Entries related to "senate"The Long-Awaited Senate Health Reform BillOn Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released his version of health reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There’s lots of good news here, especially for low-income Americans (our focus in this debate) — Reid’s bill expands Medicaid to all persons at or below 133 percent of the poverty line and prioritizes of funding for community health centers (CHC) along the lines of S.486. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will cost $849 billion over ten years and reduce the federal deficit by $127 billion the first ten years. It is expected to provide 31 million uninsured persons with health coverage through Medicaid and private health coverage, thus covering 94 percent of Americans. However, the Senate must first begin debate. The Senate is expected to vote on a Motion to Proceed with tomorrow (Saturday) at 8 pm. 60 votes will be needed to pass the motion and allow debate to begin. If the motion fails, health reform will stall. House slashes foreign assistance; Senate needs to hear from youThe House of Representatives has voted to make severe cuts to poverty-focused foreign assistance, including global health, basic education, and microcredit programs. Now the Senate must pass its own spending bill, and your senators need to hear from you Cuts That Kill: The Senate Must Restore Global Health FundingFrom Joanne's Huffington Post Blog Last week Congress approved a two-week extension of federal funding to avoid a looming government shutdown. The vote postpones -- but does not resolve -- potentially devastating cuts to global health programs. The House-proposed bill for the balance of 2011 proposes deep cuts to some of the most effective investments the US makes globally, including a drastic 40 percent reduction for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In a recent interview Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and advisor to President George W. Bush, called the cuts "irrelevant and destructive." He's right on both counts, and there's still time for Congress to reverse course. The cuts are irrelevant to the deficit problem that members of Congress are ostensibly trying to solve. Our entire foreign aid portfolio amounts to little more than a rounding error in the federal budget. Foreign aid focused on health, education, economic opportunity, and other anti-poverty programs account for less than 1 percent of federal spending. Even if Americans believed that erasing these programs was a good idea -- and they don't, as public opinion polls consistently reveal -- it wouldn't put a dent in the deficit. These cuts are destructive because they would be measured in human lives. |