By JAVIER MANJARRES

Everyone’s favorite Congressman they-love-to-hate, Alan Grayson, is up to his old tricks again, as he puts out yet another fundraising email that includes a questionable image.

Earlier this year, Grayson used a KKK flag-burning image to depict ‘Tea Party’ Americans, which set off a ‘firestorm’ of bad press for the self-proclaimed “Congressman with Guts,” but that is probably what he was looking for. You know what they say, “all press, is good press.”

Grayson’s chief 2014 Republican opponent in the 2014 election cycle, Jorge Bonilla, was quick to pounce of Grayson’s flag-burning stunt, giving him more national name recognition, and helping with fundraising of his own.

Now Grayson has targeted Republican Congressman  Paul Ryan, calling him the “Commander-in-Chief of the Benefits Thieves,” accusing his “Ryan Budget” of eliminating every single Medicare guaranteed benefit, and to do the same with “every Medicaid guaranteed benefit.”

The image that Grayson includes in his fundraising email, is a primate-like caricature of Paul Ryan . Now, I am sure Grayson and others on the Left will say that this image is just that, a caricature of Ryan, and that by no way makes him look like a monkey, but you be the judge of that.

Grayson is dead-set against any benefit cut against Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, even the ones that would benefit the programs in the long-run.

Here is what Grayson wrote to his supporters.

  Dear Friend,

Rep. Paul Ryan, Commander-in-Chief of the Benefits Thieves, threw in the towel a week ago. He doesn’t see cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits in the near future. Which makes him so, so sad. But that news comes as a relief to the millions upon millions of Americans who paid for those benefits, who earned those benefits, who depend on those benefits, and who deserve to receive them. Let me explain . . . .

This year, 2013, was slated to be a very bad year for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients. The House Republicans had lined up behind the Ryan Budget in 2011 and 2012. The Ryan Budget proposes to eliminate every Medicare guaranteed benefit(replacing them with a check that would fall $6000 short of paying for those benefits each year), and toeliminate every Medicaid guaranteed benefit(replacing them with fifty checks, one to each state, money that likely would never reach the poor and the sick). Paul Ryan also labeled Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

And if that weren’t bad enough, the budget that the White House introduced earlier this year proposed one Social Security benefit cut and three Medicare benefit cuts. The White House’s “chained CPI” would reduce cost-of-living adjustments. The White House’s Medicare benefit cuts would promote “means-testing” of Medicare recipients, meaning that although virtually every worker in America (including the self-employed) pays into the program, only poor retirees would benefit from it fully.

Well, you and I and a whole lot of other people weren’t going to stand for that. I composed the Grayson-Takano letter to the President and House Speaker, promising to vote against any and every benefit cut in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And working together, we got almost 50 Members of Congress to sign that letter.

We also set up a petition against earned benefit cuts at No-Cuts.com. This is what it said:

“We Are Against Any and Every Cut to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever. No way, no how. Not on your life, and certainly not on mine. N-E-V-E-R.

Sincerely, The American People”

That petition garnered well over two million supporters. It was my pleasure – and, oh, it certainly was a pleasure – to deliver that petition to both the White House and the House Speaker.

And it worked! We turned the tide against benefit cuts. Rep. Paul Ryan conceded that on Fox News a week ago, when he was asked about the prospects for a “Grand Bargain” (more like a “Grand Betrayal”) to cut earned benefits: “I don’t think that with this President, or this Senate, we’re going to have something like that. That’s why I think we need to win a couple of elections.”

Win a couple of elections? By insisting on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts? Good luck with that.

So we’ve won. At least for now. But we have to remain vigilant, always prepared to do it all over again. As anti-slavery leader Wendell Phillips said 160 years ago, the eternal role of active citizens is “unintermitted Agitation.”

So thank you, fellow Agitator. You and I make a great team.

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

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