Will someone please explain to the Deficit Commission that Social Security is NOT funded by the general budget? I’m aware of the creative number shifting, instituted under Reagan, used to make the general treasury fund look less in-the-red than it actually is. (Al Gore’s much-maligned “lockbox” was actually right on target.) And the core of Medicare is funded by dedicated taxes and premiums - again, NOT part of the general treasury fund. So how does cutting a program that does not affect the deficit help balance the budget?
And IF the government decides to cancel those two contracts, will my (self-employed) income rise by the roughly 13% that is currently being paid out in those dedicated taxes? Somehow, I doubt it.
This is nothing but war on the lower classes (and the middle class is a lower class in the eyes of the whiners who think that 15% is a burdensome amount to pay in a capital gains tax for passively-earned money). Have the upper crust eaters stopped to think about what would happen with the loss of the “Security” portion of the Social Security program? Never mind the starving widows and orphans, or the grandmothers freezing to death in store doorways. (Talk about a “death panel”!) If the well-washed masses truly think that we are all better off without Social Security, they also need to consider whether they can set aside enough provisions so that they never have to leave their gated communities and venture into the chaos of the streets to purchase food, clothing, or theater tickets.
When will we be done with this failed trickle-down philosophy? By the most common definition of insanity, our nation has truly gone crazy. For thirty-plus years, we have done the same thing over and over again, and keep expecting a different result. But the far right just keeps repeating the top-down mantra as though it were true, and it is swallowed whole by the efficiently consolidated and corporately-owned media, no longer run by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market.” Oh, the far right loves to quote Adam Smith, and also Jesus, when convenient. But if they studied either of these gentlemen more closely, they’d brand both of them socialist lunatics.
There is also a quote from Kennedy that the right likes to trot out from time to time, with the gleeful intent of using words uttered by one of the left’s own heros to prop up their right-wing pursuit of this economic insanity. “A rising tide floats all boats.” What the modern-day robber barons on the far right don’t appreciate, however, is that a rising tide floats those boats from the bottom up.
