— by Connect the Dots USA on Facebook
Instead of attacking struggling seniors, veterans, children and the working poor by slowing the inflation growth rate of an average $1,200/month Social Security check, shifting more healthcare costs to 65 and 66-year-olds and their employers, or slashing food stamps and Medicaid that are lifelines for working poor families, how about we try these 10 budget fixes first? By contrast, these policies primarily or exclusively affect the wealthy, while achieving lots more revenue/savings.
As President Obama has previously criticized the mean, brutish Republican cuts: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”
Or to borrow from Bill Maher, the GOP budget plan goes after children, the poor, the jobless, the old and the sick. This is picking on the weakest kid on the playground and getting called courageous. Courage would have been going after the rich and the defense department.
The Republican fixation with cutting Social Security benefits or raising the eligibility age for Medicare fail to achieve much savings and have absolutely nothing to do with the “fiscal cliff.” (Social Security doesn’t even have anything to do with the deficit/debt generally). They are, as Nancy Pelosi described them, simply “trophies” that the GOP want to claim in their ceaseless war on FDR’s New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society.
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