Just when you think it can’t get worse, out comes another budget proposal that will harm public health.
“President Trump’s 2018 budget request to Congress seeks massive cuts in spending on health programs, including medical research, disease prevention programs and health insurance for children of the working poor. The National Cancer Institute would be hit with a $1 billion cut compared to its 2017 budget.
“The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute would see a $575 million cut, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would see a reduction of $838 million. The administration would cut the overall National Institutes of Health budget from $31.8 billion to $26 billion.”
Funding for public health and medical research has traditionally been bipartisan. Will the Republican members of Congress go along with a plan that will cut these vital activities for the sake of tax cuts and military spending?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Those with the money will be able to pay for their medical care and those without will perish. This is our new democracy at it’s best (SMH)
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Actually, I think we’re closer to this: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/05/22/death-republic
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you are correct. History repeating itself. If we look at the past, we can see the future.
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Does it ever occur to these dunderheads that they will be hurt by all these cuts in the long run, no matter how much money they have?!? All the other civilized wealthy democracies have universal health care and medications are a fraction of what they cost in the US. Oh no, we can’t have universal health care in the US because that would be communism, socialism, tyranny and loss of freedom, according to the libertarian/Ayn Randians/GOP. When does this country grow a brain when it comes to health care? Ever?
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I think the budget will be published two days from now. The extent of the damage to social and civic programs will be evident in chilling detail then. We don’t need demonstrations alone, we need political organizing like never before.
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Yes!!!
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The rethuglican party is a defacto death panel. They are ruled by magical thinking, such as if we take away the “crutch” of gov’t then people will be free like never before and make everything better for themselves almost instantly. By themselves. Alone. Meanwhile the cronyism at the top continues since that’s their meritocracy, wealth is their only measure of morality. This is the only reality their policies are based in. None of it even rises to the level of the hypocritical, mal-informed stupidity of Ayn Rand. Those few that stand for the reason that once was found in the now deceased and denied-by-their-own conservative mindset are unable to stand up for themselves let alone reason itself.
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330 billion a year in extra costs, is what patent protected drugs cost Americans over what the “free market” generic value of those drugs would be.. All research should be sponsored by the Government . As Jonas Salk said about polio vaccine, can you patent the sun. Government funded research is not only necessary it is the fiscally responsible answer to our healthcare. Pharma must be relegated to producing generic drugs researched and developed with government funding. The same can be applied to other R&D as well. How much of our technology was developed through defense or NASA contracts from Teflon to the touch screen . “Why You Can Thank the Government for Your iPhone”
http://time.com/4089171/mariana-mazzucato/
Fat chance of that when we get 13 democrats together with 40 republicans voting to prevent Americans from importing cheaper American drugs from Canada. Our legislature is bought and paid for by corporate donations and future lobbying positions . It is difficult pointing to the greed of the Republicans when Democrats join them in the orgy of greed.
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Makes sense in this new world. I’m guessing there aren’t so many kickbacks and little dark money in this sector to take advantage of. For example, with the billions that the Saudis will pay us for our goods will the funding actually come for higher gas prices? We have been suppressing the price of gas. And, when I took a business class in Italy we were taught that one had to add the cost of kickbacks to the balance sheet in order to do any business at all in the Mideastern countries. Now that certain industries don’t have to declare funds used like kickbacks, something Obama was against, the business as usual group is happy again. Things are not as they seem on the surface.
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Arms deals are a form of money laundering since the USA often gives “foreign aid” that immediately gets turned around and spent on weapons we make, directly benefitting our defense contractors. It’s another taxpayer subsidy of an already cash rich market sector. The CEO’s of said defense contractors are some of the highest paid in any market sector. I’m sure that is a big surprise to everyone as are the campaign contributions from the defense industry.
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The text of DeVos’ speech to the voucher lobbying group is out:
https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/prepared-remarks-us-secretary-education-betsy-devos-american-federation-childrens-national-policy-summit
The US Secretary of Education and her staff (and hugely expensive special security detail, presumably) spent an entire work day yesterday bashing public schools.
The message from the federal government is clear- go to a public school and you will end up in prison, go to a private school and you will end up in college.
We’re all paying them for this. They’re conducting a privatization political campaign on our dime.
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Also, the public should probably find out that big plans are afoot in ed reform.
Despite denials , DeVos absolutely plans complete privatization:
“The time has expired for “reform”. We need a transformation – a transformation that will open up America’s closed and antiquated education system.
If we really want to help students, then we need to focus everything about education on individual students – funding, supporting and investing in them. Not in buildings; not in systems.
It shouldn’t matter where a student learns so long as they are actually learning.
It shouldn’t matter if learning takes place in a traditional public school, a Catholic school, a charter school, a non-sectarian private school, a Jewish school, a home school, a magnet school, an online school, any customized combination of those schools – or in an educational setting yet to be developed.”
Public school kids can forget about getting any support from the federal employees their parents are paying. These folks are vehemently and specifically anti-public school- they’re opposed to the schools 90% of US students attend.
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This is absolutely horrible. Take away from those in need and give more to the wealthy. Unbelievable. And then to say those on SS disability will be happier when they get jobs is beyond anything imaginable. “There’s a dignity to work”, is nonsense when there are no jobs.
…………….
White House To Release ‘Taxpayer First’ Budget Plan, With Cuts To Safety Net Programs…NPR
…The plan was crafted with a skeptical eye toward programs that serve the needy. Over a decade, it calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits.
“We are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs,” Mulvaney said. “We are going to measure compassion and success by the number of people we help get off of those programs to get back in charge of their own lives.”…
“The president is essentially abandoning many people the economy has left behind — a large number of whom voted for him — and is pursuing policies that would make their lives more difficult than they already are,” said Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities…
Some of the proposed cuts to programs like Social Security’s disability benefits are designed to push more people into the workforce. With 10,000 baby boomers hitting retirement age each day, and an official unemployment rate of 4.4 percent, it would be difficult for the U.S. economy to grow as fast as the administration envisions without enlisting an army of new workers.
“We need folks to work,” Mulvaney said. “There’s a dignity to work. And there’s a necessity to work to help the country succeed.”…
And while the president has proposed trillions of dollars in tax cuts — aimed mostly at the wealthy — the budget assumes tax revenues are largely unaffected….
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DeVos called public school supporters “flat earthers” in her speech promoting private schools.
This must be the new “collaborative” approach ed reformers are always talking about.
She’s really convinced the time is right to eradicate public schools. She’s very excited about getting to work on the privatization plan. Anyone who dissents will be sneeringly dismissed as a “flat earther”
The speech she gives to ed reform lobbyists is much different than what she said in Van Wert Ohio where she promised to support public schools, but this is par for the course for ed reform politicians. They don’t attack public schools when they’re standing in one, using our kids as props. They wait until they get back to the safety of the echo chamber to really let loose.
She misled those nice people who welcomed her in Van Wert. They were afraid she’d use the federal government to bash their schools and that is in fact what she is doing. They were right.
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Chiara,
DeVos probably knows flat-earthers and funded them when she was funding creationism.
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Is it legal to deny public schools grant funding if states won’t consent to privatization?
Will public schools still be eligible for federal grants, or are we now completely excluded? All grants will go to charter and private schools? That can’t be lawful, can it?
Can DC politicians like DeVos bar public schools from access to federal grants based solely upon her ideological opposition to our schools?
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Maybe it’s good ed reform is going all-in on privatization. Democrats will have to choose. They can stick with the ed reform agenda or they can defend kids and parents in public schools.
We’ll know Wednesday. If they’re as weak on public education as they have been for the last decade kids in public schools are screwed.
I wish we had one strong voice in DC who values public schools. I don’t know how it happened that 90% of kids have NO advocates in their own damn government. It’s really a travesty.
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Wow. Privatization is moving fast. Ed reform already got two Congressional sponsors of their national voucher plan:
“Rokita is working with Sen. Marco Rubio on legislation, according to the release.
“I am optimistic about what we can achieve for our kids and future generations when we work together. I look forward to hearing more about the administration’s plans and how we can expand school choice to all 50 states while making sure education stays in the hands of states, districts, and families,” Rokita said in the release.”
No one in Congress has put in a single work hour on public schools this year, but they find time to fund private schools!
Good to see our public servants are hard at work weakening and denigrating the schools our children attend.
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Seems to me big pharma would be as upset as anyone. Government research provides a great deal of their R&D. It’s not like they develop their drugs from the ground up – they use promising research from the public/university sector and go from there. These sorts of budget cuts are cutting into their corporate welfare. Not that I’m shedding any tears for them, but if anyone has the influence to stop this, it would be big pharma.
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It is big Pharma that has to be driven from research . Patents are rents enforced by the government to divert income to the owners of the (intellectual) property. The entire concept is socialism for the rich.It assumes that individuals and not technological evolution are responsible for progress . Bill Gates did not invent the computer , did not even invent DOS. He is a landlord collecting rent with Government as the enforcer. From evolution, to the light bulb, to the telephone, to polio vaccine ,to the airplane ,we have examples of multiple invention at the same time. Technology evolves .
50% of Pharma research is conducted through NIH funding.
In addition the majority of Private drug research is conducted in institutions that would barely be of scale to conduct it,if not for Govt funding. Universities and Teaching hospitals associated with them would be a fraction of the size without funding for grants,without the student loan program.
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Isn’t cruel and unusual punishment illegal?
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I am NOT speechless. Dump is not right tin his head and heart. His idea of healthy is eating junk food and drinking diet cokes while his family gets cosmetic surgeries.
Trump HATES America and wants to make us GRATE. He should just move to Russia and change his citizen papers.
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Here is the proposed 2018 budget filled with some bizarre reasoning and all of the cuts. I look a complex documents like this using key word searches. Some of interest are
discretionary
mandatory
education,
families
business
military
Obamacare
I will not spend much time on this, but the narratives disclose whose values are in play and how they propose to put our money in the pot to advance them and which programs and values are scheduled to be dumped.
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I think the SSM’s* budget comes under the “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” concept.
*Salmon** Swamp Monster
**Color not fish, I wouldn’t denigrate the regal salmon like that!
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Here’s an article that explains a $2,000,000,000 error in the budget:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-budget-based-on-usd2-trillion-math-error.html
And here’s the secretary of the treasury’s explanation: “This is a preliminary document that will be refined”
If this budget is not DOA in Congress we should all lose a lot of sleep…
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