publicly. “There’s total chaos,” Neuburger said in an interview, noting a constant turnover of administrators.
“When you tell a unit they might not exist by the end of the year, what do you think that does for morale?” “I’ve been at UT for almost 30 years,” she added, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.
The Chicago Bears have scored at least one touchdown in almost every game. Therefore, the Chicago Cubs should be able to score at least one touchdown in every game.
If you think that comment is ignorant, why? Because baseball and football are different activities operating under different rules.
So what about this comment: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do.” It too is ignorant, and for the same reason. The federal government and families operate under different financial rules.
The statement was made repeatedly by President Barack Obama in 2011 and 2012. He also vowed to cut the debt by trillions of dollars, which makes him one of the more economically ignorant Presidents in American history.
The differences between football and baseball are well known. The differences between the finances of our Monetarily Sovereign federal government and a monetarily non-sovereign family still cause confusion, partly because the same words are used: “Debt,” “deficit,” “bond,” “note,” “bill,” “owe,” “pay.”
It’s just that the words have different meanings for the federal government vs. households. And although football and baseball share words—ball, win, score, game, position, league. player, helmet, team, catch, run — we are educated in the difference, and would laugh at anyone who confuses the two.
Federal “waste” is completely unlike family “waste,” and for the same reasons.
The Festivus Report is Senator Rand Paul’s way of complaining about what he considers to be wastefulfederal spending. Here are a few items from the 2024 report. As you read, decide for yourself whether you consider any (all?) of them to be “wasteful.”
1. F-35 Sustainment Cost Overruns — Tens of Billions. The F-35 program is the most expensive weapons system in history. GAO and the DoD IG report that maintenance costs are projected to exceed expectations by $1.3 trillion over the jets’ lifetimes.
Why it’s considered waste: Underperformance; aircraft not meeting readiness targets; cost inflation far above projections.
2. Failed DoD Program: Future Combat Systems (FCS) — $18 Billion Lost. Canceled in 2009 after years of development.
Cost taxpayers over $18 billion with almost nothing field-ready. Why it’s a waste: The Largest failed weapons modernization attempt since the Cold War.
3. Hurricane Katrina & Sandy Aid Duplication — Several Billion. GAO found: Multiple billions in duplicated housing payments (FEMA + SBA + HUD). Fraud, improper payments, and administrative failures across federal disaster relief programs.
4. Nuclear Waste Repository Project: Yucca Mountain — ~$15 Billion. Congress spent roughly $15 billion designing and preparing Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste site. The project has been effectively abandoned for political reasons.
Why it’s a waste: The facility was never opened despite the massive investment.
5. ACA Federal Co-op Failures — $2.4 Billion. The Affordable Care Act created 23 non-profit insurance co-ops. 21 of the 23 collapsed, losing ~$2.4 billion in federal loans.
Why it’s a waste: Most co-ops failed within a few years, leaving almost no lasting benefit.
6. Border Wall Cancellations — $2 Billion in Stranded Materials & Contracts. When the administration changed in 2021, DHS paid over $2 billion in continued contract costs, demobilization, storage of unused materials, and cancellation penalties.
Why it’s a waste: Taxpayers paid for materials and contracts that never produced the intended infrastructure.
7. Federal Improper Payments — Over $200 Billion Annually. Not fraud—just errors. Medicaid improper payments in recent years: $50–80 billion. Medicare: $30–40+ billion. Earned Income Tax Credit: $15–20 billion. UI benefits during COVID spikes: tens of billions. Annual total often exceeds $200 billion, easily clearing the $1 billion threshold.
Why it’s a waste: Payments made to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or with no documentation.
8. USPS Pre-Funding Mandate Losses — Tens of Billions. For years, USPS had to pre-fund 75 years of employee health benefits: This created massive financial losses of tens of billions.
While not “waste” caused by USPS mismanagement, it’s widely cited as economically irrational spending.
9. IRS Business Systems Modernization (early 2000s failures) — ~$2–3 Billion Lost: An attempt to completely modernize IRS IT systems. Vast portions had to be scrapped or rebuilt because contractors and the IRS couldn’t deliver working systems.
Why it’s a waste: Billions spent, but many components never functioned.
10. Afghanistan Reconstruction Waste — Over $19 Billion Identified From the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction: More than $19 billion in documented waste, fraud, and abuse. Examples: empty schools, unused power plants, abandoned buildings, failed police programs, and aircraft that were scrapped for pennies.
Why it’s a waste: Projects that were never usable or never used.
Have you already decided which, if any, of these expenditures are federal “waste”?
Let’s first clarify what we mean by the term “waste.”
Rand Paul claims “waste” includes: “Underperformance, not meeting readiness targets, cost inflation far above projections, failed modernization, duplicated payments, never opened, failed quickly, never produced, and payments made to the wrong person, in the wrong amount.”
Do you agree that those things constitute waste?
Here is the Merriam-Webster definition: to spend money or consume property extravagantly or improvidently.I never use these tax dollars. I make new ones for spending.
Virtually everything the federal government does would be considered “extravagant.” Let’s face it, for the federal government, “million” barely rates a footnote on any budget. Even “billion” may not be noticeable. “Trillion” is the standard.
I suspect Rand Paul is talking about something like “useless,” as in flushing money down the toilet or throwing it in a bonfire.
That is why I take issue with Paul, because I don’t feel money is being used uselessly in the ten examples. I don’t feel they “flush money down the toilet” or “burn money in a bonfire.” In fact, I suggest that those projects were valuable to the American economy.
Let’s begin with these facts:
None of the tenprojects cost you, the American taxpayer, one cent. The federal government does not pay its bills with tax dollars. It pays with newly created dollars, ad hoc, simply by pressing computer keys, which it can do, endlessly.
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending + Net Exports. All federal spending grows the U.S. economy and enriches the American people as the dollars circulate.
Some things were accomplished. New products were invented; new systems were learned, and old systems were discarded. Learning what doesn’t work can be as valuable as learning what does.
None of the spending reduced the federal government’s ability to spend in the future. The government has the infinite ability to create dollars and use them for any purpose it chooses.
In short, for a Monetary Sovereign nation, “waste” is never about dollars. It is about real resources. Domestic failed programs circulate money into the economy. Only programs that destroy or export real resources can cause true economic loss.
Even then, the loss is mitigated by the political and financial positive effects of spending U.S. dollars in another nation. That nation, having dollars, is more likely to become a customer for U.S. businesses. Enriching other nations benefits our economy; we sell more to nations that have dollars than to nations that don’t
Consider number 10. “Afghanistan reconstruction.” To the extent that American businesses were involved, we benefited from the dollars these businesses received and from the experience they gained.
A substantial portion of Afghanistan’s reconstruction spending went to U.S. contractors, paid American engineers, logisticians, security firms, and auditors, flowed through U.S. banks, payrolls, suppliers, and insurers, and supported domestic production of equipment and services.
The only real loss would have been any U.S. raw materials used to make things left in Afghanistan.
Number 8, “USPS Pre-Funding Mandate Losses” isn’t even a cost. It’s just bookkeeping. Nothing was spent.
Public discussion of “wasteful federal spending” almost always misses the central point of Monetary Sovereignty: dollars are not a scarce federal resource.
Again, the U.S. government, being Monetarily Sovereign, cannot run out of dollars, does not need to obtain dollars from taxpayers, and creates new dollars every time it spends. Therefore, evaluating “waste” in terms of dollars alone is analytically meaningless.
A dollar spent by the federal government is not lost; it is added to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the commonly used measure of our economy. Every federal dollar spent—whether you approve of the program or not—enters the private sector as income.
Reminder: GDP = Federal Spending+Nonfederal Spending+Net Exports
In that sense, so-called “wasteful spending” is still “helicopter money,” and helicopter money is by definition stimulative, not lost. It enlarges GDP and strengthens private balance sheets.
A failed defense program, a scrapped IT project, a canceled contract, or even an improper payment all have the same macroeconomic effect: they increase domestic income. They are engineering or managerial failures, not monetary failures, for a Monetarily Sovereign government.
A resource constraint matters only when it prevents something else from happening. During the years of Afghanistan reconstruction, the United States did not experience full employment, nor did it cancel or delay major domestic projects because labor or industrial capacity had been “used up.”
Construction workers, engineers, manufacturers, and logistics firms were not exhausted; many sectors had idle capacity. In fact, much industrial and organizational capacity expanded during this period rather than contracted.
Most of the materials used—steel, concrete, fuel, vehicles, electronics—were manufactured goods that can be reproduced. Their destruction represents transformation, not permanent loss.
The real, irrecoverable losses were human lives, injuries, and trauma, and possibly some rare raw materials. Those losses are real and cannot be dismissed.
Claims of broader “economic waste” rely on treating money as a scarce resource and assuming a “crowding out” that did not occur. Absent full employment or canceled domestic production, those claims are hypothetical at best.
Meanwhile, the spending itself generated income, employment, industrial experience, and hard-won institutional learning. Removing dollars from the analysis leaves a narrower and more honest accounting of what was truly lost and what was gained.
SUMMARY
The strongest objection to this framing is that real resources are finite, even if money is not. Critics argue that Afghanistan reconstruction consumed labor, materials, and attention that could have been used at home.
This objection sounds persuasive, but it only holds if those resources were actually scarce.
The only “waste” is the federal collection of taxes, in the sense that the federal government creates dollars by spending and destroys dollars by collecting taxes.
Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. Their only purposes are to control the economy and to assure demand for the dollar. Federal spending never is a sign of waste.
We congratulate Florida politicians and those who vote for them on their unrelenting efforts to win Darwin Awards. May you achieve your goals as quickly as possible.
By Kate Payne | The Associated Press/Report for AmericaPUBLISHED: December 12, 2025 at 3:01 PM EST | UPDATED: December 12, 2025 at 4:19 PM EST
Jamie Schanbaum, whose legs and fingers were amputated after she contracted meningitis as a college student, testifies in support of vaccine mandates at a public hearing held by the Florida Department of Health on Friday in Panama City Beach. (Kate Payne/AP)
PANAMA CITY BEACH (AP) — Florida officials are plowing ahead with a proposal to roll back certain vaccine mandates for the state’s schoolchildren, after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called for the state to become the first in the nation to eliminate all school vaccination requirements.
Pediatricians, infectious disease physicians and teachers have decried the push to undermine vaccines, which for generations have been a cornerstone of public health policy for keeping children and adults safe from potentially deadly — but preventable — diseases.
Experts have warned that doing away with the mandates could allow for a dangerous resurgence of preventable childhood diseases and deaths, amounting to a reversal of one of the greatest advancements in public health history.
Dozens of parents, physicians, educators and advocates crowded into a hotel conference room in Panama City Beach on Friday to testify on a rule change proposed by the Florida Department of Health that would eliminate requirements that Florida children receive the hepatitis B, varicella and Haemophilus influenzae type b or Hib vaccines in order to attend public or private K-12 schools. The proposal also does away with a requirement for the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine for children attending child-care facilities.
Other state mandates related to vaccines for polio, mumps, tetanus and other diseases are enshrined in Florida law and would require legislative action to be rolled back.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who has long clashed with the medical establishment, has cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children.
All U.S. states and territories require that children attending child-care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.
All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. Most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.
Emotional public hearingFriday’s public hearing grew emotional at times, as parents and activists opposed to the mandates heralded the importance of personal freedom, while longtime physicians recalled hospital wards full of gravely sick children in the years before the widespread availability of vaccines.
Jamie Schanbaum’s legs and fingers were amputated after she contracted meningitis as a 20-year-old college student in Texas. She traveled from Brooklyn, New York, to testify in support of vaccines, recounting her seven-month hospital stay as she battled the vaccine-preventable disease and the challenges of living without her limbs.
“No one should go through this experience,” Schanbaum said.
“How about the relearning to use my hands? Feed myself? Wipe myself? This is the reality of what it’s like to survive something like this,” she added.
Rise of vaccine skepticismVaccination efforts across the country and around the world have stalled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an explosion in vaccine skepticism. Florida’s proposal comes as U.S. Department of Health Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked to reshape the nation’s vaccine policies to match his long-standing suspicions about the safety and effectiveness of well-established shots.
Mary Helms, a mother and grandmother from Apalachicola, referenced Kennedy as she voiced her “full support” for rolling back the mandates.
“Medical choice and medical freedom in all ways is a God-given and sovereignhuman right,” Helms said.
Asked if the state consulted national medical experts such as the American Academy of Pediatrics on the rule development, a department representative declined to answer directly, stating: “the rule language is grounded in policy based on considerations that favor parental rights and medical freedom.”
Measles outbreak in South CarolinaFlorida’s push comes as a monthslong measles outbreak continues in South Carolina, almost entirely among school-age children.
State health officials there have said 116 of the 126 cases have been in children under 18, with two-thirds of them in children from age 5 to 17.
The outbreak has been centered in Spartanburg County, where just 90% of students have all the vaccinees required to be in school — one of the lowest ratesin South Carolina. The state has a religious exemptionfor vaccines, and almost all of the unvaccinated students use it.
Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins contributed from Columbia, South Carolina. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
You go, Florida. We’re all rooting for you to beat Spartanburg County, and every state in the union, to win your Darwin Awards.
We only feel bad for your innocent children, who are subject to your “God-given and sovereignhuman rights.”
The Darwin Awards project became formalized with the creation of a websitein 1993, followed by a series of books starting in 2000 by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states: “In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species’ chances of long-term survival.”
Let’s begin with a basic fact that we have discussed many times. The federal government is Monetarily Sovereign. It never can run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.
Send the government a multitrillion-dollar invoice at 10:00 AM, and it could pay it by 10:01 AM simply by pressing a few computer keys.
“Despite what they tell you, I can pay for everything, and I don’t need or even use your tax dollars.”
And no, it wouldn’t affect federal taxpayers, because federal taxes don’t support federal spending. All federal tax dollars disappear upon receipt at the Treasury. All federal spending is paid for by the creation of new dollars.
That’s one of the differences between federal vs. state/local government finances. State/regional taxes do fund state/local spending.
December 9, 2025, 4:46 PM ESTBy Sahil Kapur, Brennan Leach, Ryan Nobles and Frank Thorp VWASHINGTON — As the U.S. careens to a health care cliff, Senate Republicans say they’ll offer a bill written by two key committee chairs as an alternative to extending billions of dollars in Affordable Care Act funds that are expiring this month.
A “health care cliff” would be a dramatic decrease in the availability of health care. The Republicans will do nothing to prevent it. On the contrary, all their efforts are directed toward reducing health care in America.
Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Senate will vote on a bill by Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Senate HELP Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., “side-by-side” to Democratic legislation that would extend the enhanced ACA funds for three years, preventing sharp premium increases.
He stopped short of promising that all 53 Republicans would back the Republican bill, but it is almost sure to fail either way, as it would take 60 votes to advance.
“Our members — and I can’t say 100%, but I think for the most part, I would argue — are united behind the Crapo-Cassidy proposal,” Thune told reporters Tuesday after a Senate Republican lunch meeting where they discussed what to do.
Thune said the bill “is about patients, not insurance companies; and about lowering premiums, not increasing them, and about getting a better return for the federal taxpayer.”
Note the great struggle the Senate is going through, because “it’s about patients, not insurance companies” (lie #1), “it’s about lowering premiums, not increasing them” (lie #2), and “getting a better return for the federal taxpayer” (lie #3).
If the Senate really wanted to help patients, lower premiums, and get a better return for the federal taxpayer (whatever that means), there is an easy way to do it: Fully fund a comprehensive, no-deductible Medicare plan covering every American of all ages, regardless of health.
This would “help patients” (everyone would be protected). It would “lower premiums (premiums would be $0). And it would be a better return for the federal taxpayer (no tax dollars would be used).
It would do everything Thune claims he wants, and he knows it.
So why does he lie? Because he is paid to lie, and because you buy his lies.
The Crapo-Cassidy bill would allow the ACA tax credits to expire and instead approve new funds to boost health savings accounts, or HSAs, which Americans up to 700% of the poverty level can use to buy “bronze” or “catastrophic” plans, the lowest tiers of insurance available under the ACA.
It would also create the option for more people to buy cheaper, less comprehensive plans. And it would fund cost-sharing reduction payments.
The irony of a crapo plan being put forward by a politician named “Crapo” would make for a hilarious John Candy movie if it were not precisely what is happening.
The program calls for “bronze” or “catastrophic” plans.
Under a typical Bronze plan, you’d pay most costs until you hit about $7,500 in covered expenses; after that, you still share costs; and if you end up needing a lot of care in a year, the most you’d pay (including $6,000 in premiums) is about $15,200 (for an individual).
With a Catastrophic plan, you’re responsible for almost all costs (except limited preventive + a few PCP visits) until you’ve spent about $10,600 in a year, after which the plan pays 100% for covered care. Because of this high deductible, Catastrophic plans are often only sensible if you expect very low care needs (or rare, serious emergencies).
If you pick a Catastrophic plan, figure around $4,500 a year in premiums.
And it is all unnecessary. The federal government could and should pay 100%, you should pay 0%, and not one penny of your tax dollars would be used. But the politicians don’t want you to understand that.
Eligible adults under 50 would receive $1,000 per year deposited into an HSA, and those 50 to 64 would receive $1,500. The legislation blocks the use of the money for abortion or “gender transition procedures.”
Because, to a Republican, gay people are an abomination with no right to health care.
Democrats and some health care policy experts say that is nowhere near enough. If Congress allows the ACA subsidies to expire at the end of this year, premiums will, on average, doublefor more than 20 million Americans who use them.
Sabrina Corlette, a Georgetown professor who specializes in health care policy, said the Republican bill amounts to “offering people a 1-foot rope to get out of a 10-foot hole.”
“The average deductible for a bronze plan is $7,500, double that for a family plan,” she said. “The HSA contribution doesn’t extend to kids under 18 and is only $1,000 for an adult under 50. There’s no adjustment for income, meaning this proposal wildly favors wealthier — and healthier — enrollees.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the Republican bill as a “phony proposal” and a “nonstarter” that is “dead on arrival” in the chamber.
He said the Crapo-Cassidy bill promotes “junk insurance” and would raise costs for those who need health care.
“It is junk insurance that puts the burden on people. We should call it what it is: misdirection, smoke and mirrors to cover up blocking the ACA tax credits that keep health care costs down,” Schumer told reporters. “Our bill keeps premiums down. Their chaos sends premiums up.”
The primary reason the Republicans propose their plan is to cut benefits for the poor and middle-income people—benefits that the government could easily afford at no cost to taxpayers.
Schumer has said all 47 Democratic caucus members will support his bill to extend the existing ACA premium tax credits for three years when it comes up on Thursday.
In the House, every Democrat has signed a “discharge petition” to force a vote on the same bill; it would need the support of a majority of the House, meaning at least a few Republicans, to bring the bill to the floor.
Though the Democrats’ bill is more generous than the Republicans’, it still rests on the misconception that federal spending is constrained by the amount of federal taxes collected. In reality, federal taxes do not fund spending; all federal expenditures are made possible by the creation of new dollars.
Schumer added that stricter abortion restrictions, as GOP lawmakers have demanded as part of any deal, are “off the table.” He said Republicans are doing it because they’re “afraid” of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America and don’t “care about reducing health care costs.”
The Senate alternative comes as many Republicans — especially those facing re-election next year — are scrambling to get behind some kind of plan to address sharp premium hikes that are scheduled to kick in next month for millions of Americans. House GOP leaders have not endorsed a health care alternative.
Unnecessary “premium hikes.”
“I just don’t know how Republicans would explain that to 24 million Americans whose premiums are going to double,” Hawley said. “People at home are going to say, ‘You are hurting me. You’re making my premiums go up. You’re not helping me. Why are you doing that to me?”
And Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he heard from a constituent who’s “currently paying $800 a month for health insurance, for a couple and three children.”
“They just communicated to me, it’s going to be twice, going to be $1,600 a month. If we’ve got a lot of those out there, that’s a problem for us,” said Tillis, who is retiring. “Look, the Democrats created the problem. We’ve got to solve it, or going into next year, we will own a problem that they created.”
The “problem” is the Big Lie that federal finances are like personal finances, and so, must be limited.
Republicans have offered a potpourri of other proposalsto ease the pain. Some are merely frameworks. Others have been written out into legislative text.
Some provide a temporary extension of the money, with strings attached, like narrowing income thresholds for eligibility, requiring a minimum premium payment and slapping new abortion restrictions.
But none of the Republican plans to prevent ACA funds from expiring have a consensus in the party, as many GOP lawmakers in both chambers want the money to expire on schedule.
And there you have it. The Republican Party (aka “The Party of the Rich”) really doesn’t want you to receive any financial help for health care. In fact, it wants to cut all benefits for those who are not wealthy.
Benefits to the rich, like tax loopholes that cost the government trillions, are OK, however.
“Giving billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers is not working to reduce health insurance premiums for patients,” Crapo said. “We need to give Americans more controlover their own health care decisions. This bill builds on the work we did in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act and will help Americans manage the rising cost of health care without driving costs even higher.”
In promoting his crapo plans, Crapo really is saying, “We need to give Americans more responsibility for paying their healthcare costs.”
And by the way, there is no legislation called “Working Families Tax Cuts Act.” It’s all a Republican hocus pocus. It doesn’t exist.
Larry Levitt, a health policy expert with the research group KFF, highlighted the “tradeoffs” in the GOP proposal, saying it would benefit healthier people while raising costs on sicker people.
What a great idea: A Republican healthcare plan that primarily benefits healthy people and hurts sick people. What next — a TV that only works when no one is in the room? A car that only drives when you want to stay home?
“ACA enrollees who are sick would be stuck with big out-of-pocket premium increases or have to switch to a plan with a deductible of over $7,000. People with substantial health needs would blow through their modest health savings accounts and face high, out-of-pocket costs.”
“The Republican plan would not avoid ACA enrollees seeing their out-of-pocket premiums doubling next year,” Levitt added.
As many members of Congress have acknowledged, the premium hikes are likely to go into effect. Both the Democratic and Republican bills are expected to fail this week on the Senate floor, where they’ll need 60 votes to advance.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he has little interest in extending money under the ACA, calling it “a program that’s just never going to produce quality results.”
“I’d like to make drugs more affordable,” he said. “So how do you do that? You change the system that makes them too high.”
Lindsey doesn’t like ACA, but wants to make drugs more affordable. Of course, he has no plan for that, because it would help poor and middle-income people.
==========================================
All politicians, particularly Republicans (though Democrats share some responsibility as well), promote the false narrative that the federal government cannot afford to provide benefits to citizens because the costs supposedly burden taxpayers. The media and university economists are also complicit in this deception, as they, too, have been influenced by wealthy interests.
“For four years, the Biden Administration sought to unlawfully shift student loan debt onto American taxpayers, many of whom either never took out a loan to finance their postsecondary education or never even went to college themselves, simply for a political win to prop up a failing Administration.”
Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent made a statement on Tuesday. “The Trump Administration is righting this wrong and bringing an end to this deceptive scheme. The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back.”
American taxpayers pay taxes, but their tax dollars pay for nothing. The federal government pays all its bills with newly minted dollars.
When people “pay it back” to the government, it does not benefit either taxpayers or the government. Instead, it removes money from the economy and transfers it to the federal government, where it effectively disappears. See: “Does the U.S. Treasury Really Destroy Your Tax Dollars?”
Thus, forcing student borrowers to repay federal loans has no good purpose and two bad results:
It discourages Americans from going to college, contributing to the dumbing down of America.
It removes growth dollars from the economy, reducing economic growth. It’s recessionary.
Two bad results; no good results. What a concept! And it’s all based on the Big Lie in economics.
WHY THE LIE?
“Rich” is a relative term. You would be considered rich with a million dollars if everyone else had only a thousand. However, you would be seen as poor if everyone else had ten million.
So, there are two ways for you to get richer:
Obtain more for yourself and/or
Make sure everyone else has less.
The very rich, who always wish to be richer, use both systems:
They get more for themselves by bribing politicians to create tax laws favoring the rich– all those tax loopholes and programs you don’t even know about, much less use.
It’s interesting to see how the tax system is structured! Higher tax rates apply to salaries, while capital gains are subject to much lower, sometimes even zero, rates. Wealthy individuals also benefit as their corporations often cover many expenses, leading to further deductions.
This setup is designed to help the wealthy widen the income/wealth/power Gap between them and those below them. They make sure everyone else has less by opposing benefits for the poor and middle classes and even taxing some of those benefits.
To make you believe the Lie and accept the unfairness, they promulgate it via the information providers:
They bribe politicianswith campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment.
They bribe the media with advertising dollars and outright ownership
They bribe economistswith university endowments and promises of lucrative jobs at “think tanks.”
They are so effective at manipulating perceptions that the vast majority of Americans do not realize they are being deceived. As a result, you and your friends may accept misleading claims, such as the belief that taxpayers fund federal spending, that the wealthy pay higher tax rates, and that federal spending equates to socialism.
These are all lies. When was the last time you voiced your concerns to your Senator or Representative?
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 