The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a part of Joe Biden's infrastructure package, is a lifeline for families struggling with internet bills. While the media is busy chasing after every hair-brained thought from Donald Trump, the underreported ACP offered substantial discounts on internet bills for families, up to $30 a month, and an even more meaningful $75 a month for families on tribal lands. This program, which covers twenty-two million households, comes at a cost of $14.2 billion. The program expired on April 30, and while the Senate is considering extending the program, the GOP has decided that the people are not worth giving Joe Biden a policy victory. Bloomberg News reported that Senate Republicans“don’t want to hand President Joe Biden an election-year victory on the legislation.”
This latest failure by Republicans to govern came shortly after they refused to pass an immigration and border bill they claimed was imperative. When Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas was asked why he said, “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.” The American public gets a constant harangue from Republicans about immigrant crime, and that it means life and death, but as with the ACP, partisanship trumps (no pun intended) the people.
We may have hit a new low.
In a press release from the Food and Drug Administration, “The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law on December 13, 2016, by President Obama, was designed to help ‘accelerate medical product development and bring new innovations and advances to patients who need them faster and more efficiently.’ A vital element of that act was a proposal by President Biden to cut the rates of cancer in half over the next 25 years. Dubbed the Moonshot, Mr. Biden will have to rely on Congress to refund the program since the Republican-controlled House's new spending package in March no longer contains funding for the Cures Act. Jon Retzlaff, chief policy officer and vice president of science policy and government affairs for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), is sounding an alarm. Harking back to the GOP battles with Obama and a Republican-controlled House over healthcare, Retzlaff is calling for an intense response. “Something dramatic may be necessary” again, Retzlaff said, much like the 10,000-strong rally and show of support orchestrated by the AACR. Cancer research has never been controversial, and bipartisanship has always been a given.
For the current GOP, which announced it was planning to impeach Joe Biden before his Inauguration, nothing should come as a surprise. In a tweet on January 13, 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced she would file articles of Impeachment the day after Mr. Biden was sworn in. “On January 21, 2021, I'll be filing Articles of Impeachment against Joe Biden for abuse of power,”wrote Greene.What used to be at least an effort to appear bipartisan has devolved into an all-out war with the American people as collateral damage.
On a personal note, I just lost a good friend to pancreatic cancer, partly because he could not afford insurance that, with early detection, may have given him a fighting chance.
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