Remember the Declaration...

Put Congress on warning. We're coming for you if you back this awful bill.

Troubled times, right?

Not as troubled as the times that created this wonderful, enduring nation. Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues are on the edge of enacting one of the most odious pieces of legislation in modern times.

Should it succeed, the poor will suffer, rural America is likely to see its few hospitals shuttered, and more importantly, the impoverished and their children will pay the price of tax cuts for people who are immensely wealthy.

Let’s turn for an instant to history.

“Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

Are we approaching a point of revolution because of one remarkably stupid piece of law?

No, but that’s not the real message above, which is taken from the Declaration of Independence.

“In the face of “absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government.”

We do that in elections. And at this point, we should be counting numbers and taking names.

If you back this abysmal piece of legislation, the message is the people are going to make you pay for it with your jobs.

Charlie Madigan was a reporter and editor for 40 years at United Press International and the Chicago Tribune. Find out more about him at charlesmadigan.com.