Dear Editor,
In March, Democrats worked with Republicans to pass a bipartisan Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.
Republicans repaid them by passing a highly partisan Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) with a hefty helping of continued tax relief for the rich and modest tax relief for the rest of us.
Incredibly, Republicans were aware of, but didn’t fix, a looming health insurance bomb at the same time. That bomb is a tax credit for 24 million Americans who get health insurance under Obamacare, which will end at the end of December. By not addressing it in their BBB, insurance premiums for 150,000 Georgians will skyrocket by almost 200%.
National polls show the current government shutdown is being blamed primarily on Congressional Republicans and the White House.
Democrats say they want to work with Republicans to fix this bomb before it explodes. Republicans must have thought their own voters wouldn’t pay attention, but eyes are opening across America.
We Georgians are hurting already.
Evans Memorial is on the brink of closing its ICU, and St. Mary’s has already cut OB/GYN services in Lithonia. Rural mothers-to-be will now have to travel 45 miles to Athens for care.
Republicans want Democrats to vote for another Continuing Resolution to keep the government open another six weeks, promising to work on this health care bomb “in the future.”
This promise might be believable if it weren’t for the president’s well-known practice of changing his mind, sometimes daily. Remember how he torpedoed a bipartisan bill on immigration last summer when he demanded the Republicans revoke their support to give him a campaign issue?
This time around, the Democrats are too savvy to fall for Congressional hat tricks again. This time, we the people are demanding leadership from both sides of the aisle.
R. A. Smith, Athens