Originally published at: House Republican Wants Party To Boldly Own Plans To Gut The Social Safety Net
You can typically gauge just how badly Republicans want to ravage social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid upon their return to power by how much they talk on the campaign trail about how they’re not going to do that. Trump has, throughout his political career, vacillated between utter devotion to the…
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Excuse me, but it is not entitlements when you put the money and credits into it.
They are willing to cut out what people earned? While we are at it, let’s cut those congressional pensions because they are costly.
Sorry - no cat pics.
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Apropos Josh’s editorial. I am wondering whether the Bangladesh coup, Syria terrorism, South Korea martial law, and the France chaos are last minute policy agenda tasks the outgoing administration and the 3-letter spook people are trying to take care of. Is everything happening in the world simply coincidence?
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“There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we [Republicans] know how to do it”
How?
Hello? Remember us? We, the people?
Just tell us.
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The fact is politicians have been “borrowing” from (read: raiding) those funds for decades to pay for wars and tax cuts (read: giveaways) for millionaires and billionaires. If they can kill off the program it will absolve them of having to figure out how to pay the money back.
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“We got to bring the Democrats in to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.”
Democrats should present a united front (yeah right!) in telling this guy to go to hell. No talks about cutting these programs. Period. Republicans want to undo the safety net, then it should be entirely on Republicans.
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There’s no way in hell they would have talked this smack 29 days ago.
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Ignorant or mendacious; does it matter? Conflating the federal budget with the entirely separate Social Security and Medicare Trusts is a typical opening gambit in congressional tricks and games.
Wonder if the Biden voters who failed to show up for Harris will ever figure out just how badly they screwed up. Plato was supposed to have said that those too wise to engage in politics are punished by the governance of fools or, in this case, sanctimonious swine like Rich McCormick (R-GA); it is going to get so very, very ugly the next four years.
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If this ends up bad for America…Americans should ask themselves why they voted for it. It’s not a secret that GOP’rs have wanted to do this since Reagan sat in the oval office. But…they weighed the likely consequences against that lust and backed off. Until now. Trump doesn’t weigh consequences unless they’re going to hit him. He’s term limited and has survived all manner of horrible behavior thanks to a SCOTUS, Congress and press that have washed his face for him. So why would American’s think he’s going to weigh consequences?
We can expect the retirement age to go up. Parts of SS and Medicare will be privatized and young folks will face “it won’t be there for you” for real.
Every GOP’er POTUS has claimed SS is going broke. “It will run out of money in 5 years” etc. Nope. Reagan taxed SS income, looted it and got away with it. Bush showed us a goofy photo of a file cupboard with IOU’s in it. He put them in there jacking up the deficit though. He pulled it off.
The landscape is now perfect for the big hammer.
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What makes you think he will abide by that? just whispering
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The shitheads in rednickistan do not understand that the Social Security Trust Fund is an IOU from the US Treasury, and that those monthly checks the retirees receive are actually funded primarily by workers’ FICA withholding.
Killing Social Security/Medicare and tossing out the immigrants go hand in hand. Doing the latter will provide the RWNJ’s an excuse for doing the former.
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Frankly I doubt he survives his term but no matter how much he wants it…the Constitution is just too big for him to take on.
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More like wiped his ass. But who can tell the difference?
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Russian GDP $2.021T
US GDP $27.4T
US “defense” spending $916B
Cost to reinstall TCF: priceless.
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They’ve been talking this shit for more than half a century. American’s were better informed then so it was resisted.
Here’s Sen. Mike Lee in the warmup bullpen:
1. Of all the deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people, one of them—the Social Security Act—gets far too little attention. Buckle up because this is a wild ride.
2. In 1935, the American people were sold a bill of goods. They were told, “Pay into this system, and it’ll be YOUR money for retirement.” Sounds great, right?
3. But here’s where it gets juicy, in a really ugly way. Two years later, when the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, the government did a complete 180.
4. The government—through Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson—argued in essence, “Oh no, this isn’t YOUR money at all. This is a TAX, and we can do whatever we want with it.” Classic bait and switch.
All of that is bullshit. ( For more head over to Digby’s place ) but there’s a media infrastructure ready to carry it. In this case Twitter. The folks in the Villages best buckle up.
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Republicans have been trying to gut the New Deal for almost 90 years. Their hope is that Bannon’s Administrative state wrecking ball can pull it off this time.
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You mean the MAGAts aren’t Christian?? I am shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!!
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If, or when, it happens, Fox News and the whole idiotic RW propaganda universe will so expertly deceive their viewers, they’ll be all for it. Just like the guy at the dog park who INSISTED to me that he gets the ACA, not Obamacare. I just don’t know how you counter this tsunami of lies …
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There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we know how to do it, we just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA)
He misspoke. He meant “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be pilfered.”
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Just as point of clarification.
Social Security History
https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths.html
MYTHS AND MISINFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY (Part I)
Myths and misstatements of fact frequently circulate on the Internet, in email and on websites, and are repeated in endless loops of misinformation. One common set of such misinformation involves the history of the Social Security system.
Part II
https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html
Has Social Security Ever Been Raided?
Interview With Robert D. Reischauer University of Illinois Champaign Urbana
After months of partisan rhetoric in which leaders of each party accused the other of “raiding” Social Security, many Americans were left with the feeling that their Social Security taxes have been stolen over the years.
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