Illness has no Party

Watch AOC Excoriate McConnell on House Floor,
saying Illness has No Party

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the House floor Friday on behalf of her working-class district and struggling Americans across the country to call out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for sending members of the upper chamber home for Thanksgiving without striking a deal on coronavirus pandemic relief legislation.

The New York Democrat decided to rise and speak out, she said, because McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, “decided to break the Senate.”

“And he broke the Senate,” she said, “as there are thousands of people in Texas lined up for food lines. He broke the Senate while hospitals no longer have beds to house the sick.”

“He broke the Senate, and dismissed the Senate, while 30 million Americans are on the brink of eviction,” she continued. “He dismissed the Senate when every single day, when we go back to our communities, people are asking us, ‘Where is there going to be help? Is there going to be a second stimulus check? Are we going to get the resources that we need?”

Recognizing that Americans continue to grapple with the “extraordinary health and economic hardship of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the congresswoman emphasized that “in breaking the Senate, we are abandoning our people.”

MY REACTION

AOC reminds us that when it comes to politics, illness has no Party. As we watched Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell break the Senate and send them home for the Thanksgiving holiday without helping those who are hungry, sick, unemployed, soon homeless, or about to lose their business; we’re reminded that Republicans and this administration have been trying to break even more.

They’ve been trying for 10 years to repeal the Affordable Care Act and are now in front of the Supreme Court trying to break it, and our healthcare. And they’re contesting election results and trying to break our government. There are many possible reasons for that, which I will not discuss here. But I refer you to my article, “AMERICA BROKEN: critiquing Capitalism, Healthcare & Politics,” to understand the role of extreme wealth and political corruption.

As for President Trump, one must question why his pandemic response has been so harmful, if he’s intentionally allowing hundreds of thousands of Americans to die needlessly, and if true, what his motives might be.

One theory is that it’s racially motivated, since low-income blacks and Latinos seem to be dying from COVID-19 at higher rates than affluent whites. Another theory is that its economic, since another group with high mortality rates is the elderly or those with serious preexisting conditions in nursing homes. Either way, dead people no longer depend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment insurance benefits, or other social services. And dead people don’t vote against you.