âItâs very disturbing, and itâs driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular: Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid,â McConnell said matter-of-factly. âThereâs been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of the programs. Hopefully at some point here weâll get serious about this, we havenât been yet.â
three big entitlement programs BULL PHUCKY it is not an entitlement if you are paying into the programs with each paycheck. All it will take to fix these programs is to remove the caps. If it is deemed that additional steps need to be made then means testing starting at the high end, for once, could be implemented. The state of deficits are directly related to the corporate and .01% giveaways for sure, not any so called three big entitlement programs.
The US has plenty of money available to fund social programs; all it needs to do is reduce spending for the biggest welfare program in US history: The Military. No department wastes more, destroys more lives and cripples our nation. Go find the billions we need for Medicare, Medicaid in the grotesque, bloated, immoral monster called the Department of Defense. Eisenhower had it totally figured out when he warned how dangerous it would be to allow the Military-Industrial Complex to suck the nationâs coffers dry at the expense of health, education, infrastructure and the environment. Cut the defense budget NOW!
During the Depression, some history books tell us, many rich people bought machine guns for their country places so that they could defend themselves when the starving mobs came. The New Deal did away with all that.
So of course the current generation of republicans wants to repeal it.
As much as Iâm in full agreement on everything he stated, even if we win the Day in the immediate, the long-term issues will become even greater. None of these programs can be fully sustainable without addressing both overall Health Care costs and wages within our economy.
Even with the ACA, demographics and other factors will continue to drive increasing per capita spending and most likely allow for the repubs to enlarge their bogeyman in the future. So right now, we probably have a better message, but in the future, the overall cost of Health Care will not be going away. Hopefully that might create enough political will to ultimately pursue the correct path of some sort of Single Payer, but given what we are seeing heretofore, Iâm not very optimistic about that possibility.
And lastly, if we donât finally address the trajectory of Median Wages, then I can guarantee you, it wonât be a question of cutting of these Social Programs, but whether they will even exist. Ultimately if society is not âearningâ enough, nothing is going to be sacrosanct.
We need to start talking about slashing our bloated military budget. Letâs do that before we even get to discussing tax increases.
Thank you, AFSCME, for sponsoring this. I have been a member since 1982.
Robert Mercer owns whatâs believed to be the worldâs largest collection of machine guns. Appears he may also have acquired a grenade launcher: https://splinternews.com/oh-cool-robert-mercer-likely-has-a-grenade-launcher-st-1824146943
Yes it is, that is exactly why they are entitlements, because you paid into them and are entitled to a payout for that investment. They are things you are entitled too.
If the Rs lose this election badly, the lame duck that will follow might end up being an even bigger nightmare for social programs.
It goes without saying that if they lose the Senate, there will be an astonishing number of midnight judges nominated and confirmed. Thatâs a no-brainer, because thereâs no downside to them for doing that. Hell, they might pass a law creating âreserve justicesâ or some such, folks waiting in the wings who will automatically step into vacancies on the bench that come open for perhaps decades to come.
If the plan is to gut the social programs, admittedly the calculus is more difficult. They will have a bunch of legislators in the lame duck who will not have to face the voters again, because they just got tossed out of office, and so might be willing to vote their nasty little heartsâ desire. But itâs also true that itâs likely to be their sideâs âmoderatesâ who will make up most of their losers, because they held swing districts, and maybe some of these people donât actually want to immiserate many of our fellow citizens. Of course, if they want remunerative careers in the years ahead, maybe they vote as the Koch brothers want them to in order to cash in on some sweet wingnut welfare. The potential motivations are choppy, cutting both ways.
It may be that the greatest potential for the lame duck Rs to do really radical things will come about if they really lose big. The more it looks like the lame duck will be their last chance to hold the legislative trifecta for many years, the greater the temptation to use the power to legislate before they lose it. Maybe their moderates would block a complete and direct destruction of the social programs in that case, but it is also possible that these moderates in that climate could be brow-beaten into agreeing to some of the measures discussed here that would âonlyâ indirectly and eventually cripple the social programs. Folks like Collins and Flake have sure proven to be very brow-beatable even under the less pressing everyday conditions of the last two years.
âMedicare reform âhas been my big thing for many, many years.ââ
Was that when college student and Social Security Survivorsâ Benefits beneficiary Paul Ryan was hanging around the beer keg dreaming of eliminating Medicaid so he could make Ayn Randâs awful books come to life?
Iâve got my money on Mueller to take the wind out of their sails. Itâs my Christmas wish that the Râs are so busy scrambling to cover their ass that they wonât have time for any legislating.
Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Population, Information Explosion.
Itâs likely that with all the Right Wing Authoritarians in charge, there will be a large âdie-offâ of humans in the next 30 years. War, drought, famine. It wonât take much to tip our sensitive systems of food production/transportation to collapse. Dictators have less interest in solutions than figures to blame.
If you are a âhave-notâ you now know what the âhaveâsâ have, and you want it. Thank the 2nd Amendment in the USA. The âhave-notâsâ now have guns instead of pitchforks.
The trajectory of median wages isnât going to be the driver of change - it will be AI, changing medicine for the better, eliminating tech jobs, good white collar jobs.
Be ready to change
I dunno.
If Mueller really has them worried, why wouldnât they take advantage of the lame duck to simply get rid of Mueller and every bit of evidence he has gathered? They will still have the trifecta until January 2019, and thus the unimpeded legislative authority of the US of A. They could by law end his investigation and impound all of the evidence he gathered, making it illegal for anyone to reveal any of it. This result could not be reversed until and unless Ds get the trifecta starting January 2021.
The Rs havenât done this, get rid of the Mueller investigation, over the past two years for one or some combination of two reasons:
- They arenât that afraid of the Mueller investigation
- They donât want to take the heat with the voters over ending the Mueller investigation
As for 1), a lot of them would be happy to be rid of the mercurial, destructive antics of Trump, preferably some time before he drags them all down to Hell in 2020. They dare not do the deed of getting rid of him themselves, because they fear their base. But if Mueller were to do that deed, bitter condemnation of his name might be on their lips in order to satisfy their base, but their hearts would rejoice. If Mueller pounces after this election, in the lame duck, only really aware members of their base will realize that these Rs still really control Congress, and therefore they will get a pass from the less aware from any expectation of doing things to save Trump
If they lose, and especially if they lose big, many of them will no longer give a flying eff about 2). They will be so mad at Trump for dragging them to Hell this election that they might not need big thrilling stuff from Mueller to do the deed on Trump themselves. I think Trump would feel more humiliated and angered if removed from office for mental incompetence than over criminality anyway (he probably admires Gotti), so if they want to turn on him, and no longer fear his fans in their base, or the swing voters, because Trump had already dragged them to Hell, WTF, 25th the idiot. Send him into custodial care and out of the WH!
Whatever their wicked hearts may desire, being voted out in the upcoming election will tend to free them to do what they want in the lame duck. Eff with Mueller, eff with Trump, eff with the swing voters, whatever they want. No one will be able to eff with them, because they will still have all the power, but be beyond any further harm, because politically they will already be dead men walking
the budget trims Social Security disability insurance (SSDI) for those unable to work by $71 billion over 10 years.
This is not going to be a winner for the repugs because so many of their voters are on disability. When you look at the tea party, a bunch of their leaders are drawing money from this program. It might be just the thing, along with cuts to Medicare and SS, that will change the minds of some of their voters in the South.
Thatâs okay. You just repay me every goddamn dime that I paid in with interest.
Just want to get this comment out there: if not for the Trump shutdown and the resulting chaotic effect on both our economy and our society, Mitch McConnellâs New yearâs resolution would have come to pass already: decimate the most vulnerable in our communities by taking away what is left of a safety net.
Mitch has to be pleasantly surprised by the unforeseen hardship facing the workers for a federal government he so despises. He is completely out sight at the moment because all he knows how to do is punish the poor and brown people. With the shut down and the 2018 tax cut, his work is done.