Politics: gotta keep those tax cuts permanent

While the House is busy distracting everyone by popping a Boehner, they're also hitting poor folk with a moneyshot.

The spending bill, which covers a five-year period ending in 2010, will achieve savings of $6.4 billion in Medicare, the health care program for the elderly, through a variety of changes that include higher premiums for all beneficiaries, with steeper increases for the more affluent and a freeze in payments to home health care providers.

In the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled, $4.8 billion will be saved in part by increasing co-payments and reducing payments for prescription drugs.

Apparently the GOP thinks the best way to make problems with health care go away is to just get rid of health care all together. Who needs meds when you've got tax cuts?