Right now it's really hard to pick who is the worst person in the world since just about every Republican in the House or Senate is vying for that role, but let's give it at this moment to be shared jointly between House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Fred Upton. Sure, they're telling 9/11 first responders fighting for the health care, we'll help you out. In return for screwing over people on Medicare.
All the congressional leaders involved insist they support passing a bill that permanently provides health care for more than 33,000 responders who are sick from their World Trade Center service, but negotiations over how to fund the bill without tacking the cost onto the deficit have grown increasingly contentious in recent days.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has settled on a so-called "pay-for" for about half the program that Democrats have long deemed toxic—subjecting Medicare recipients to income tests so that a wealthier person pays more. Upton's version amounts to about $70 a month. Most Democrats and groups like AARP have opposed such means-testing on the grounds that it would turn Medicare into a welfare program […]
Upton pushed ahead with the plan Tuesday, reiterating his intentions in a press release that cast his funding idea as entitlement reform and a tax on the rich.
First, it is absolutely obscene that these assholes insist that taking care of the people who ran into the toxic clouds of the fallen World Trade Center to try to save lives, and spent day after day after day searching for remains of the victims isn't something to just fucking pay for. Without worrying about the deficit. Without taking a pound of flesh from somebody else they find unworthy. Second, to say that this approach "puts 9/11 heroes ahead of millionaires," as a Republican spokesperson did, is so transparently bullshit that it's unbelievable even a Republican would say it.
You want to put 9/11 heroes ahead of millionaires? Just fucking tax millionaires!!! It's not hard. But this gets even worse.
The spokesperson also described concerns of 9/11 responders that the committee was looking to trim funding as "hogwash," although two sources forwarded to HuffPost a discussion document that appears to contemplate cutting about $250 million from the expected $4 billion-plus cost of the health and treatment program.
They're not only setting up this absolutely noxious funding fight, but they're trying to figure out how to nickel and dime 9/11 heroes!!! Those cuts, by the way, are reportedly being directed by none other than Speaker Paul Ryan. "A spokesman for Ryan flatly denied those suspicions, however, leaving it in Upton's lap." He's not off the hook with John Feal, an injured Ground Zero construction worker who leads the FealGood Foundation advocacy group:
"Speaker Ryan and Fred Upton have joined the asshole of the month club," he said. "I'm coming down there tomorrow. I'm leaving tonight, and I'm not in a Merry Christmas mood.
