On Saturday, let them hear you in D.C.
By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
As I write, Senate Republicans are playing who’s-got-the-bill and, let us hope, heading for strike three after failing twice in 24 hours to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gut Medicaid, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and leave 18 million or 22 million or 23 million of the most vulnerable among us without health care.
If the "skinny" repeal eventually gets the votes, everything will go back to the House of Representatives for negotiations, then back to the Senate again. If it fails, who doubts that Mitch McConnell & co. will be back shortly with almost the same thing in a slightly different package? After seven years of the dog chasing the car, barking “repeal and/or replace!” and passing 40+ symbolic resolutions, Congressional Republicans now have the Affordable Care Act in their jaws and we have the dispiriting spectacle before us. To their great surprise, they caught it. What to do?
Trump, Pence, McConnell and Ryan have made it clear: They’re going to keep trying because their party can’t afford to fail. But the country can’t afford for them to succeed.
The attack on health care is all of a piece with the Trump administration’s attack on the environment and the regulatory agencies that keep our air and water clean. And the most devastating health impacts of that environmental assault will be felt in precisely those communities where millions of people rely on the Affordable Care Act for preventive care.
That’s why, ahead of this week’s political high drama around the vote to repeal the ACA, the Alaska Wilderness League, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Green Latinos, Green For All, Safe Climate Campaign, Environmental Working Group, Endangered Species Coalition, Earthworks, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Oil Change International, The Climate Reality Project, Clean Water Action, Climate Vote Hawks, and 350.org sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Schumer, and House Speaker Ryan and House Minority Leader Pelosi urging support of the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood. We noted that “preventive health services and increased access to insurance coverage are critical to promoting public health, especially in the low-income and front line communities that often bear the brunt of environmental pollution.”
“Despite their attempts to hide it from the American public, it’s no secret that Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are seeking to roll back vital environmental and health protections that keep our families and communities healthy and safe,” said Kirin Kennedy, the Sierra Club’s Associate Legislative Director. “Pollution isn’t cheap -- and the hospital and doctor's visits, medications, and other health needs that come with breathing dirty air and drinking dirty water add up, and without affordable health care, are extremely difficult to cover. Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump's deadly and dangerous attempts to gut environmental standards will only be compounded by this mean-spirited plan to strip healthcare away from millions.”
Two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Bonnie Tillery, a volunteer with the Sierra Club's Gender, Equity and Environment Program, wrote that a successful assault on the ACA “will be especially hard on women who have had access to contraceptives…. We no longer have a firewall protecting a woman’s right to be able to choose for herself the number and spacing of the children she will have, if she even chooses to have children. Meanwhile, nearly half the pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned.”
For all of the above reasons, social justice and environmental groups are mobilizing nationwide for Our Lives on the Line -- a day of action on Saturday, July 29 -- to advocate for the protection of the Affordable Care Act. Join us as we tell all Senators NO to their attack on women, families and our communities.
On the Central Coast, come to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for a sign-making workshop at 11a.m.; spread out at noon. Bring ideas, materials to share, and extra signs. RSVP here.