1 minute:

Many of you have already seen the short video of Iowa’s first district congress member, Marionette Miller-Meeks, running like a scared rabbit from a man with a recorder who is trying to ask her questions. If you did not know, that man is Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works. Mr. Lawson is a highly considered man in Washington for his expertise and advocacy for those receiving Social Security.

So Mr. Lawson is a very highly respected member of the Washington environs. Why then is Miller-Meeks practically tripping over herself to get to the sanctum of the congressional elevator? Miller-Meeks is running because she knows she just cast a vote of which she should be enormously ashamed.

She knows that by voting for Donald Trump’s Big Very Bad Bill she voted to close at least 4 hospitals in her district and to take medical care from some 67,000 or more citizens in her district. That is more than the population of Waterloo or Dubuque. Tough luck suckers. 

This video was taken after Miller-Meeks had voted the Big Very Bad Bill out of committee. Now we are two days removed from her voting once more to advance the Big Very Bad Bill despite her show that she is well aware of what severe problems her vote will cause. She obviously has little concern for her constituents.

Miller-Meeks is not the only representative worthy of our scorn for her vote. As usual the Iowa delegation does not take a back seat to anyone in their subservience to Trump. Miller-Meeks just happened to get caught in an act that outwardly showed that she is well aware of just how wrong her vote is. Hell, it even goes against the oath she took as a physician. 

Adding to Miller-Meeks knowledge that what she is doing is bad is the fact that MAGAs called meetings at 10PM and 1AM to hide what they were doing under the cover of darkness. MAGA leaders and followers alike knew full well what they are doing. Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern calls MAGAs out on hiding under the cover of night (12 minutes)

I have no doubt that Nunn and Hinson are well aware of how damaging their vote is. I know not how Feenstra feels, but voting against health care for Iowans is a hell of a thing to run for governor on. I can almost hear him say “And I will end health care in this state for anyone who makes less than a quarter mil a year!” 

Of course the staggering cuts to Medicaid and their disastrous effects have been the focal point of the Big Very Bad Bill, but there is much more that is Very Bad also. As pointed out by Heather  Cox Richardson in her daily update on History “Letters To An American” that this bill will also trigger cuts to Medicare:

“Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.”

SURPRISE! Hey, Seniors, how about them apples? Bet Miller-Meeks probably isn’t aware of that.

While the cuts to health care aimed at the poor and most vulnerable are maybe the most immediately alarming parts of the Big Very Bad Bill, but there is a lot more that is bad, bad, bad! Again we look to Heather Cox Richardson for some brief highlights:

Just after 1:00 this morning, the House Rules Committee began its hearing on what congressional Republicans have officially named The One Big, Beautiful Bill. If passed, this measure will put Trump’s wish list into law. Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Three judges are currently considering whether the administration is in contempt of court over its apparent disregard for court orders over its rendition of undocumented immigrants to third countries.

But the center of the bill is indeed related to money: it is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be “the biggest cut in the program’s history,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”

Call or write Miller-Meeks and the other three stooges for the rich. The congressional switch board number is on the side of the page.

Let us hope elections are fair and free in November. Until then let’s put as much pressure on those who are supposed to represent us.