by Soren Ryan-Jensen
As a voter who has consistently supported the Democratic Party since first becoming politically active, the ending of the government shutdown with the support from a number of democratic senators has cemented my disillusionment with the Democratic Party. If we had simply passed the budget to begin with, the blame for the resulting-suffering would lie solely with the Republican Party while preventing the issues we have seen with the loss of SNAP benefits and pay for our service members. Conversely, continuing to hold out would have enabled us to extract powerful concessions. Ultimately, the decision to approve the budget with as few concessions as we received, was the worst decision possible.
The new budget will cut off $13 billion to non-defense funding, with social welfare being a particular area of funding cuts. As a direct result of these cuts, social security is estimated to reach insolvency within 7 years and will be forced to downsize benefits. This corresponds to a series of increasing regulations on governmental welfare programs like Medicaid, which Republicans gave an employment-based eligibility scheme predicted to decrease GDP, state income, and overall economic activity. All of this without significant increases to the workforce, as most Medicaid recipients would be considered exempt anyway due to disability, age, or disease.
While researching these budget cuts, I found an itemized list of every grant the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) had slashed. I had the distinct displeasure of scrolling through page after page of vaccine programs for US children being cut. The total cuts, worth $2 billion dollars in total, would have funded programs like Vaccines for Children which aims to provide lower cost or free vaccines against diseases like Measles. Why didn’t we fight for these programs harder?
While I would have preferred that the democratic senators continued to vote no on the proposed budget, I can still understand the position of those who had decided to vote yes since the introduction of the budget. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada had voted to pass the budget since it came to the floor, citing the widespread pain this would cause to American citizens. I can respect the senator on this opinion, but I find it difficult to understand Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada who had only voted yes on the final vote, citing the very same issue. What else could we have expected?
Time and time again, we see this inability to actually tackle issues effectively from our elected party members. The issue of medical debt, and the corrupt nature of our healthcare system in this nation, has been largely unaddressed for decades despite both the political willpower and means to effect change. I mean, you could even tie this back to Republican talking points on governmental spending and appeals to working class suffering.
Medicare makes payments in excess of $160 billion annually for prescription medication, largely due to the truly insane mark-up pharmaceutical companies place on their drugs. As an example, Medicare pays approximately $126 per tablet for a drug called Imatinib, even though the actual acquisition cost is only around $4.20 per tablet, representing a markup of 3,000% for a month’s supply. On average, on-brand drugs cost 372% more to purchase in the US compared to abroad. It’s not even just the pharmaceutical companies that get in on the fun, CVS was recently found guilty of charging Medicare $95 million in faulty charges. This blatant price-gouging has persisted for so long it is normal for life-saving medication to be completely unaffordable. It is estimated that the anti-trust violations of big Pharma results in approximately $40.07 billion in damages annually. However, we can fix this problem. During the Biden administration, a deal was struck setting price ceilings on prescription drugs sold to Medicare that were previously costing the US government $50,482,188,000 annually. When our elected leaders choose to, they can make great strides in addressing societal issues.
However, the people we elect to the highest positions of power within our nation often do nothing to solve these foundational issues, driving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, into extensive debt and deaths of despair. Instead, individuals like former congressman Robert A. Brady (D) take what amounts to legal bribes. The former congressman received donations from Comcast and then supported them in their fight against Net Neutrality, the legal principle that prevented internet service providers from charging additional fees in an anti-competitive, anti-consumer manner. He is now the seemingly only employee of Robert A. Brady Consulting which received $111,000 from Comcast in 2024. Nancy Pelosi, another great example, has made $130 million during her 4 decade stint in office which represents a 16,930% return on her investment. Her prescient stock trading history has outperformed the Dow Jones (which saw a 2,300% increase within that same period) and has resulted in an investment fund “NANC” which tracks her trading patterns.
At this point, what reason do I have to vote blue? Because it’s the lesser of two evils? This isn’t normal, plenty of democracies around the world function with parties and politicians people *actually* support. Maybe the reason we have such a terrible voter turnout among other democracies, is because we don’t really have much of a democracy at all.