ICE Budget Will Be Larger than Marine Corp Budget under Republican /Trump Rule

The Budget for ICE deportations next year will be larger than the budget for the U.S. Marines.

This is how a private, unregulated private army is created by Fascists/ for fascists.

Vote Yes on Proposition 50.  Protect democracy. 

 Key budget details for FY 2026:

• ICE: Multiple reports from July and August 2025 project ICE's total budget to be between $27.7 billion and $30 billion or more, which includes a base budget plus significant supplemental funding. This large increase is due to a budget bill passed in mid-2025 that allocated $75 billion for ICE over four years.
• Marine Corps: The Marine Corps requested $57.2 billion for FY 2026. 

The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal ...

Jul 6, 2025 — The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 that calls for spending $57.2 billion on new airc...

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Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex”

Aug 13, 2025 — The biggest piece of the pie for enforcement operations in the United States will go to Immigration and Customs Enforc...

 

 

As of October 2025, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget is projected to be larger than the Marine Corps budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026

. Recent budget bills have dramatically increased ICE's funding, surpassing the Marines' total budget request. 

 

This is the budget that will take food and health care from Millions of low income Americans. 

 

FY 2026 budget estimates

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): Several sources indicate that ICE's FY 2026 budget is approximately $29.9 billion, based on a budget bill passed in July 2025 that allocated $75 billion over four years. This is a significant increase from previous years and includes:
• $29.9 billion for enforcement and removal operations.
• $45 billion over four years for expanding detention capacity to over 100,000 individuals.
• Marine Corps: The Marine Corps' FY 2026 budget request is for $57.2 billion, which is a component of the larger Department of the Navy budget. This request includes funding for aircraft, drones, weapons, and facility modernization. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brennan Center for Justice

Context for comparison

While the Marine Corps' budget request appears higher, comparing the final budgets can be complex due to the specifics of the supplemental funding allocated to ICE:

• ICE funding structure: The $75 billion allocated to ICE is a multi-year appropriation, available through September 2029. Sources report that the average annual allocation is about $18.7 billion, but the Trump administration could front-load the spending, increasing the amount available for FY 2026.
• Defining the budget: The Marine Corps' $57.2 billion is a specific request for a single fiscal year. For ICE, the total spending is determined by its base budget plus the supplemental funds it actually spends in FY 2026, which could potentially surpass the Marine Corps' figure depending on how quickly the agency spends the new money. 

Therefore, while the initial request for the Marine Corps is higher, ICE's ability to draw on its new multi-year funding could result in a larger budget for FY 2026. 

AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses 

What are the implications of ICE's budget exceeding that of other federal law enforcement agencies?

How does this compare to previous years' budgets?

What specific programs will the extra ICE funding be used for in 2026?

6 sites

• Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex”

Aug 13, 2025 — The biggest piece of the pie for enforcement operations in the United States will go to Immigration and Customs Enforc...

Brennan Center for Justice

• The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal ...

Jul 6, 2025 — The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 that calls for spending $57.2 billion on new airc...

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• ICE’s Budget Is Set to Triple Next Year - Jacobin

Jul 28, 2025 — I also think it could end up being too low, possibly by a lot. There are likely billions more for ICE in the reconcili...

Jacobin

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Casualties of a Failed Health Care System

Casualties of a Failed Health Care System: Why even an elite Boston hospital can feel like a makeshift infirmary in a war zone

Don't Be Stupid- Don't Deport DACA Health Care Workers

Opinion

Don’t Deport DACA Health Care Workers 

If the Supreme Court affirms the administration’s termination of DACA, thousands of vital health care workers could be deported.

By Bill Aseltyne, Beth Essig, Debra L. Zumwalt and Abbe R. Gluck

Mr. Aseltyne, Ms. Essig and Ms. Zumwalt are general counsels for health care systems. Ms. Gluck is a professor at Yale Law School and Yale School of Medicine.

·       April 2, 2020

·       https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/trump-coronavirus-daca.html?

The Covid-19 pandemic is stretching our public health system to its limits and challenging our ability to meet the urgent and critical medical needs of the country as never before. As executives responsible for the legal affairs of major hospitals and lawyers working in Covid-19 hot spots, we know how crucial it is to have every available front-line medical worker fighting this pandemic.

But 29,000 of those workers are being threatened with deportation by the Trump administration. They have been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, under which undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children can obtain protection against deportation and authorization to work in the United States. The Trump administration terminated that program, the Supreme Court is currently considering the lawfulness of that determination, and the court’s decision could come at any time.

New data from the Center for American Progress reveals that the DACA-recipient health care work force includes more than 6,000 diagnosing and treating practitioners, including respiratory therapists, physicians assistants and nurses; some 8,000 health aides, including nursing assistants and orderlies; more than 7,000 other health care support workers; and some 5,500 health technologists and technicians.

The Association of American Medical Colleges told the Supreme Court that nearly 200 physicians, medical students and residents depend on DACA for their ability to practice medicine and serve their communities. Those 200 trainees and physicians alone would care for hundreds of thousands of patients per year in normal times — the association estimates as many as 4,600 patients per year, per person. Under the demands of the Covid-19 pandemic, those numbers will be much higher.

The Center for Migration Studies found that 43,500 DACA recipients work in the health care and social-assistance industries, including more than 10,000 in hospitals.

If the Supreme Court upholds the decision to terminate DACA, nearly 700,000 people — including those health care workers — will lose their ability to work and live in the United States. The administration is preparing to deport DACA recipients and has repeatedly stated that it will do so if the Supreme Court gives it the green light, something that could happen as soon this coming Monday, April 6. There are many reasons for the Supreme Court to hold the administration’s decision invalid, and the pandemic confirms those flaws.

Even before the crisis, primary-care doctors, nurses and other health professionals were in short supply. The Association of American Medical Colleges and over 30 other groups told the Supreme Court last fall that our health care system relied on DACA health care providers.

That need is even more acute now. For example, as of last week, more than 300 workers in four of Boston’s biggest hospitals had tested positive for the coronavirus. As Covid-19 hospitalizations increase, health care professionals are increasingly likely to become ill. This is especially true because of the current national shortage of personal protective equipment in some health systems that puts health care workers at an even higher risk of infection.

Each health care worker who tests positive must self-quarantine for at least two weeks, further intensifying the current worker shortages. We have already seen the disastrous impact of provider shortages in Europe, particularly in hardest-hit Italy and Spain. Their experiences demonstrate that expanding provider capacity will be key to reducing Covid-19’s death toll.

Bretón has it wrong- Again

Bee opinion columnist Bretón has a harsh column about the SCUSD budget crisis.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article238321423.html

Part of the problem is what he assumes.,

He argues teachers should take a pay cut, and that they should pay some of their health care. This is the essence of austerity.  He assumes that the way to fix the problem is to pay teachers less,

( You can see how well this works out.  The Bee now pays its reporters less. They have over 100 fewer reporters. The quality of the paper has diminished substantially.  It is no longer a substantive paper. see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/growing-local-news-deserts-endanger-democracy-study-finds)

Why assume that cutting salaries is the answer?  Lets try an alternative.

Assume the teachers should be paid well.  Assume that teachers should have quality health care for themselves and their families.  This is what unions are fighting for all across the nation,. It could be called Medicare for All.

Well, if we need to pay teachers well, more money will be needed for schools.  Yes, we should tax more and adequately fund our schools.  We have not done that since the passage of Prop. 13.  Austerity, underfunding schools, is a lousy policy. Just fighting over who gets their salaries cut is avoiding the important issues.  Fund the schools.

Here is how.

U.S. Falls Further Behind

Does the U.S. government’s priority for military spending explain, at least partially, the discrepancy between the worldwide preeminence of the U.S. armed forces and the feeble global standing of major American domestic institutions?




Maybe those delirious crowds chanting “USA, USA” have got something. When it comes to military power, the United States reigns supreme. Newsweek reported in March 2018: “The United States has the strongest military in the world,” with over 2 million military personnel and vast numbers of the most advanced nuclear missiles, military aircraft, warships, tanks, and other modern weapons of war. Furthermore, as the New York Times noted, “the United States also has a global presence unlike any other nation, with about 200,000 active duty troops deployed in more than 170 countries.” This presence includes some 800 overseas U.S. military bases.

In 2017 (the last year for which global figures are available), the U.S. government accounted for over a third of the world’s military expenditures―more than the next 7 highest-spending countries combined. Not satisfied, however, President Trump and Congress pushed through a mammoth increase in the annual U.S. military budget in August 2018, raising it to $717 billion. Maintaining the U.S. status as “No. 1” in war and war preparations comes at a very high price.

That price is not only paid in dollars—plus massive death and suffering in warfare―but in the impoverishment of other key sectors of American life. After all, this lavish outlay on the military now constitutes about two-thirds of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending. And these other sectors of American life are in big trouble.

Let’s consider education. The gold standard for evaluation seems to be the Program for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tests 15-year old students every few years. The last test, which occurred in 2015 and involved 540,000 students in 72 nations and regions, found that U.S. students ranked 24th in reading, 25th in science, and 41st in mathematics. When the scores in these three areas were combined, U.S. students ranked 31st―behind the students of Slovenia, Poland, Russia, and Vietnam.

"think tanks" How they work .

Top Obamacare Critic's Op-Eds Drafted by PR Firm That Reps Drug, Health Care Clients

Ed. Note. This is how top PR firms work while calling themselves research institutes.  Note below how the Broad Foundation and Michelle Rhee perform parallel  services.

  

The Drum Report. Mother Jones.

Meet the magic PR elves fueling Sally Pipes' prolific anti-health-care-reform punditry.

Last Tuesday, a week after the Supreme Court's ruling upholding Obamacare, Sally Pipes appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to enumerate the evils of the law. The president of the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based free-market think tank, Pipes warned members of Congress that if they didn't act quickly Americans would soon suffer the rationed care and long waits supposedly plaguing her native Canada. The country's health care system, she insisted, had killed her mother by refusing to test her for colon cancer, which she later died from.

Pipes' appearance on Capitol Hill, days before the House voted for the 33rd time to repeal Obamacare, capped a busy two weeks for the prominent critic of the president's health reform law. In just the 24 hours following the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision, Pipes churned out thousands of words of outraged copy, publishing columns in the National Review Online, the Orange County Register, the Daily Caller, Human Events, and elsewhere—all while running her small think tank and keeping up her typically frenetic schedule of media interviews. All of this cemented her status as a leading voice of Obamacare opposition. Along with a constant stream of op-eds and TV appearances in recent years, she has also authored three books since 2008 lambasting health care reform.

If Pipes seems supernaturally prolific, there's a good reason. To assist with her written output, PRI employs a DC-based ghostwriting and PR firm with drug and health care industry clients. That firm, Keybridge Communications, researches, drafts, and edits much of Pipes' published work in an arrangement that's unusual for someone at a supposedly independent think tank.

Several former PRI staffers tell Mother Jones it was well known within the organization that Pipes relied heavily on Keybridge, particularly for her books, and did far from all of her own writing. (Pipes thanks Keybridge and specific staffers there in her last three books.) In recent years, PRI has spent large amounts of money on Keybridge's services. Between 2008 and 2010, the think tank paid Keybridge nearly $1 million—$400,000 alone in 2010.

Affordable Care Act- DSA

The DSA National Political Committee (NPC) welcomes the 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). The decision affirms the right of Congress to legislate in the interest of the general welfare of the American people.

We applaud the gains for ordinary American families that will come with the ACA. Over ten million members of moderate income families will gain coverage under Medicaid; millions of young Americans between the age of 21 and 26 will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance; children and adults with pre-existing conditions will now be covered by the same policies as those deemed by insurers to be “healthy”; and over one hundred million Americans will now be free of lifetime expenditure limits on their coverage.

DSA also recognizes, however, that the ACA will fail to curtail ever-rising health care costs driven by the profit-seeking of private insurers and private health-care providers. Only a single-payer or “Medicare for All” system would provide truly affordable universal coverage by granting a single public insurer bargaining leverage over private providers.

Join Nurses Across the Country on September 1 to Demand a Tax on Wall St...

JOIN THE NURSES TO MAKE WALL  STREET PAY TO HEAL AMERICA Urge your legislators to support the tax on Wall Street for jobs, healthcare and education on Main Street! Thursday.  11 A.M. Lungren's Field office. 2339 Gold Meadow Way Gold River, California.  95670

Christmas cheer and health care

Trumka: Senate Health Care bill must change

The health care bill being considered by the U.S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.
In recent days, as the Senate has debated health care reform, small numbers of senators have held health care hostage by threatening to block a vote. The new proposal by the Senate puts the interests of insurance companies—and senators who would rather look out for the insurance companies—ahead of real reform.
Trumka said the top priority now is to fight over the rest of the legislative process to fix the bill and make sure we can pass real health care reform:

The labor movement has been fighting for health care for nearly 100 years and we are not about to stop fighting now, when it really matters. But for this health care bill to be worthy of the support of working men and women, substantial changes must be made. The AFL-CIO intends to fight on behalf of all working families to make those changes and win health care reform that is deserving of the name.

The absolute refusal of Republicans in the Senate to support health care reform and the hijacking of the bill by defenders of the insurance industry have brought us a Senate bill that is inadequate: It is too kind to the insurance industry.

Genuine health care reform must bring down health costs, hold insurance companies accountable, assure that Americans can get the health care they need and be financed fairly.

Health care - Canada

Tea bagger protests

Dan Lungren Town Hall Meetings

California. Congessional District 3

Saturday, August 22nd 10:30- 12noon
Jackson
Civic Center
33 Broadway
Jackson, CA 95642 View Larger Map

Wednesday, August 26th 7:00-8:30pm
Rancho Cordova
American River Room
2729 Prospect Park Drive
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 View Larger Map

And, Thank you Barney Frank.

Medicare for All

Medicare for all
The town hall meeting occurring across the country reveal a renewed hard right wing in the U.S.
The health care debate has interest.
I support Medicare for everyone. I am 68. I have had Medicare for 3 years. Prior to Medicare, I had Kaiser. I and my employer paid for Kaiser care.
Now, I, and the Medicare system pay form my Kaiser Advantage system using Medicare. There has been no noticeable to me difference in the care, only a difference in billing for drugs. I get good care, we should all get good care.
So, I think everyone in the U.S. should have health care, we should all have Medicare.
This would save billions each year by eliminating the insurance industry.
Some people want a public option in our health care, Medicare is a public option.
Many people want a Single Payer system to save money. Medicare is a single payer system. Most people have private doctors under Medicare. I prefer an HMO, Kaiser.

So, what can you and I do to advance a sound medical reform other than engaging in a screaming match at a local town hall meeting?

Write letters to the editor of your local publications -- something that's easy to do.
Read news items on line and respond in the comments section with rational, reasonable suggestions.
Submit an editorial column, a more advanced form of advocacy that takes more time to perfect. Newspaper web sites have instructions on how to submit these "op-ed" articles.
Or, read op-ed pieces in your newspaper and respond with a letter to the editor.
Arrange to meet with your members of Congress (both senators and representatives) -- or their staffs, which tends to be easier -- in their local offices in your area.
Just call up an make an appointment, preferably when the member is in town on the weekend or during a Congressional break. If you live in the district, the odds are good that you will get in. Bring facts and material to support your position.

Barack Obama on costs of health care

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why reformers are losing the health care debate -- and how to win it back

Chris Kromm
We're now two weeks into the Town Hall Uprising that has rocked members of Congress coming home for their August recess. The signs and screeds have been uncannily similar: "Obamacare" will kill your grandma. Bureaucrats will choose your doctors. We're headed towards socialized medicine, a slippery slope towards communism in the USA.


But whether coming from a hot-headed protester or a former governor of Alaska, the rhetorical bombs share at least two things in common: One, they have little basis in reality. And two, they have little if anything to do with real health reform.

Health reform isn't being debated in the country's TV screens and town halls -- it's being swift-boated. And just like the infamous 2004 TV ads by deep-pocketed right-wing operatives had little to do with Sen. Kerry's military honor, the current assault reveals more than anything the ability of powerful interests to fan lingering resentments - especially in places like the South - to serve their bottom line.
read the entire piece.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/08/why-reformers-are-losing-the-health-care-debate----and-how-to-seize-it-back.html

Chris Kromm

Why and how health care is stalled

The Real Problem with The Senate's Small-State Bias
by Nate Silver
Five Thirty Eight: Politics Done Right
8/3/2009


As you all surely know, the Senate is not a terribly
democratic institution. A voter in Wyoming -- population
533,000 -- has about 70 times more ability to influence
the Senate's direction than one in California --
population 36.8 million. And the lack of
representativeness can be particularly acute when the
Senate is conducting business at the committee level.
Max Baucus's Table for Six, for instance, which may very
well determine the fate of efforts to reform health
care, is made up of members who collectively represent
about 6.5 million people, or around one-fiftieth of the
country's population.

This in and of itself is problematic for Democrats,
since there is a correlation between the size of a state
and how Democratic it tends to vote in elections for
national office, although the relationship is not as
strong as you might posit (Rhode Island, Delaware and
Hawaii are small states too). The bigger and more
structural problem, however, may have to do with the
ways that small-state senators raise funds, and in turn,
whose interests they are beholden to.

The chart below details the 20 current senators who have
received the highest percentage of their campaign
contributions since 2003 from corporate PACs, based on
data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
This data focuses on corporate PAC contributions and
individual contributions only; other, usually minor
sources of income (self-financing, transfers from other
campaign committees, contributions from ideological and
labor PACs) are treated as ambiguous and are ignored.
Data should be current through roughly May of this year.

What do these senators have in common? All 20 come from
states with below-median populations. In fact, you have
to go to #26 (John McCain) to find a senator from a
state with an above-median population, and #30 (Saxby
Chambliss) to find one from a state with an above-
average population.

The reason this occurs is because individual
contributions are easier to obtain in states with larger
populations. Although some people make campaign
contributions to candidates from outside their states,
most do not, and so a senator from Texas ought to have
an easier time eliciting funds than one from Idaho. On
the other hand, there is no relationship between the
amount of PAC contributions and the population of a
senator's state; PACs know that one senator's vote is
just as good as another.

What this means is that senators from small states tend
to be relatively more dependant on special-interest
money -- it makes up a larger share of their overall
take. Senators from the ten smallest states have
received, on average, 28.4 percent of their campaign
funds from corporate PACs, versus 13.7 for those in the
ten largest. There is a tendency to think of senators
from small states as being populists, and there are a
few instances in which this is accurate -- Jon Tester of
Montana and John Thune of South Dakota, for instance,
are relatively non-dependant on PAC money. But for the
most part, something the opposite is true, and senators
from small states in fact have more incentive to placate
special interests.

It is worth noting, by the way, that the six senators on
Baucus's mini-committee are especially egregious in this
regard. They rank #1 (Mike Enzi), #6 (Chuck Grassley),
#11 (Kent Conrad), #13 (Baucus), #14 (Jeff Bingaman) and
#20 (Olympia Snowe) in the share of contributions
received from corporate PACs (an average of 47.5 percent
of their funds overall).

One can think of several plausible reforms to redress
this imbalance. For instance, corporations might be
restricted from donating PAC money to a senator unless
they do a material amount of business in her state. In
addition, the proliferation of the Internet as a
fundraising tool has probably leveled the playing field
some, making it easier for populist-ish candidates like
Tester or Jim Webb to receive contributions from
activists all over the country.

This goes a long way toward explaining, however, why the
Senate tends to be more protective than the House of
corporate interests -- be they in the form of bank
bailouts, tax breaks, or whatever else (consider, for
instance, that H.R. 1424 -- the second take on the bank
bailout -- was approved with the votes of 74 percent of
the Senate but just 60 percent of the House). We don't
need vague notions about the "cultural" differences
between the two chambers to explain this -- they have
mostly to do with where the money is flowing in from.

A complete list of the source of campaign funds for all
100 senators follows below.

-- Ira Cohen

Health care reform

Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future
Health Care Reform: Time to Go All In


It is time to go all in to support comprehensive health care reform. The stakes have gotten prohibitive. Republicans have essentially bet the House on it. Obama, for all intents and purposes, has wagered the White House agenda. The insurance and drug companies are pouring in dough. This month will be telling. The debate in congressional districts across the country in August will go far in determining what kind of reform we get -- or whether we get any reform at all.
The opposition -- well financed by the insurance and drug companies and by the rabid right -- is mobilizing now to stop reform. Republicans believe that they can replay 1994 when the defeat of Clinton's health care plan (and the fight over NAFTA) led to the stunning elections that resulted in the Gingrich congress. The insurance and drug companies have sought to dilute reform on the inside the process while helping to fund front groups trying to torpedo it on the outside.
Their tactic this August is clear. Run Astroturf campaigns and mobilize the zealots to disrupt congressional town hall meetings, spew anger and invective against the "government takeover" of health care that will "kill your grandmother." Intimidate legislators, cow decent citizens, sow fear and confusion. Legislators learn that if they vote to disembowel reform they'll be amply rewarded with campaign contributions. If they vote to support it, they'll face the fury of the wingnuts and the Astroturf activists. Cynical but effective politics. (For a fact check on the big lies, go to the Campaign for America's Future page here)
Every American has a direct stake in this debate. Every citizen faced with soaring health care bills, every one of the 14,000 who lose their health insurance each day, every one of the millions frozen in jobs for fear of losing health insurance, every family that faces bankruptcy because someone got sick, every one denied coverage or cut off of coverage because he or she fell sick, every parent losing sleep over a child entering the workforce without insurance, every senior gouged by unconscionable prescription drug prices, every worker who simply can't afford adequate coverage for her or his family. If the insurance industry and the Republican right manage once more to frustrate reform, all of us will pay part of the price.
We should make it a personal mission to challenge and counter the opposition's plans. Locate the town meetings that your legislator is having. (Call your legislators' district offices. Health Care for America provides a listing of town halls organized by pro-reform groups here) Attend with friends and family, silence and shame those trying to disrupt the meeting, demand a serious discussion about this fundamental issue. Challenge your legislators to ignore the wingnuts and support real reform, not a watered down substitute.
So what constitutes "real reform?" Amid the foul odors and sordid ingredients of the legislative process, it is easy to lose sight of what is needed to insure the result is nourishing, and not dangerous to our health.
What many of us would favor -- a system of government funded insurance with many alternative plans, a sort of Medicare for all - is not on the table, to the dismay of single payer advocates. But reforms now under consideration include major changes -- all of which have passed through Senate and House committees -- that could make a dramatic difference in people's lives, and begin to mend our broken system. Those elements include:
Choice . if you have insurance, like it, and can afford the increasing costs of it, you get to keep it. Every plan on the table insures that. The charge that this is a government takeover of heath care is simply a lie.
Comprehensive insurance reform. Since most American voters have some kind of insurance, these reforms will have the greatest impact. Every plan under consideration will force a change in the insurance companies' model. They will be prohibited from refusing to cover those who are sick, and prohibited from cutting off those who get sick. Discriminatory prices against women will be banned. Children can stay on family plans until the age of 26, which is vitally important to those like myself, a father of a 23 year old daughter who works at a place that doesn't offer health insurance. Insurance companies will be prohibited from hiking rates and co-pays in the middle of the year just because someone gets sick. They won't be able to gouge small businesses when one of their employees suffers a serious illness.
Shared responsibility. Everyone covered; everyone contributes. Mandates on businesses - beyond small shops -- to provide insurance or pay into a common pot; mandates on individuals to get insurance. This removes the hidden charge -- estimated at $1,100 per person -- we each pay for the 47 million who aren't insured and are forced to use the emergency room as their doctor, often putting off treatment that results in higher costs when the untreated illness becomes critical. If you have health insurance now, you've got a big, personal stake in getting everyone covered.
Affordability. You can't mandate that people get insurance without making it affordable, since cost is what keeps people from getting it. The best legislation coming out of the House would provide subsidies for low and middle income families up to 400% the poverty level (about $43,000 in individual income). The house legislation would also empower Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, and allow the import of drugs from safe places abroad, saving seniors big time. This would remedy the outrageous payoff to Big Pharma in the prescription drug bill that prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices on drugs.
Fair financing. Not surprisingly, there's a pitched battle over how to finance the costs of the change. This shouldn't be complicated. In society with gilded age inequality and the wealthiest paying lower tax rates than their secretaries, the most sensible way is to add hike top end tax rates on millionaires. Rep. Charles Rangel has been pushing for high end tax rates. The least sensible way -- floated constantly by the eternally wrong-headed Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee -- would be to tax those who have so called "Cadillac" health care plans now. Too often people with high cost plans are people who suffer terrible illnesses. The insurance companies already gouge them for getting sick; it would be truly outrageous for the Congress to tax them for it. Luckily Obama campaigned against this in his campaign, and should be held to that promise.
Public Option. For those whose companies don't provide insurance -- disproportionately lower wage workers in small businesses -- every plan offers access to an "exchanges" that provides choices in private plans and helps keep prices down. Key to this is a robust public option that can contract with providers at something like Medicare rates. That will drive down the price of private insurance, provide model coverage that they will have to compete with, and help, as the president put it, keep the companies honest. The most obscene part of this debate has been to watch so called fiscal conservatives in both parties seek to oppose or disembowel the public option. This is the corrupting influence of insurance company dollars. If they succeed in prohibiting the public option from pegging its rates to Medicare, it will be as outrageous a subsidy to private industry as the prohibition on negotiating lower drug prices. Legislators in both parties should be challenged to support a real public option.
This isn't as complicated as some in the media try to make it. Cover everyone, curb the abuses of the insurance companies, insure affordability, and send the bill to those who've had the party, use a public option and the power of Medicare to drive lower prices and better practices.
Making the case
In a town meeting or on the phone to legislators' offices, many of us get intimidated. Legislators and aides often are skilled at using detail to dazzle or distract. The right-wing claque hopes to intimidate others. But in fact, you don't need all the facts and figures. Just tell your own story about health care, and express your opinion clearly. Say you want insurance company abuses curbed. That you expect your representative to fight for a public option strong enough to cut costs and force competition. That you want the reforms paid for fairly by higher taxes on the wealthy and a cutback on subsidies to the insurance companies. And make it clear, reform is essential; the right-wing extremists don't speak for you or the district. Don't let them hijack the debate.
These reforms aren't nirvana, but they would make a difference. And committees in both the House and Senate have now passed bills that contain them. If they are passed into law, 
we will have made dramatic changes in our health care system that will benefit the vast majority of Americans. A lot more work will still be necessary to fix the broken system -- particularly on cost. But most Americans will enjoy more secure, more affordable, and more sensible coverage.
Needless to say, this is all contested. The House Energy Committee, held hostage by the Blue Dogs, weakened the public option, lowered the subsidies for middle income workers, and diluted the reforms. We haven't even seen the worst of the bills, whatever comes out of Baucus' Finance Committee. But in the House and the Senate, if liberals stand tall, we've got a real chance to pass the basics mentioned above.
The first question, however, is whether any reform will pass. That is what is at stake this August. Will the insurance companies, the Republicans and the wingnuts sow sufficient fear and doubt to stop any serious reform? Or will citizens demand an adult debate about a broken health care system that must be fixed?
If Republicans are betting the house on this, so is President Obama. As Senator DeMint suggested, the right thinks defeat here will be Obama's Waterloo, that it will "break" his presidency. There is no question that failure to move health care will be treated by the press as a monumental setback, weakening the president significantly. If health care reform fails, then the other reforms on the table -- energy, financial reform, education, immigration, empowering workers -- will face more daunting odds. Many voters dismayed at the failure will stay home in 2010. Failure on health care may well strangle this era of reform in its infancy. That, of course, is what the zealots on the right seek.
But this country can't afford more drift and more stasis. We can't afford another failed presidency. We desperately need to step up to deal with the fundamental changes that can no longer be avoided. This isn't a spectator sport. The abusive tactics of the right are designed to keep the good hearted away, to create fear in the undecided, to cow timorous legislators. We can't allow that to happen. It is time to go all in.
From: The Huffington Report.

Nevada brothel offers free passes to Senators

The Keith Olberman video below is powerful. Please view it.
If Republicans and Blue Dogs are going to sell their souls; they might as well enjoy it.
A famous Nevada brothel is offering free passes to the legislators. This is far less corrupting than taking millions for campaign finance efforts as the Republicans are doing; and several Blue Dogs.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/nevada-brothel-offers-free-passes-to-lawmakers.php

Healthcare and corruption of our legislature

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Keith Olberman