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GOP taking aim at SS, health care

Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to Newsweek, let the cat out of the bag. We’ve got to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It’s the deficit, don’t you know, gotta bring it down.

The deficit didn’t seem to matter when the Republicans gave away $1.5 trillion in tax dollars in their so-called tax reform plan, with 83 percent going to the top 1 percent. It was supposed to raise wages, but only 2 percent of the tax cuts went to workers’ wages. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said, “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is where you tackle the debt and the deficit.”

So if you depend on Social Security, watch out. The Republicans leading the U.S. House and Senate are aiming at you. But in Michigan, don’t forget Republican Snyder and his party, who in 2012 raised taxes on seniors’ pensions and retirement benefit while cutting taxes for their big business buddies.

Then there is Republican state Senator Jack Brandenburg, who has refused to let “dark store” legislation out of his Senate committee for a vote, so Dickinson County, its townships and cities are in peril for the tax breaks given, and we homeowners are in peril because if big business doesn’t pay its fair share, we and the small “mom and pop” businesses get the bill while Republican-controlled tax tribunal continues to hobble our communities and further enrich the already wealthy.

If you are in need of health care — and who isn’t — watch out. Medicare and Medicaid will be on the chopping block. Nearly 4,185 people in Dickinson County are Medicaid eligible, according to Department of Health and Human Services Green Book in August.

Schuette, the Republican candidate for governor, opposed the Medicaid expansion program that covers 680,000 Michigan citizens. If the Republicans cut Medicaid and Medicare, who’s going to wind up with uncompensated care? Dickinson County Health Care System, which is having its own problems.

If you don’t make enough to feed your family, there’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which 2,213 use in this county. But it is being pared back with draconian requirements for users, typically workers with low income.

So remember that it’s the Republican establishment that’s going after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and it’s the Republican candidates who want us to forget their allegiance is to the same establishment that has taxed our pensions, threatened our retirements and health care, and handed billions to the wealthy 1 percent, expecting us to pay for it with our earned benefits.

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