Welcome to what is the 868th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the U.S. Senator from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy, who is up for re-election in November, since he first got his Senate seat back in the 2014 elections, after serving three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives for Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. Make no mistake, the timing of our release of this profile in 2020 is in the hopes that the people of Louisiana decide to go a different direction to help flip the Senate blue, because GEEZ, this guy.
Perhaps it’s now, during a pandemic, that we should take a look at Sen. Cassidy’s passion for denying health insurance to the American people. He opposed the passage of the Affordable Care Act, supported repealing it once the GOP retook the House in 2011, and as a senator in 2017, worked hand in hand with Sen. Lindsey Graham to try and repeal the Affordable Care Act with the Graham-Cassidy Bill. Now, the public debate on this bill was what really told you everything you needed to know about Bill Cassidy. He appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, likely expecting a softball interview, only to be surprised when Kimmel pitched him a healthcare situation that was absolutely not hypothetical. Kimmel’s son was born with a congenital heart disease, and he asked Cassidy if such a child born with a pre-existing condition would be able to get everything he or she would need in that first year of life under Cassidy’s plan, and if their parents would have the surgeries required to keep their infant alive paid for under it. Cassidy, in front of a national audience, lied and said it would. However, after experts and analysts took a hard look at Cassidy’s bill, they determined that the bill would cut healthcare by just shy of $300 billion in the year 2027 and leave 32 million more Americans not covered… and oh yeah… it would have not covered Jimmy Kimmel’s kid. Kimmel, in a monologue, called Cassidy a liar, and Cassidy responded that Kimmel just “doesn’t understand” his bill, and went on to double down and claim it would cover MORE people than the ACA, which was utter bulls***.
But that’s Bill Cassidy. There’s a pathological nature to his mendacity and cruelty… he just doesn’t care who lives or dies, as long as he can avoid tax dollars going towards paying for the poor, and money staying in the pockets of the rich. He was even bored during the hearings on his doomed piece of legislation, lazily yawning as protesters in wheelchairs were carried out by capitol police in front of him.
We should also note that after Donald Trump made national headlines for his “s***hole countries” comments regarding African nations and Haiti, that Bill Cassidy had some harsh words of criticism… for Senator Dick Durbin, for telling the media how much of a disgusting racist the president is. Yup, he didn’t seem to object that Trump said it, just that the public found out, thanks to Durbin.
And that’s not the only moment where Senator Cassidy chose the side of bigots in our national political discussion. As white nationalists repeatedly were making the news for carrying out mass shootings and other domestic terror attacks over the summer of 2019, Cassidy and Senator Ted Cruz thought it was a great time to draft a resolution to criticize the real problem…antifa. Only a few weeks later, he used the Senate’s time to address the very important problem that he was upset about the New Orleans Saints getting hosed by referees in the NFL playoffs six months earlier.
Your tax dollars at work.
Taking a look at Cassidy’s worst moments as a legislator… well, there’s a lot to choose from:
- January 9th, 2009: Cassidy votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- April 29th, 2009: Bill Cassidy votes against the Hate Crimes Expansion that would provide protections to LGBTQ citizens.
- July 31st, 2009: Cassidy votes against the widely successful “Cash for Clunkers” program that helped save the American auto industry.
- June 30th, 2010: After Wall Street bankers taking unnecessary risks nearly imploded the global economy in 2007, legislation finally comes forward to prevent the same behaviors from being permitted in the future. The signature piece of legislation to prevent another financial meltdown was Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, which Bill Cassidy voted against.
- July 30th, 2010: Months after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a bill comes to the floor to better regulate off-shore drilling. Cassidy is apparently alright with ecological disasters continuing in the future, as he votes against it.
- December 8th, 2010: Rep. Cassidy votes against the DREAM Act.
- December 15th, 2010: Cassidy votes against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
- On January 5th, 2011, Rep. Cassidy votes the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for almost every attempt to do so since.
- On February 18th, 2011, Bill Cassidy votes to defund Planned Parenthood.
- March 17th, 2011: Rep. Cassidy votes to cut funding to National Public Radio.
- September 15th, 2012: Rep. Cassidy votes for the “No More Solyndras Act”.
- September 21st, 2012: Cassidy co-sponsors and votes for the “Stop the War on Coal Act”.
- January 15th, 2013: Bill Cassidy votes against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
- February 28th, 2013: Cassidy votes against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
- June 19th, 2013: Bill Cassidy votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Cassidy votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown. When the vote came up seventeen days later to re-open the government, Cassidy voted to keep it closed.
- Feb 26th, 2014: Bill Cassidy goes “all in” on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by voting for the “Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act”.
- July 10th, 2014: Cassidy votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
- January 6th, 2015: Bill Cassidy’ first act in the Senate is to vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
- Sept. 24th, 2015: Cassidy votes to defund Planned Parenthood, based on conservative outrage over a video concocted by the Center for Medical Progress that had been repeatedly debunked by investigators, and eventually resulted in the CMP being hit with criminal charges.
- December 3rd, 2015: Sen. Cassidy votes to protect the right of people on terror watch lists to still buy guns and explosives.
- June 20th, 2016: Bill Cassidy votes to protect the right for people to transfer their guns and explosives to people on terror watch lists.
- July 25th, 2017: Cassidy votes for the BCRA, aka Trumpcare.
- December 20th, 2017: Sen. Cassidy votes for the GOP Tax Plan/Scam, that places the burden of taxation upon the working class and almost none upon our country’s billionaires.
- October 6th, 2018: Bill Cassidy votes to put accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court.
- February 14th, 2019: Cassidy votes to approve the nomination of William Barr to be the country’s Attorney General, even though he was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. (SPOILER ALERT: He’s still crooked as a snake with scoliosis).
- January 31st, 2020: Sen. Cassidy votes against witnesses being allowed in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
- February 5th, 2020: Bill Cassidy votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance in the 2020 elections.
- February 25th, 2020: Cassidy co-sponsors and votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.
Bill Cassidy is currently trying to leverage his experience as a doctor prior to being in office into an easy path to re-election during the COVID-19 outbreak, hoping that the malfeasance of the White House and the GOP overall demanding the country reopen doesn’t blow up in his face, and harm his own chances in November. However, we would recommend that voters in Louisiana might want to look at his history of trying to strip people of healthcare before they just rubber stamp him in again. Frankly, we’re interested to see if Cassidy can continue to ignore the Hippocratic oath he once took about “doing no harm” or if he’s going to jump in line behind Donald Trump and the rest of the idiots in his party about “reopening the country to save the economy” even as tens of thousands of people die from coronavirus.
Sadly, we’re predicting the latter.
One Year Ago, May 14th, 2019: Burt Minor (IL)
Two Years Ago, May 14th, 2018: Jesse Kremer (WI)… 2018 Update
Three Years Ago, May 14th, 2017: Jesse Kremer (WI)… 2017 Update
Four Years Ago, May 14th, 2016: Jesse Kremer (WI)… Original Profile
Five Years Ago, May 14th, 2015: Jeffrey Wood (WI)