Senator McConnell recently said that he feels we need to tackle "entitlements" and that there's a bipartisan attempt not to because they're too popular....
Ok, I promise this will be quick, there's not much to dig into but let's get started.
1) The GOP Congress last year reduced taxes, especially on corporations and, not surprisingly, the rich. At the same time, they gave a big boost to military spending... spending the military didn't ask for. That's why we are so deep in the red this year. Let's not pretend this is anything but what they planned: reduce the money coming into the Federal Government (and increase non-social spending) so you can claim to e forced to reduce spending on the non-military. It's a manufactured crisis. Don't think of it in any other terms.
2) If a program is popular, and it works, both of which are true for these social nets, why are you so hung up on tearing into them? And boy are they hung up on it... I can't remember a time when the leadership of the GOP wasn't trying to break the contract with the American people. Oh, it's because you feel it has something to do with the deficit spending that Conservatives like to rail against in times of Democrat leadership of the government and love to indulge in when the Republicans are in power.
3) Ok, so, let's talk about their impact on the deficit... there is none. Ok, it's even better than that, these programs are funded by a separate revenue stream to the general tax system and they bring in more money than they spend... so far. That's right, the Social Security and Medicare elements you see in your paycheck more than cover these programs. They never have caused a deficit. They, in fact, have been used to offset the deficit spending from time to time. "But Peter, you said 'so far'... won't they eventually go bankrupt?" Well, sure, if we don't do anything, eventually the money the Government takes in for Social Security won't cover the costs of the program. There are a number of different ways that we can resolve this however, and one of those is to change it from a regressive program to ... less of a regressive program. See, your income is taxed for Social Security but only up to a certain cap... and that's currently $127.200. We could simply remove the cap and those of us fortunate enough to make more than $127,000 would pay an equal percentage into Social Security as everyone else. And the benefits aren't capped in the same way, so a person making $127,200 and a person making $1,270,000 pay the same into Social Security but the former gets back significantly less when they retire. So just remove the cap on the taxable income and you're pretty much covered.
So really, what the fuck are GOP leaders talking about when they say that we don't have the resources to support these programs and need to find ways to cut costs?
