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From State Senator Janet Bewley
Don’t Buy the Snake Oil
Without the other provisions of the ACA, a law requiring insurance plans to
cover pre-existing
conditions, by itself, is almost meaningless.
I
thought the days when shameless con men could get away with peddling snake oil
as a health care tonic were long over. Unfortunately, some of my
Republican colleagues are trying to revive that tradition. Earlier this
week the Senate voted in the middle of the night (well, early morning) on a
bill that pretended to protect people with pre-existing health conditions.
Neither
Assembly Bill 365, as amended by the State Assembly nor the Senate Republicans
substitute amendment would have protected people with pre-existing conditions
if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is overturned. Without the other
provisions of the ACA, a law requiring insurance plans to cover pre-existing
conditions, by itself, is almost meaningless.
Nothing
in the republican’s proposals would prevent insurance companies from imposing
annual or lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits provided under the
plans they sell. Nothing in these proposals would require insurance
companies to cover the medications that people with pre-existing conditions
depend on, or limit the amount they could set for co-pays and
deductibles. The only thing these proposals offer is false hope. I
voted no.
Minutes
before that vote, Democrats presented an amendment that would have provided
genuine protections. Republicans refused to even take it up. And
now they are running around pretending that somehow democrats are responsible
for their failure to pass their hollowed out version of a pre-existing
conditions exclusion. They are as shameless as those old time snake oil
peddlers.
The
protections that people with pre-existing conditions need were in the
Democratic amendment, and every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican
voted it down. They voted against genuine state level protections
for those with pre-exiting conditions. Then they defeated their own
half-hearted measure. But they found the votes to keep the greatest
threat to those with pre-existing conditions, their own ACA lawsuit,
alive.
The
only reason a bill banning pre-existing condition exclusions would be needed at
the state level is if the ACA were overturned by the pending lawsuit that
Wisconsin’s outgoing Attorney General joined. The man who defeated him
ran on a promise to pull the state out of that lawsuit.
Instead
of listening to the voters, the republicans who control the legislature used
their lame duck extraordinary session to overturn the will of the voters and
passed a bill that prevents our new Attorney General from pulling Wisconsin out
of the lawsuit. Taxpayers will be forced to pay for the lawsuit they
voted to end.
So
don’t fall for the hype you might be hearing. Don’t be fooled into buying
what my republican colleagues are trying to sell. They are the ones who
voted to put insurance company profits ahead of health of the people of the
great state of Wisconsin. There’s nothing but false hope in their
half-empty bottle of snake oil called AB 365.
From State Senator Janet Bewley
If They Had
Done Their Jobs, They Would Have Kept Their Jobs
They held an unprecedented lame duck session, extraordinary only for its failure to do anything for the people and taxpayers who paid for it.
Did they come in to deal with Wisconsin jobs at Kimberly Clark, the whole point of this session in the first place? No.
Did they come in to make good on Governor Walker’s promises to people with preexisting conditions and their families? No. They proved those promises empty, and worse.
After seven years of railing the nation in private sector job creation, legislative Republicans decided to make WEDC - an agency that has proven itself unable or unwilling to count jobs, a permanent source of hefty handouts at your expense.
After working tirelessly to take protections away from people with preexisting conditions, Republicans offered ineffective protections with one hand while the hand behind their back guaranteed their ability to continue the greatest threat to people with pre-existing conditions: Republicans' costly and anti-Wisconsin lawsuit to repeal the ACA.
Then they created a blank check so they can hire a legion of high-priced attorneys at your expense to file endless lawsuits. Then they created a whole new bureaucracy in a legislative committee to create more red tape, delays and cost.
This was another act of a seven year pattern of GOP politicians putting their own jobs ahead of the people who vote, and pay, for them. They’ve granted themselves powers the constitution gives to the executive branch, and thanks to the heavily-gerrymandered districts they drew for themselves in 2011, they won’t be giving back that power anytime soon.
Unfortunately, it's the taxpayers of Wisconsin who have to live with, and pay for, the consequences of this contemptible pettiness.
From the Wisconsin AFL-CIO
The people went to the polls in
November and voted for a new direction in Madison, not a repeat of the Scott
Walker dirty tricks playbook. Yet, immediately after Tony Evers was elected
Governor, Republicans in the State Legislature revealed their plans to hold a
special legislative session to take away critical pieces of the new Democratic
governor's authority before he takes office.
A special session is a period
when the legislature meets and passes bills outside of a normally scheduled
legislative session.
Republican legislators even want
to change long established election dates and add an additional statewide
election that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars just to give their
hand-picked conservative justice a better chance at winning a Supreme Court
election.
TAKE ACTION NOW to stop the
GOP lame duck power grab:
1. CALL 866-832-1560 and tell your legislators you oppose the lame-duck special
session power grab.
3. Share the call-in number
to your social media pages.
Republicans aren’t looking to help
Wisconsinites in this special session, but to rig our democracy to their own
unfair advantage. Senate
Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) plainly stated the
motive for changing the election date is to give a hand-picked conservative
judge a 'better chance' at election.
Republicans in the
Legislature need to stop playing politics. Voters went to the polls and spoke loud and clear that we want
a new direction in Madison, not the same old political games from Scott Walker.
Instead of being sore losers, the legislature needs to start solving
Wisconsin’s problems. Wisconsinites want our elected officials to work together
on the issues that matter to working families: creating good jobs, fixing a
rigged economy that favors the wealthy, protecting affordable health care, and
strengthening our middle class by strengthening union rights.
Take action now to stop the
special session power grab today. CALL 866-832-1560 and tell your legislators you oppose the lame-duck special
session and want our elected officials to work together with our newly elected
Governor on solving real issues facing working families.
In Solidarity,
Stephanie Bloomingdale, President
Dennis Delie, Secretary-Treasurer
Bottom of Form
Joel
McNally: Walker’s horrendous Foxconn deal looks even worse
By Joel McNally SMS
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It probably didn’t seem that way at the
time, but Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker may have been fortunate the election
ending his political career took place when it did. Just a week later, a major
national announcement revealed the horrendous $4 billion deal Walker negotiated
with the Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn was by far the most astronomical
taxpayer giveaway in U.S. history producing the fewest jobs.
If voters had received such glaring proof
of political incompetence before the election, Walker’s narrow defeat could
have been a massive landslide even if he escaped getting tarred, feathered and
chased out of the state with pitchforks.
The Tuesday after Election Day was when
Amazon announced the grand-prize winners of the largest economic development
jackpot in American history: New York, Virginia and Tennessee would gain 55,000
high-paying Amazon jobs in exchange for more than $2.4 billion in state
subsidies.
It didn’t take long for Wisconsin taxpayers
to realize exactly what Amazon’s announcement meant for them. They’d been taken
to the cleaners by Walker, President Donald Trump and Terry Gou, Foxconn’s
billionaire chairman. Walker’s deal with Foxconn provided $4 billion in state
and local taxpayer subsidies in exchange for an actual guarantee of only 3,000
jobs paying an average of $53,000 a year in a Mount Pleasant electronics plant.
Compare that to the enormous number of
higher-paying jobs costing far less for the winners of the great Amazon
lottery. Amazon split 50,000 headquarters jobs averaging $150,000 a year with
25,000 going to New York, which bid $1.5 billion in direct state subsidies, and
25,000 to Virginia bidding only $573 million in direct subsidies plus
infrastructure, transportation and educational improvements. Nashville, Tenn.,
was a surprise last-minute addition, winning an Amazon operations center
providing 5,000 new jobs in exchange for $102 million in state subsidies.
Economic experts who track politicians
frantically throwing enormous bundles of cash at multibillion-dollar corporations
in exchange for jobs question whether such one-sided deals ever pay off for
taxpayers. Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated state
taxpayers wouldn’t recoup their obscenely high cash payments to Foxconn for a
quarter-century. Economists thought New York’s $1.5 billion for 25,000 Amazon
jobs already was a gross overpayment. That puts Wisconsin’s $4 billion to
Foxconn for fewer jobs than Nashville got for $102 million on another planet
somewhere.
“The Foxconn deal is one of the all-time
historically bad tax giveaways by any state,” said Jeffrey Dorfman, an
economics professor at the University of Georgia, “whereas the Amazon deals
look more like an average bad tax giveaway to a big business.”
Walker outrageously exaggerated the jobs
from Foxconn from the day in July 2017 he joined Trump in the White House for
the honor of being selected to pay Chairman Gou billions of dollars to
manufacture electronic LCD screens in Wisconsin. The three celebrants — Walker,
Trump and Gou — all had a history of promising unbelievable jobs numbers that
failed to materialize.
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Walker rhetorically added 10,000 to the
3,000 jobs Foxconn actually was required to provide contractually. Trump and
Gou backed up that dubious claim with vague references to one day possibly
providing “up to 13,000 jobs.” Or possibly not.
Many state taxpayers immediately were
concerned they might actually be subsidizing jobs for residents of Illinois
with the border only 20 miles away. Despite the billions in state tax dollars
going to Foxconn, Walker’s agreement didn’t require preferential hiring for
Wisconsin residents.
Weekly News from Your Wisconsin Democratic Party
Chair
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Wisconsinites
left behind the politics of divide and conquer when they elected Tony Evers and
Mandela Barnes to be their governor and lt. governor.
Wisconsinites want their leaders to address the issues facing their families
and communities, like our rising health care costs and crumbling roads.
Instead, Vos has chosen to pick petty political fights over addressing real
issues.
On Baraboo
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