(ThyBlackMan.com) Now that the One Big, Beautiful Bill or as Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it the Big, Ugly Bill eyes are focused on next year’s 2026 midterm elections.
During the run up to the vote, Congressman Jeffries took the Congress and the nation to church. He talked passionately and recounted the verses in the Book of Matthew, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
One could not help wondering what Republican House members were thinking when they heard those words attributed to Jesus. Did Republican House members decide to transport their minds to someplace else so they would not become weak-kneed.
Or perhaps they were unfamiliar with that Biblical verse and thought it was some left wing, Marxist-Leninism nonsense the Democratic House leader was quoting? “Who is this Marxist Matthew? This left wing Jesus? Don’t they know American voters are not into that?”
Perhaps, the part about being a stranger that is as a stranger in a foreign land went completely over their heads. Then again, perhaps Republican lawmakers (can they still be called lawmakers or would a more accurate term be law breakers?) decide that not the word of Jesus but the word of Trump was all that mattered.
Republicans at one time projected themselves as the party of family values, religious principles and fiscal responsibilities. That Republican party went the way of video stores, beepers, drive-in movie theaters and fax machines.
It is now the party of Trump. What Trump wants and only what he wants is what they want. To hell with their constituents. To hell with the American people. As Kentucky US Senator Mitch McConnell stated as regards Americans losing their health and other safety net benefits, “Get over it.”
He it seems is not the only Republican who apparently believes American voters will get over losing their health and safety net benefits and programs. Benefits and programs eliminated in order that super rich American and US corporations can acquire even greater wealth.
Democratic lawmakers and strategists on the other hand are giddy that with the enactment of the One, Big, Ugly Bill, American voters will take them off the sidelines and place them back in control of the House if not the Senate. They are projecting grave suffering for less affluent American families who because of the One Big, Ugly Bill lose health insurance coverage and end up sick or dying. Children starving and becoming ill as a result of food assistance programs being cut which ensured that school children from less affluent families were provided with supplement meals.
While wealthier Americans, millionaires and billionaires were having their taxes cut, middle and lower income Americans would see a reduction in their income. They would see their income reduced due to the increases in medical related costs that will be shifted to them by hospitals and other medical providers to cover the emergency care of people who lost their health coverage due to the changes to Medicaid and other social safety net programs.
Democrats are projecting that the One, Big, Ugly Bill will result in thousands of American deaths due to the loss of healthcare and other social safety net benefits and programs. Republicans are counting on that American voters would “get over it” if it were to occur. Republicans are probably right.
If thousands of deaths occur as a result of the vast and insensitive policy changes enacted in the Republican bill most Americans, Republicans believe, will not see or notice it. More important, Republicans are counting on the fact that most Americans would care even less.
If such deaths occurred if it was not a family member or very close friend such deaths would go unnoticed. But more important, Republican strategists probably suggested to wavering Republican lawmakers that those who might be negatively affected by the bill provisions are non-voters. Nothing to concern themselves with, suggested the Republican strategists.
Not only will Democrats not be able to get such voters to the polls to vote, the Republicans led by their supreme master of distraction will once again be successful in changing the political narrative to some cultural boogeyman that they will use to remain in control of the Congress.
In the 2024 election, the master of distraction and his Republican cohorts were extremely effective in making immigrants and transgender persons responsible for all the evil of the world. Republicans may not know how to govern, but they sure know how to successfully win elections.
They also know how to use misinformation, disinformation and outright lies to promote their candidates and their agenda. In addition to blaming immigrants and transgender persons for America’s problems they have used the image of the welfare queen milking the social safety net system at the expense of hard working Americans.
They have been successful in having many Americans believing the image. An image that they crafted over many years of a Black woman on welfare driving a late model luxury car.
However, the facts are that the majority of people on welfare and other social safety net programs are poor whites. Facts it seems tend to get lost in the narratives of Republican storytellers.
Democrats seem to be delighted that the Republicans passed their One, Big, Ugly Bill. That Republicans have gifted them the House of Representatives.
The day after the midterm elections in 2026, Democrats might be forced to shake their heads and wonder why they remain in the minority. Republicans might offer when the truth is viewed as a lie, and the lie is viewed as the truth all things are possible.
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
