Winners, Losers

Remember, President Trump and nearly every Republican said there are no cuts – none, zero, zilch – in the Medicaid program.

Which seems to me to prove they were and are lying at least about that health program which provides medical care and services to children and medically challenged adults aged 18 to 64. Green energy, student loans, food benefits or SNAP, also on the chopping block, make up the lion's share of other reductions in order to afford investments in defense, border security and, the biggie, the extension of the 2017 temporary tax reductions for individuals and certain corporations.

One other truth in the nearly 1,000-page law is – drumroll – it adds an additional $3 trillion to our existing $37 trillion national debt.

And this comes from the Party of Lincoln, Reagan and current U.S. Rep. Chip Roy who all worship[ed] at the altar of no deficit spending.

So here we have what is known now as the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act [OBBBA] the largest and most far reaching domestic piece of legislation in perhaps 70 years. Winners in the new law are wealthier individuals, corporations, small and start-up businesses, the fossil fuel industry, including coal, the Department of Defense and of course border security.

Losers can be characterized as illegal immigrants, Medicaid recipients, alternative and/or renewable energy proponents and investors, students with debt and people who like to eat but don't have much money in order to do so.

And the division between the two major parties in DC could hardly have been more sharply drawn.

Every Democrat in both houses of Congress voted no, joined by only five Republicans out of 273 currently elected to office in Washington.

While many provisions in the OBBBA were nightmares for millions, others were sweet dreams for lobbyists. Lawmakers may claim they always read what they vote on; however, many do not. Lobbyists, though, are paid to do just that and then support, oppose, rewrite, delete, modify, expand, reduce or, in many other ways, respond to the hundreds, if not thousands of proposals considered annually along the Potomac. They, along with the professional staff for lawmakers, in truth have as much or even more input into what becomes what the rest of us must live by daily.

It's called democracy and while I do not and did not support Trump's greatest legislative victory, I think it is important to point out that it was created, through hours, days, weeks and months of debate and division and was finally decided by majority rule.

And it was all done without a shot being fired, which is remarkable, in a near equally split country, on this Fourth of July weekend as we celebrate our nation's 249th birthday.

Hopefully all of us will be around to see the 250th, the longest-lived democracy, by far, ever in the world.

Surely no American will stand in the way of that even grander and momentous moment in our long and storied history.

Surely.