Republicans: Total War Against the Poor

The Republican Party has only one program to conceal behind its incessant guerilla tactics against Barack Obama: the war against the poorest. During the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney hinted at his party’s thoughts when speaking of the 47 percent of those pariah Americans who would always support the 44th [president] because Democrats favored social programs that allowed them to get by without working.

Just a few days later, Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, continued in the same vein, “We will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.”

Health insurance reform efforts have brought to light startling proof of hostile Republican attitudes, not just toward the poor, whom they consider to be profiteers, but also toward blacks and Hispanics. Republicans will do anything to keep these voters far away, not just from the voting booths, but now from health care too.

Because of the responses of Republican governors to the health care law, one-third of the poorest blacks and single mothers and half of the working poor will be excluded from health care reform efforts, according to a New York Times study, even though these people are exactly whom the law sought to protect. We are talking about 8 million people — those who are just over the limit that would allow them to qualify for Medicaid, but who lack the resources to take advantage of government assistance for insurance. The U.S. law fixes the poverty line at $19,500 for a family of three.

What is the problem with these people? These poor live in a state with a Republican governor. Twenty-six states have rejected the expansion of Medicaid to this category of Americans, but these 26 states, which make up less than 50 percent of the country’s population, represent 68 percent of the country’s poor. Is this a coincidence? All of the southern states, except Arkansas, have decided to reject the expansion of Medicaid, the federal aid program that allows the poorest in the country to have access to health care. These are exactly the states that need health reform, yet they have rejected it. According to the New York Times study, 14 million Americans who are otherwise eligible for coverage under the law are not covered because of discriminatory policies from dissenting states. In the South, six blacks out of 10 are not insured.

Racism is definitely not dead — far from it.