UPDATE: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio admits that the GOP plan is to drastically cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for massive tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy. Read more here

We could write volumes about all the things to hate in the GOP tax bills. From ending a deduction to teachers who spend money on schools supplies, to reducing the mortgage interest deduction that many families rely upon to its huge giveaways for big corporations that they won’t use to create jobs, it’s clear that the GOP expects working people to give the wealthy few a major tax break at our expense.

But among the most devastating blows the bill delivers is the automatic cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other lifesaving health care programs.

In the Huffington Post, Robert Creamer breaks down the GOP’s dirty little secret. The tax bill would immediately cut $25 billion from Medicare, perhaps the most popular and widely used public program of all time.

GOP leaders have done their best to sweep an ugly – politically toxic ― secret under the rug: under current Congressional rules, their tax plan would force a quarter-trillion dollar cut in Medicare starting next year.

In 1990, Congress passed the “Pay As You Go” (paygo) rules. They require that if Congress passes a law that will increase the deficit, the same amount will be cut from government spending – automatically – beginning immediately.

The Republican plan to cut taxes for millionaires, billionaires and wealthy corporations would increase the deficit by about $1.5 trillion dollars over the next decade. That would mean that if it passes, there would be mandatory, automatic spending cuts of at least $150 billion in each of the next ten years, including $25 billion per year from Medicare.

Over ten years that amounts to a quarter-trillion dollars of Medicare cuts right at the same time that the baby boom generation is demanding more and more from Medicare.

My mom, like so many other seniors, is a Medicare recipient. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to afford the doctors visits, medications and treatment that older Americans so desperately need. This tax plan is a cruel gut punch to seniors like her as well as the rest of us who at some point will likely rely upon Medicare for lifesaving treatment.

Eleven California GOP members of Congress voted for this travesty of a bill already. They will likely have another chance to vote on it in the next week or two. If Republicans from California again vote to cut Medicare to give tax breaks to millionaires and corporate CEOs, we must hold them accountable. Politics as usual in Washington, DC mustn’t continue. The stakes are simply too high to let politicians get away with answering to their millionaire donors instead of looking out for their constituents.

Join us to fight the GOP tax plan and cuts to lifesaving programs like Medicare. Call Congress today at 844-899-9913 to be directed to your Senator and get ready to call if the bill heads to the House!