I was raised in a family of Republicans in the midwest. I went to high school where a lot of the kids came from Republican families. To this day, I have many Republicans in my life who I think are smart and caring people, who I happen to (sometimes vehemently) disagree with. This article isn't about them though. If I asked any of them if it was a good idea to take health care away from 24 million people, they would say no. To be fair, they would also tell me why they think Obamacare is a disaster, but even in this time of polarizing politics, they wouldn't endorse what the House GOP did yesterday. They took a bill that their constituencies (across party lines) hated only three weeks ago and they made it crueler and more heartless. Then they shoved it through the House without waiting for a CBO score to tell them just how it would affect regular Americans or to see if it would add to the deficit. Why? Because for all their talk of fiscal responsibility, and for all their talk of fixing our health care system, what this current iteration of the Republican party actually cares most about is making the rich richer.

Paul Ryan Is a Depraved Bullshit Artist He’s no genius.

For years now, Paul Ryan has been selling this narrative to the American people that he's a wonky policy nerd who just wants to get in there and cut spending so he can lower the deficit, specifically in the form of Obamacare. The problem is this bill doesn't even attempt to do that. Sure, it guts health care spending, but it mitigates any savings by giving the rich tax cuts. This would be roughly akin to saying I needed to save more money, so I was going to give up my car and ride a bike, then I used the money to pay for Uber Black Cars everywhere I went. Once you acknowledge that this is what's happening, Paul Ryan and the House GOP lose any idealogical leg they had to stand on, and what you're left with is basically a simple bank transfer.

Ryan transfers money from the HEALTHCARE FOR POOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY NEED IT TO SURVIVE account and deposits it into MONEY TO BE GIVEN BACK TO RICH PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T LOOKED AT A PRICE TAG IN DECADES IF EVER account. That is absolutely immoral. For a party that has spent the last two decades wrapping itself in both the flag and the pages of the Bible, hypocrisy doesn't even begin to get at it. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Not if you're poor.

Let's look at what the Bible says about all of this:

Matthew 19:24: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Here's another:

Mark 10:21: "Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me."

One more:

Matthew 21:34-36: "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me."

Now, I don't believe the words of Jesus are necessarily how our politicians should govern, but if you go down the list of GOP reps who voted to take money that saved poor people's lives and give it to rich people, you'll find a whole bunch of people who do. And not for nothing, as a moral philosophy, our government could do a lot worse than the words of Jesus.

So if you're keeping score at home, this bill doesn't live up to the idealogical belief that Paul Ryan peddled for a decade. It doesn't live up to the writings of our founding fathers, which the right loves to fetishize. And it does the exact opposite of what Jesus would want Christians to do. And why? Because they're rich and because their friends are rich, and they decided that the preservation of that wealth was worth more than their ideologies, their history, their faith, and most importantly the lives of a majority of the people they were elected to serve.

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The Shame and Cruelty of the GOP