Why Trump is right to sue MN for giving in-state tuition to illegals

The Trump DOJ is suing Minnesota for breaking a 1996 law prohibiting in-state tuition for illegal aliens without offering in-state rates to all students regardless of residence. The DOJ successfully sued Texas for the same reason, which ended their policy, and other states are on the DOJ's radar. They're doing the right thing.

Why is it right, and why should you care? 

If you're not a Minnesota resident but live in one of the 24 states that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens, you're paying for it. The Minnesota Office of Higher education reports that 76 percent of their funding is from taxpayer dollars. State and local funding is used to provide in-state tuition, so it's your money. 

I've heard compelling, heartstring-pulling arguments against these lawsuits because DACA "kids" or "Dreamers" (people up to age 44 who were brought to America as children by their parents) will lose these reduced tuition benefits. 

They argue that ending this policy will hurt DACA "kids" more than American citizens who don't qualify for in-state tuition because DACA recipients "often don't qualify for any other scholarships or assistance." 

Except when the State of Minnesota provides an avenue for that.

Cue the "Minnesota Dream Act" that allows illegal aliens to apply for benefits like scholarships and in-state financial aid by "establishing residency." This opens up many financial aid doors that would otherwise be closed and allows them to bypass the Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FAFSA) program that low-income American citizens use to apply for tuition assistance. Illegal aliens are prohibited from receiving federal financial aid, so Minnesota and other blue states like Maine rode to the rescue to fix that.

I feel bad for DACA "kids." I think most people do, which is why we've accepted the "Dreamer" moniker (often used interchangeably with DACA) into our vernacular though it was coined when the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed to pass in 2001. People feel so bad for these "kids" that politicians don't dare overturn President Obama's Executive Order establishing DACA. It would be political suicide. Even people who disagree with illegal immigration tend to soften when Dreamers are invoked. 

As bad as we feel for Dreamers because of the decision their parents made (I must add the requisite "through no fault of their own"), shouldn't we also feel bad for American children whose parents made choices that negatively impact their access to college through no fault of their own? 

These American children aren't living the American Dream, but a Dickensien nightmare. My examples may seem hyperbolic (like when we debate defunding Planned Parenthood and everyone "needing" an abortion becomes a 10-year-old incest victim); however, these are examples of children's lives I've seen, lived. Even one of the challenges caused by parental choices detailed below could derail an American child's college dreams. These children have: 

• Parent(s) with a Substance Use Disorder (SUD)*. Their lives are unstable, chaotic. They may have lived in filth or moved around because their parent was unable to keep housing. The child may have never learned to drive because the family couldn't afford Driver's Ed or a car. (In states like Minnesota, driving is important because access to public transportation isn't readily available outside of major cities.) Children of addicts are at higher risk for addiction, so the child may have an SUD of their own before graduation. Popular shows such as Netflix's Ginny and Georgia or And Just Like That show the stress even children of privilege with supportive parents go through to prepare for college: 5.0 GPAs, staggering numbers of diverse extracurriculars for well-rounded college applications, ACT test tutors, consultants to help craft perfect admissions essays. Children of addicts often don't have access to these things, either due to economic issues caused by a parent's addiction or inability of the addicted parent to help organize a child's life day to day, let alone help her through successful transition into adulthood or the labyrinth of college admissions. There is no tuition break for children of addicts.
  
  *To everyone who argues,"addiction is a disease, not a choice," I say: every day parents don't choose sobriety, they're choosing addiction over their children. When my husband had cancer, he submitted to a month of torturous twice weekly chemotherapy injections directly into his brain through a port installed in his skull to get one more day of the six months they said chemo could give him to be a father. If doctors hadn't stopped treatment because (they admitted) it was killing him faster than the cancer, he would've continued. He died a week later. He'd have done anything--and I mean anything--to stick around, but he didn't have a choice because Cancer chose for him. Putting a bottle to your lips or a straw up your nose is not a disease like cancer, MS, or any disease that a parent does not choose that impacts the lives of their children, so I reject your argument.
  
  
• Parent(s) with other adictions (social media, sex). Have you heard a child say, "Mom, Mom, Mom, MOM, MOM!" before Mom looks up from her phone? According to a 2019 New York Times article, 45 percent of parents report feeling addicted to their phones. Other studies show a sad 65 percent of parents use phones during meals, and a terrifying 56 percent of parents use their phones while driving. Many children must compete for parental attention with this technological interloper from birth.
  
  A sex addicted single parent may parade a steady stream of partners through the home, putting the child at risk for abuse of all types. The parent's sexual behavior can result in a child's increased anxiety, depression, delinquency and poor school performance. There are no taxpayer-funded programs for children of parents with social media and sex additions.

• Able bodied parent(s) who don't work. Yes, these people exist, thus the need for the Big Beautiful Bill's adding work/volunteer/school requirements for able-bodied adults who choose not to work. There are a lot of reasons:  laziness; perceived or self-diagnosed but undocumented disability; "I'm too good for that job" syndrome; etc. Children living in these households are in poverty because of parental choices, not because of the post-COVID economy or other factors outside of parental control. These parents are often lazy or disorganized, so nobody checks backpacks, e-mails, or asks if the child has homework. The child's grade suffer, creating barriers to college dreams before they begin. If they clear the hurdles joblessness brings and have college ambitions, there's the North Star Promise program, State Financial Aid for children whose families meet income eligibility requirements. Please note that American students must compete with illegal aliens for these funds. 
  
  
• Hunger: Children living in poverty caused by parents' choices may be too consumed by essentials like food or shelter insecurity to think about excelling in school. It's hard to concentrate when you're stressed out and hungry. Even if there's food in the house, the parent may be too checked out to prepare it for the child, so he eats whatever his age or skill level allows or just goes hungry. Minnesota gives free breakfast and lunch to all children, forcing poor American children to compete for resources with illegal alien and wealthy children. Some school buses arrive at school too late for kids to eat breakfast. Four of six major food vendors that prepare school lunches also feed Minnesota's prisoners. Even hungry children will throw away disgusting prison food. When summer comes, due to Tim Walz' "I Spend Taxpayer Dollars on Food For Kids Who Don't Need It So I Can Brag About How I Feed Hungry Children" program, children are no longer automatically enrolled in a free/reduced-price program that follows them into summer to provide food support. Parents, who often struggle with simple tasks due to one or more of the factors listed here, must seek out paperwork to file for food support each summer. Some parents never complete this step resulting in three months of hunger for children, making Tim Walz' signature law even more jawdroppingly stupid. Hunger can directly affect school performance, which directly affects college access.
  
  
• Parents who choose divorce,** According to a Census.gov report, nearly 1/3 of American children experience divorce, which reduces family income by an average of 40 percent. The study found that divorce "reduces children's adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births." Even in the best circumstances, children must navigate two homes and endure destabilizing effects of parents dating or remarrying. The best-case scenario that puts children's needs first isn't the norm, so these children endure neglect and emotional, physical and even sexual abuse that their peers who live in nuclear families don't experience. Let's not forget the fresh hell experienced by children whose parents live apart but can't afford or just don't bother to divorce, so custody arrangements and child support orders usually in place to protect children of divorce are absent. There are no taxpayer-funded programs that specifically help children of divorce pay for college.
  
  **When I say "choose divorce," I'm referencing people who put their own happiness and fulfillment above that of their children and break up the family unit, careening their children's lives into turmoil, anxiety, and pain. I realize divorce is sometimes necessary (especially for the "Three A's:" adultery, addiction, abuse). Not all divorce should be avoided, but increasing numbers are avoidable as divorce for any reason is more socially acceptable than ever. All states have no-fault divorce laws. 
  
  
• Absent mother, father, or both. One or both parents decided living his best life was more important than sticking around and supporting his child emotionally, physically, financially. Adults raised in these fatherless (less often, motherless) homes will live with the effects of this decision forever. They may not have access to food or housing because of the absent parent's choices. Parents can be physically present but still absent, leaving the child to be raised by herself and the internet, if they have internet. The MacBook the child was presented with in first grade requires WiFi so she can do her homework. If homelessness has forced the family to live in a motel, school-provided computers may not work there. If there's no internet at home, the parent must have the means/money/initiative to drive her to a library or a parking lot to access WiFi just to get her homework done. (Note: paper and pencils work everywhere, no matter how poor you are.) If both parents choose to leave, the child may be raised by grandparents, other family, or in foster care. If foster homes are available, they complete high school/GED, are disabled, attend post-secondary school, or work 80 hours monthly, youth can remain in foster care up to age 21 in 48 states. That's a lot of "ifs," resulting in only 13 percent of Minnesota's foster children remaining in foster care past age 18. Most foster children get the gift of homelessness for their 18th birthday. Fostering Independence Grants is a Minnesota taxpayer-funded nonprofit that provides tuition assistance for foster children; but again, these children must compete with illegal aliens for these funds. 
  
  
• A Hobby Parent. This Dad picks up the child to play with it whenever it suits him and puts the child down when he's bored or something more interesting comes up. He's around, but he's not financially, physically, or emotionally accessable or stable for his child. He doesn't pay child support, and sometimes goes to great lengths to avoid paying, like allowing his driver's licence to be suspended due to unpaid child support giving him the circular excuse: "I can't pay child support because I don't have a job because I can't get one without a driver's licence because mine was suspended because I don't pay child support." Mom may be trying her best as a single mom on one income in a two-income economy. She might work multiple jobs with long hours or become depressed and spend most of her time in bed. Nobody makes dinner for that child. No one cares if he has breakfast. He gets himself ready for school, sometimes with the help of an older sibiling. 
  
  
• Abuse: An estimated one in three girls and one in five boys are victims of sexual abuse in the United States. Neglect is the most common form of child abuse, comprising 59 percent of abuse victims. Abused and neglected children are 11 times more likely to commit crimes as adults. Statistics on domestic abuse between adults in the home vary widely with estimates of between 3.3 and 10 million children witnessing domestic abuse. Living in these situations is never the child's choice. All of these forms of abuse have negative effects on school performance and mental health, which alters a child's future access to college. There are no taxpayer-funded scholarship programs for abused children.

Double, triple quadruple, etc., the effects of the above parents' choices if there are multiple children in the family. These children must compete for scarce resources of all types in their own homes before they try to go to college and compete with illegal aliens for scarce resources.

Illegal aliens are allowed to apply for every program I found that helps students whose college dreams are made harder by their parents' choices. In a de facto sanctuary state like Minnesota, this really matters. (Statewide sanctuary status failed to pass the legislature, so Minnesota is not a sanctuary state, it just tries to operate like one. Cities have sued to stop Walz from ordering them to operate like sanctuary cities. When will Minnesota be sued for violating the will of the people by flouting its own non-sanctuary-state status?) There are finite resources that must be spread out to citizen and non-citizen college applicants alike. There isn't enough money to go around and in a state like Minnesota, people in "underserved, under-represented communities, i.e., people of color, who make up the majority of illegal alien residents, are always first in line. 

Where are the expensive taxpayer-funded programs enshrined into law assisting American--I can't stress this enough--JUST AMERICAN CITIZEN college applicants living with the decisions their parents made that changed their lives forever? 

They don't exist. We don't help these college dreamers. We don't enact taxpayer-funded programs into law to help them out of the holes their parents dug for them. We hope they'll dig themselves out. 

The Cause of the Problem and Why There Should be No Solution

Most of the people making laws live in worlds where kids get new cars for their 16th birthdays, big graduation parties and send-offs to their bright, shiny college futures. They grow up eating dinner every night and breakfast every morning. They're taken to the doctor when they're sick and to the dentist twice a year. They get braces. They're carefully cared for, especially financially. Their grades are important, tracked, tutors hired if the child is struggling. This is not the whole of America, or even most of it.

For those who say "money doesn't buy happiness," I say, it buys food, medical care and housing. It buys transportation to both necessary and enriching activities. It pays for music lessons, sports equipment, and extra curriculars, which are increasingly provided a-la-carte as an added parental expense in public schools. In Minnesota, things like choir, band, sports and school counselors  (even at the elementary school level) are paid for by parents, not taxpayer-funded public schools. Students who don't have the kind of privilege lawmakers think most American students possess don't have easy access to things that look good on college applications that used to be "free" with a public school education. 

They think, "America is the wealthiest country in the world." You know, the kind of wealth with a big house, new car, maxed out credit cards, and drug-addicted kids huddled starving in a tent in the backyard. "We can afford to help everyone who comes to our country for a better life achieve the American dream." That would be nice if it were even a little bit true and if they focused on taking care of their own before taking care of others. Add the one-two punch of white guilt and white savior syndrome that infects many of America's powerful, and you wind up with too many American children who aren't seen as "underserved" and "underrepresented" living hellish lives nobody even tries to fix.

If we care so, so much about helping children of people who chose to bring them here (a choice no matter how you slice it) why don't we care just as much about helping American children who must live with their parents' choices? We all live with the choices our parents made, good or bad. Think about your life. You know it's true.

We don't because it's not politically viable and because it would be too expensive to help every American who had a crappy childhood. It'll get more expensive as mental health declines and addiction soars. 

Government can't be the salve for every wound. It can't heal scars or undo screwed up parental choices that negatively alter the prospects of their college-aged children. 

We pay for the choices of illegal immigrant parents but not not American parents. Does that make sense? No. Governor Walz executed a magic trick worthy of a Las Vegas stage: turning a projected $616 million surplus into a $6 billion deficit. Can we afford to be a magnet state for illegal aliens? No.

The only way to fix this is for the Trump DOJ to win its lawsuit and force Minnesota to stop giving in-state college benefits to illegal aliens. It would be even better if the lawsuit included access to all taxpayer-funded tuition programs. We should not overcorrect, as government often does, and add more programs to help American children at taxpayer expense. If we focused on lifting up all American children and stopped making them compete with illegal aliens for resources, there just might be enough to help victims of bad parenting using systems already in place.

Kendall Qualls announces run for MN Governor to packed house

The back room of the Rojo Mexican Grill in St. Louis Park was so packed last night that they had to stop letting people in due to fire codes. The doors to the oppressively hot room were opened to the sidewalk where the overflow crowd stood talking, waiting. I expected people to leave before Qualls began speaking, but they stayed. The last time I was in a room that hot with a packed crowd was when my son's band headlined at Station 4 in St. Paul. Both times people stayed because they were excited to be there to see the headliner take the stage and to listen.  

Last night's headliner was business leader Kendall Qualls, who took the stage to announce he is running to be Minnesota's next governor.

Despite the heat, there were smiles on the faces of the strikingly age- and racially-diverse crowd as Qualls delivered a message of hope for the people of Minnesota.

Qualls, who ran for the Republican nomination for governor in 2022, lost the nomination to Scott Jensen, who lost to Governor Tim Walz.

I remember Qualls from his 2020 run for the congressional seat eventually occupied by Dean Phillips. I was so impressed by him then that just last week while pondering a hopeless third term under Tim Walz I thought, "I wish Kendall Qualls would throw in his hat again." 

Last night, he did just that.

Yes, Qualls has run unsuccessfully for office before, but Qualls has demonstrated that he doesn't let anything keep him down. His is a quintessentially American story of a boy growing up in an impoverished broken home, working his way through college, serving his country, earning advanced degrees, and becoming a very successful business leader. As detailed on his website, KQforMN.com, Qualls shows he has the backbone to keep fighting to be Minnesota's governor and working hard to help Minnesota be a place where people want to live.

He talked of crime, of the fall of Minneapolis, of the out-of-control spending that led Tim Walz to oversee a financial landslide from an $616 million surplus to a projected $6 billion deficit, even after inflicting $10 billion in tax hikes on the people of Minnesota. State spending under Walz "...gives drunken sailors a bad name," said Qualls.

He spoke of Minnesotans who have fled to states that have lower taxes and of restoring the broken state so people will "stay in Minnesota and raise families in Minnesota for generations." 

I could feel hope creeping in while fanning my face with his brochure as Qualls spoke. Standing there recalling the conversation I had with my family last weekend about leaving the expensive national embarassment that Minneosta has become for somewhere more liveable, this beautiful place in which generations of our family have lived and died, I thought, "Maybe if we just hold on. Maybe the people of Minnesota have had enough and will vote for change." 

Kendall Qualls seems to embody positive change for Minnesota's future. 

Qualls said we need to "attract the sensible center to join us to restore Minnesota to its former glory." That may worry some conservative Republicans who are already concerned about Minnesota's Republican Party running "just another RINO." But Qualls, who began his speech by congratulating Americans for delivering Donald J. Trump a presidential and popular vote victory and wants Minnesotans to follow suit and vote for change in 2026, seeks to bring everyone who loves Minnesota into the Republican party's newer, bigger tent.

He asked that we close the meeting with a prayer. The people responded with an enthusiastic "Amen" before bursting into applause. 

Kendall Qualls is running for Governor of Minnesota in 2026. There will be other candidates, and I will address them here as well. I left last night wanting to learn more about what this man, who seems to love Minnesota as much as I do, will do to save it. The people who came to hear him speak last night gave him a very warm welcome. I stepped into the cool breeze of a bustling city street with something I haven't had in too long--hope.

What is a New Republican?

I recall riding in the backseat of the car while my parents were talking politics. I was seven years old, and it was near the end of the Vietnam War. I asked, "Daddy, what's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?" 

He said, "Democrats like things to change, and Republicans like things to stay the same."

"Then I'm a Republican," I said, knowing that I didn't like it when things changed.

For a child whose life isn't all sunshine and roses, change often means negative things: Daddy loses his job, Mom has to start working, child is suddenly a latch-key kid at a time when that isn't a thing. Change can be scary. I think a lot of people are scared now, but not everyone.

What I love about American politics in this moment is the elasticity of the political parties. I used to scoff at Democrats who kept saying that in the post-reconstruction days of the Civil War, the political parties "flipped." Republicans became the racists and Democrats, who had overseen slavery and segregation, became the "tolerant" ones. (I think "tolerant" is a pejorative term as regards race--should we merely "tolerate" someone's race?)

Many on the right thought this was ridiculous because of President Obama's choice of Vice President, Senator Joe Biden, an old-school Democrat who not only palled around with KKK members but fought against school desegregation. (Kamala Harris' only factually accurate campaign moment was when she called Biden a racist during a 2020 Democratic primary debate.) Also, because of stats like the 17 percent of Democrats who said they wouldn't vote for Obama over McCain simply because of his race, which could be a reason to pick known-racist Biden as VP.

Republicans have long rejected this notion of the parties "flipping," but have they flipped now? If aversion to change is the metric, they certainly have. Other metrics have changed as well:

What is a "New Republican?" 

• A Trump voter or someone who didn't vote for Trump but who likes the policies coming out of the second Trump Administration. They realize the presidency isn't about who you'd like to have a beer with, it's about who's a more effective leader.
• New Republicans are patriotic but don't associate it with war. They're largely anti-war, especially for regime change or to benefit the Military Industrial Complex. In the past, you'd hear "Military Industrial Complex" uttered by Republicans only when making fun of liberals, but New Republicans recognize and are suspicious of these entities. Any military action must meet "America First" standards.
• They're willing to admit mistakes. I no longer agree with some things I wrote post 9/11. Many apologize for supporting the Iraq War. Events like realizing there were no weapons of mass destruction revealed to even the most patriotic Republicans that our government isn't always good just because it's ours. Obama's weaponization of federal agencies, like using the IRS as a weapon to audit conservatives, surveilling conservative journalists, or Biden's assault on religious liberty, speech and parental rights cemented the sad reality that our government isn't always on our side.
• New Republicans are fiscally conservative and hate government waste. This was given a lot of lip service by Republicans, but their actions didn't match their words. My late husband stopped identifying as Republican due to huge spending increases during G.W. Bush's presidency. It's still a problem, but New Republicans are more likely to call out their representatives for overspending.
• After years of proven government censorship, New Republicans are the Free Speech Party, a title ceded by the right during the McCarthy era anti-Communist hearings and claimed by the likes of the nakedly left-wing ACLU. The left now openly argues in favor of censorship. 
• They're younger and more racially diverse than ever.
• New Republicans love change--fast and sweeping, please. Known for their conservative values, Republicans have long been associated with keeping the status quo or returning to the past. While many still advocate conservative values like family, patriotism, and parental rights, most New Republicans want change. 
• In addition to "flipping" with Democrats on classical liberal issues, New Republicans are becoming more Libertarian than ever. The Dobbs decision led some pro-life Republicans to believe abortion education is a more effective strategy than outlawing it. Many Libertarians seem happy with a lot of the Trump Administration's policies, though they may disagree with implementation, like "due process" for illegal alien deportations. 

We've just passed the 100-day mark of Trump's second presidency. Change is happening so fast that a lot of people are freaked out by its pace and volume--mostly people on the left. The right voted for change, the change Trump ran on, and are thrilled to watch it happening at breakneck speed in real time. 

I was watching a TV interview today about military technological innovations and the new U.S./Ukraine minerals deal. The interview was followed by a White House Press Briefing about abolishing the Department of Education and Trump's signing an Executive Order to protect religious liberty, among many things. This is just one morning on Trump Time.

The left calls it "chaotic" and "destabilizing." Can some things, like tariffs, be destabilizing? Yes. Is that always bad? No. The New Republican party's position is that the status quo is unacceptably dangerous and change--rapid, immense change--is necessary for America's survival.

The left likes its change stirred nice and slow. The toxic brew of leftist ownership of media, academia and culture simmered to a boil during the Obama and Biden Administrations. There was a Trump Administration in between, but COVID seemed to erase a lot of what Trump tried to do. The rest was undone by Biden's executive orders and leftist tracks laid deep underneath Washington by Obama and his ilk running a parallel government that stopped Trump's progress. 

New Republicans saw their country dying before their eyes and moved to stop it by re-electing Donald Trump--a disrupter, change agent, a doer. Even Democrats knew the country was starving for change as they laughably tried to run the current Vice President as the "change" candidate. 

Changes coming out of Washington during this new Trump Administration are too numerous to list, but we all feel the inertia. Leftists reacted by self- infantilizing. Septuagenarians/octogenarians lead sit-ins and rallies at which they're all required to drop F-bombs, somehow managing to sound like they're headed to The Oval for a gangbang, and (oh my God) sing-alongs. It could work. The singing is so bad they might get what they want if it'll make them stop--like waterboarding or blasting Metallica to prisoners around the clock at Guantanamo Bay.

They've also returned to Fearmongering's Greatest Hits aimed at the elderly and disabled, making their 2012 "Throw Granny off a Cliff" ad campaign look like Sesame Street. Only the most craven politician goes out of his way to make the most vulnerable Americans think they're about to lose their Social Security and housing, especially while knowing it's not true. It's effective because these groups have disproportionately low incomes, which often leaves them with access solely to leftist media sources that put them in information silos the left counts on. 

But most New Republicans are happy. For example, Republicans overwhelmingly approve of DOGE, with a CBS News/YouGov poll showing 81 percent of Republicans think DOGE should have "a lot" or "some" influence over spending and operations of government agencies. New Republicans are excited about the prospect of aggressively saving taxpayer dollars, something that would have put people to sleep five years ago. Trump's immigration policy is overwhelmingly popular with New Republicans as well.

Sure, not all New Republicans love everything Trump's doing. I don't trust anyone who loves everything any politician does. It's sycophantic. I didn't love everything my husband did, and he was my husband. We should examine the policies of politicians we agree with and speak out if we don't agree. With our newer, bigger tent sheltering many high-profile former Democrats, New Republicans can do this in ways Democrats can't. For example, I'm not a fan of Trump's "Gold Card" for bringing in rich immigrants or his selling any merch like shoes, etc. I know conservative Republicans who feel Kilmar Abrego Garcia needs to come back to the U.S. for more "due process." Yet, when an illegal alien has been adjudicated deported twice, how much process is still due?

It's good to respectfully disagree with our own side, especially if we can foster debate and make sense while doing it. New Republicans are having a very good time under the second Trump Administration. Democrats are still going with "recite the talking points, fall in line, or get primaried/cancelled." 

If my Dad were still alive, I'd love to ask, "What's a Republican now, Daddy?" He was a politically savvy guy. I think he'd say they're people who love the Tilt-a-Whirl change the New Republican party espouses because they love the country they're trying to save, staying in place without change was not an option, and they're willing to go along for the wild ride even if they sometimes feel the need to hold on for dear life.

Democrats are on the sidelines watching, afraid, nauseated and weak. Change is too scary for them. Now they're the ones who want things to stay the same. 

Democrats stoke terror of entitlement cuts for vulnerable Americans

Terror: a state of intense or overwhelming fear

Terrorism: the systematic use of terror, specifically as a means of coercion

                                                                                                    - Mirriam Webster Dictionary

In an exchange meant to make her sound like a nice person, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D) of Wisconsin announced she's planning to bring a guest to President Trump's address to Congress tomorrow night. In an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," she said she's bringing a woman with cancer who is "terrifed about the possible impacts of a cut to Medicaid." 

I'm sorry a woman has cancer. I'm sorry she needs Medicaid for her treatment. Mostly, I'm angry that she's "terrified" because the bellows stoking her fear is her Democrat host for tomorrow's speech.

I first became aware of the depth of the terrorism (yep) perpetrated by the left as regards entitlement programs in an online group for a rare disease from which I suffer. Immediately after Trump's election victory, the woman who started the group into which she'd poured years of hard work announced she was shutting it down because Trump "ran on cutting Medicaid, subsidized housing, and abolishing the Americans With Disabilities Act" (ADA). Making sure she didn't lose housing, medical care, food support and civil rights would be a full-time job. No more time for anything else for her or, as she warned, the other disabled people in the group. I wasn't a frequent visitor to this group because I don't like to define myself by my medical condition, but I did hop on occasionally to ask questions about a disease that I sometimes have to spell for doctors. But for many, it was a lifeline.

These are the actions of a terrorized person. When her stunning announcement was made in a series of rolling posts over weeks, group members were expressly told no questions were allowed--confirmation bias only, please. Some people who seemed truly fearful upon hearing this "news" tried to ask for sources but were removed or ignored. Terror spread.

It's not my intention to mock this woman and the other terrified people. What you may be detecting as snark is anger and deep sadness about what these people are going through. These stories are illustrative of the effects of Democrat propaganda fed to vulnerable people. The Democratic Party should swap out their donkey icon for a spoon.

In the months since the election, I've tried to find any mention of Trump's saying he's cutting these programs. I've found the opposite. He has expressly said he isn't, and I can't even find his mentioning the ADA. 

That's not to say I'm in love with the budget bill. It sets the budget goals for fiscal years 2025-2034. It raises spending across all sectors every year. This isn't new. I recall pundits saying only a Democrat can call a spending increase a cut. 

So where are the savings supposed to come from? From cutting wasteful spending. This has been directed to be done carefully by each department, not just by DOGE but by the departments themselves. If the $2 Trillion in cuts can't be achieved, the bill directs that the tax cuts be rolled back to make up for it. If it looks like they'll have to cut at the meat of important entitlement programs, it's up to the American people to push back on that. These plans will take time. Nobody is cutting Medicaid tomorrow--if at all--in a way that will hurt the poor and disabled. 

So lets cut the hysteria. It's impossible to research this topic (save reading the actual bill) without slogging through a swamp of hyperbolic opinion pieces talking about how important benefits for the needy may have to possibly potentially be cut. Interestingly, few of them include cuts in waste or fraud in their fictional yarns about how cuts would/could be done, and if they mention it, it's only to say fraud is extremely rare.  Speculative hand-wringing pieces about how spending cuts could potentially be horrific are endemic. No wonder people are afraid. 

These successful terror tactics are diabolical and as old as politics. Trump says something and people then fill in what they think he must really mean or follow their own crazy domino theories of what one of his actions will surely lead to. Then they present it as fact. The piles of media about looming devastating cuts are merely theories manufactured by people who are critical of everything Trump does, so all of their hypothetical outcomes are horrible. The narrative itself is horrible too.

Like this headline from the Autism Self Advocacy Network, "ASAN condemns Trump's baseless attacks on people with disabilities." The article says Trump blamed January's plane/helicoptor crash on disabled people. Remember when he did that? You don't because he didn't. What he really said was that DEI was responsible; yes, seemingly without evidence. I didn't approve of his timing. But that is not the same as saying disabled people caused the crash. That is simply a group with an axe to grind trying to move people to action by putting words in Trump's mouth.

Most of the media's language surrounding Trump's alleged cutting of entitlement programs stems from the aggressive $2 Trillion spending cut goal in the latest budget language and from DOGE's stated goal. People run with that and say things like, "This may lead some people to think that it might be possible that the government could maybe potentially cut entitlements because we don't see how you can cut that much from the budget without likely enacting entitlement cuts."

Is that a direct quote? No. Is it an accurate depiction of the prolifigate use of qualifiers used in everything I've read on the subject? Yes. 

Agressive cuts to waste, fraud, abuse and simple overspending might, maybe, possibly, probably, lead people to think, make people believe--these are the words and phrases used around the idea that Trump's spending goals could, in someone's opinion, lead to entitlement cuts. The most often-cited reason is they can't see any other way, which could mean they lack imagination, intelligence, political will, or they could be right. But there are no true data, just scare tactics wrapped in CYA qualifiers used to incite terror in the most vulnerable among us and those who care for them.

I have some words for what Democrats and their media partners are doing here: shamful, discraceful, cold blooded, political, evil.

Think of these motivations as they parade their "plus ones" at tomorrow's speech. CNN reported that the House Democratic Policy and Comminications Committee sent a memo to Democrats to bring someone who has been hurt or will be hurt (?) by Trump's policies. I understand there'll be a number of disabled veterans there. It would be nice to think the disabled are actually being respected by congressional Democrats instead of used as props to prove some nebulous point or to terrify other disabled people even more. 

Yeah. That would be nice.

    

Beware of refusing government benefits--they'll punish you for life

Eliminating penalties could save government $12 Billion annually

There are two ways they'll get 'cha:

1. Widows/Widowers/Divorcees

Your spouse has died while employed. He died before retirement age, or he/you are past retirement age and he was still working. (This also applies if you're younger but legally disabled.) You were on his employer's health insurance plan. If you don't make the right decision, you will pay penalties for the rest of your life.

When your spouse dies while employed, you'll be offered COBRA benefits, even if you're Medicare eligible. COBRA legislation was passed in 1985 to give employees and their dependents temporary access to their former employer's health insurance plan. You can receive COBRA for 36 months after your spouse's death. What if you choose it?

COBRA is no walk in the park. While it gives continuity of care to widows (whom professionals advise not to make important decisions for a year), it's expensive. With COBRA, your spouse's employer provides an umbrella for you to continue on the identical health plan you're used to. Many choose it because they've met their deductible for the year. Some choose it due to complex medical issues for which they've assembled teams of caregivers. The only difference is that now you're responsible for the entire premium. Many widows won't be able to afford that, but some will and will do it just to avoid adding more change to an ever-growing pile of change at the worst time in their lives.

If you wish to end it or it expires, you'll need to go on Medicare. That's when you'll find out you've made a big mistake, and you had no idea this was even a thing, let alone something that would cost you more money forever.

You will be charged, without exception, a 10 percent penalty for each year you were eligible for Medicare but chose not to enroll. For example, if you choose to stay on COBRA for the allowed 36 months, you'll pay 30 percent more for your Medicare premium for the rest of your life.

How the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) makes Medicare penalties possible:

It's an astonishing feat of slight of hand, really. The ACA mandated that people have and employers offer "creditable coverage." This means it must be "affordable" and offer "minimum essential coverage." "Affordable" is whatever they want it to mean. "Minimum essential coverage" is important medical coverage like single men having coverage for prenatal care.

Most widowed people never think going on COBRA is a risk to their financial future because it's identical to the plan they were on when their spouse died. The reason COBRA doesn't meet the standard under the ACA is it's not "affordable."

So the government penalizes you for choosing expensive health insurance, whatever your personal reasons, during what experts say is the most stressful time in a person's life, because they decided for you that it's too expensive. So, to remedy that they make you pay more money for your Medicare insurance for the rest of your life.  

Well, that sounds reasonable to absolutely no one. Especially because nobody tells you this when you're faced with the decision. When asked why they don't mandatorily tell widows about the COBRA penalty, the Social Security representative I spoke with after 9.5 hours on hold said it's because, well...because they don't. "It's not in the packet we have for widows." That was the actual answer. Even though every widow with a working spouse will be offered COBRA because it's the law.

2. Retirement-age workers:

Our aging population and bad economy has led to more people (11 million) working past retirement age. According to the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of retirement-age workers work full time, a 33 percent increase since 1987. 

You become eligible for Medicare in the seven months straddling your 65th birthday. If you or your spouse have the audacity to work and stay on your employer's health plan past that age, you're going to eventually pay the price. Pew also notes that record numbers of retirement-age workers are eligible for employer benefits like 401(k), pensions, and health insurance. You decide to take it. 

Here's where you'll get tripped up. The majority of older workers work for small companies. Small companies don't have to offer health insurance under the ACA, but if they do, they're "required" to offer "creditable coverage." If your insurance doesn't meet that standard, you'll be penalized when you go on Medicare. 

Your employer doesn't really have to tell you the insurance they offered doesn't meet the standard. Surprise! This happens more often than you'd expect because the ACA allows for substandard plans to be "grandfathered" and "grandmothered(?)" in. The "requirement" is a soft requirement, which results in the company's not so much being required to provide creditable coverage as your being required to receive it. I've spent hours researching whether small companies pay a per-employee penalty for doing this (large ones do) and some resources say they do, some say they maybe do, some say they don't... I give up. I'm sure that's how they feel too when met with these reams of regulations.

They use the same 10-percent-per-eligible-year penalty system for these workers. I couldn't find any reference to a percentage cap, e.g. if you work until age 75, you'll pay 10 percent for the 10 years you could have been on government insurance. That's a 100 percent penalty, doubling your premium for the rest of your life. If you work longer, it'll be more. (There are also potential Medicare Part D penalties under this scenario, but this is already an exhausting amount of information, so I won't go into that now.)

And here you thought you were saving the government money by not burdening them with your healthcare bills and taking care of it independently! It seems the government thinks that's a bad thing. They argue that they want literally everyone who's eligible for Medicare to enroll because they're spreading the risk by making healthier people pay premiums to cover costs for less healthy enrollees. I understand that risk pools are a part of insurance underwriting, but I'd like some hard data on how much money they're saving under this system.

Possible Solutions

Does the penalty system profit the government on the backs of some of society's most vulnerable: widowed people, the elderly, and the disabled? How does the math shake out from the penalties collected vs money saved by not having to pay for their medical bills for years?* I think at least an estimation of that data should be available and debated so we can move to the important thing: changing policy.

Medicare doesn't tell you about these penalties. The bipartisan BENES 2.0 Act would require them to warn people about the penalties of delaying Medicare enrollment, but there has been no action on the legislation since it was introduced in May of 2023. They should add language to the bill (just in case someone tries to read it again) that mandates all widows be warned during their inevitable contact with Social Security after their spouses die so they, I don't know, WON'T CHOOSE COBRA. 

Legislation was introduced in May, 2024 to allow those on COBRA to enroll in Medicare Part B without penalty. One problem with the bill is that it would apply only to those who begin COBRA coverage January 2025 or later. I'd make it retroactive. In fact, I prefer a bill that wipes out penalties altogether for the 779,400 Americans who pay them (as of 2021, the last year for which data is available). 

If I could make policy, I'd eliminate the penalties (retroactively) and (after looking at the numbers) propose a 5 percent decrease in premiums for each year someone doesn't enroll in Medicare. 

After all, we already have laws in place to help delay people's retirement as long as possible (raising retirement age, increasing benefits for each year you delay, not giving widow's benefits to widows younger than 60, etc.) to keep income taxes rolling in and Social Security dollars in government pockets. Why are opposite systems in place to encourage Medicare enrollment as soon as possible?

Why not a carrot rather than a stick? It's just a hypothesis, but given our population's demographics and increased life expectancy since Social Security was enacted, it could wind up saving taxpayer dollars while simultaneously giving a break to these hardworking, sometimes broken people. Unless saving money isn't really the goal.

Oooh, and while we're problem solving, maybe we should take another look at that Affordable Care Act. Do it for the widows and the elderly.

*Our federal government spends $848.2 billion per year on Medicare, $15,727 per Medicare recipient. Costs have risen from 10 percent of our federal budget to nearly 14 percent in the last 30 years. Medicare Parts B and D have several revenue streams (including premiums), but most revenue is from "government contributions." If each of the 779,400 people who currently pay Medicare penalties delayed enrollment for just one year, it would have saved taxpayers more than $12.3 billion. If each person pays a 10 percent penalty for that year, the government earns just $14.5 million. So, I suppose, they're making money on both ends in the current system, because each person who delays also pays. But incentivizing them to continue on private insurance could save more money than penalizing or threatening penalties if they don't. It's an imperfect calculation, but it shows me that we'd save a lot of money if we encouraged people to delay Medicare enrollment rather than penalizing them.