Republicans Are Literally Willing To Let People Die To Decrease Our Debt

Unfortunately, this is a choice which MANY Americans are faced with.

Republicans seem to believe that the biggest problem in our country is our debt. Despite the fact that people die because of lack of healthcare. Despite the fact that people are dying because of lack of food. Despite the fact that people are killing themselves because they don’t feel like they can go on living with the problems they face.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to gut programs like Medicare. What happens when you cut access to healthcare for poor people, and people who couldn’t regularly afford it? People die.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to cut programs like Social Security, which the elderly and disabled rely on. Which pays their bills and, if they’re lucky enough to receive enough, pays for them to eat. Social Security is a lifeline for millions of Americans. What happens when you cut the lifeline of the impoverished elderly and disabled? People die.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to eliminate the department of education. If they can’t do that, they’re constantly defunding education. When you cut education you doom the poor to perpetual generational poverty. If people can’t afford a 1st class education, and you don’t want to provide them with one, then you making rising out of poverty nearly impossible. What happens when you cut funding to education? People die.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to eliminate the EPA. What happens when you let corporations dump whatever pollutants they want into the air, water, and soil? People die.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to eliminate consumer protections. What happens when corporations are allowed to gouge the consumers to the point that they’re living in extreme poverty? People die.

To reduce our debt and deficit the Republicans want to cut access to STD prevention classes and contraceptives. When people have unprotected sex they’re more likely to contract an incurable disease, or end up with a child they can’t afford to raise, or end up having abortions to prevent having children they can’t afford to raise. What happens when you don’t teach people about safe sex, and provide them with easy access to contraceptives? People die. Fetuses are aborted, despite the fact that access to education and contraception could have prevented many of those pregnancies in the first place.

The Republicans also want to eliminate the minimum wage. What happens when people can’t make enough to afford to pay their bills, or to eat? People die.

This isn’t hyperbole. These are the real consequences of cutting aid to the people in our society who need it the most. Middle and working class Americans are walking on a tightrope figuratively juggling all the things they need to afford to stay alive. People like Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor, who were raised with a golden spoon in their mouth, have never had to walk that tightrope, or to worry about falling back on social safety nets. Because of that, they think that we can keep cutting these nets until there’s nothing left. It’s very easy for someone whose never walked that tightrope, whose never fallen, and who doesn’t expect to fall, to not want to pay for a net. But what happens if there’s no net? People die.

The problem with the Republican ideology is that they believe that people only fall into poverty, and wind up with government assistance, because they know they have the safety net available to them. They don’t see the American people struggling to walk that tightrope, and what they’re failing to realize is that without nets people will still fall, only there won’t be anything there to catch them.

Despite all of the consequences of cutting these programs, and the fact that so many Americans would be living in extreme poverty without safety nets, Republicans constantly claim that the greatest threat to our country is our debt problem. Our nation does have a significant amount of debt, but until we can actually address the issues which are literally causing people to die, they need to redirect their focus.

Republicans are constantly saying that raising taxes on the wealthy is not the solution to providing funding to these programs. They say that the working and middle class need to contribute more, and that we need to “broaden the tax base.” If the Republican Party continues to push for cuts to the programs which are keeping the poor and middle class alive, while simultaneously giving more money to the richest Americans, who are already thriving, they’ll have a much larger problem on their hands than the debt. They’ll have a disenfranchised proletariat with nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from an insurrection against their oppressors.

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