There are currently 237 millionaires in Congress according to a report released this week by the Center for Responsive Politics, meaning 44 percent of the House and Senate is run by Millionaires. This compares to about one percent of Americans overall that are millionaires.
So, the question is: When the senate begins finalizing health care legislation and needs to raise funds, who are they going to get it from: Millionaires or Working Families? Will they tax Cadillac health plans that many union families have, or will they join Congress in saying - Enough is Enough! Since Reagan the millionaires have gotten huge tax breaks at our expense, time for them to give us the least amount of dignity - access to affordable health care.
To me, this is the moment of truth. The moment where the President and the Senate decide - are they on the side of working class or on the side of millionaires?
Also according to the CRP study, many of the same members of congress that are millionaires and are deciding who is going to pay for health care reform own stocks in the very companies that are trying to stop it. So, just passing health care is going to be difficult, let along asking the wealthy to pay for it.
A lot of people would call this class warfare - and I say absolutely, and deservedly so. Over the last 40 years the gap between the rich and poor have grown at increasing rates, The Harvard School of Public Health writes:
The united states is becoming even more unequal as income becomes more concentrated among the most affluent Americans. Income inequality has been rising since the late 1970s, and now rests at a level not seen since the Gilded Age—roughly 1870 to 1900, a period in U.S. history defined by the contrast between the excesses of the super-rich and the squalor of the poor.
The comparison of numbers from the early part of this century, the era of the Robber Barons and now are eerie:
Total percentage of US income taken in by the top 1 percent:
1900-1928: 18-21 percent
1960-1970's: Less than 10 percent
- 15 percent
- 20.3 percent
So, basically, the best income distribution in our country happened between WW2 and 1979 - creating the largest middle class in history. From 1980 to present, the Middle Class has been under attack. Even worse, according to the same Harvard study, the top five percent of wage earners live on average 9 years longer than the rest of us. One of the major reasons - lack of access to health care.
Access to quality, affordable health care is non-negotiable. Also, who is going to pay for it should be non-negotiable: the wealthy. They have benefited from enormous tax breaks, loopholes, tax havens, the breakdown of unions, and laws that have favored them. It is time to give us peasants a few scraps in the form of health care.
I view what the Senate is doing to working families as a direct attack on the middle class, as the New York Times Reports:
In a preliminary estimate, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation calculated that absent any such employer efforts, 14 percent of family health policies and 19 percent of individual policies would be hit by the tax in 2013. By 2019, according to the estimate, 37 percent of family policies and 41 percent of individual policies would be affected. Those numbers rise over time in these calculations because although the initial tax threshold would increase with the economy’s overall inflation, premiums would be expected to rise even faster...
“The tax, supposedly aimed at Cadillac health plans, would affect millions of middle-class people,” said Representative Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut. “The American people soundly rejected the idea when it was proposed by Republicans in elections last year.”
The Senate and the President have a choice: Stand with working and middle class families or stand with the 1 percent of the country that are millionaires. If they choose to stand with the millionaires, then the gap between the top one percent and us will continue to rise, if they stand with us, it will at least stop the bleeding.
Senate and President Obama - This will be the clearest display of whose side you are on. I volunteered hundreds of hours for you, made thousands of phone calls, donated money i could not afford, and even wore t-shirts, hats, and bumper stickers in a heavily Republican district where I took a lot of abuse (which we lost by only 2 percent, the closest it has been in over 100 years). While I am not going to turn against you - because the Republicans are much worse, I can promise that if you side with the millionaires on this issue, I will not be working for you in the midterms or 2012, I will be convinced that both sides have been corrupted. I will hold my nose and vote Dem, but I will not volunteer in any shape or form.
So, whose side are you on? 99 percent of Americans or 1 percent? Here is your chance to show your cards. Don't let us down.
Facebook Pimping: If you are on Facebook, please join the group I created named Health Care Bill Facts. Everyday we breakdown one or two parts of the health care bill, so that people will know what is in it and be able to talk about it with their friends and neighbors in an intelligent way. The group is not meant to debate whether the bill is good or bad, merely breakdown the facts in bite sized pieces. Thanks!