Friday, February 12, 2010

Why Do Republicans Want to Kill Grandma and Grandpa?

Republican Congressman, Paul Ryan, is supposed to be a serious policy wonk for the Republican party. But what is his big idea? He wants to kill Social Security and Medicare? Why? Because Nazis are liberals and liberals are Nazis. Seriously. George W. Bush tried this scheme during his administration and it thankfully died a pretty quick death, just like millions of senior citizens would if these two programs were eliminated. Imagine what would have happened during the collapse of the stock market if millions of senior citizens had their Social Security invested in the stock market.

This is one of the worst ideas ever by the Republican party, but because they are ideologues, it keeps coming up. 96% of senior citizens on Medicare like it. I don't know the number for Social Security, but there's a reason Social Security is considered the third rail in political circles.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah... Let's just keep blowing money we don't have...

Both sides engage in this kind of rhetoric and that is why nothing productive even gets done in DC.

You should actually go the the website and read the plan, not just go with what one biased tv personality says.

Bruce Fealk said...

We can fix Social Security and Medicare without privatizing them. Privatization is a disaster.

Chris said...

May I remind you that it was the socializing of the programes that didn't work for sure. We don't know that privatizing SSI would be bad. I know one thing though. My 401k is doing much better then my SSI. That is afact weather or not you agree with it or not. SSI and Medicare are going bankrupt fast. They are unfunded and I am paying for something I will not get. Are you sure privatizing is the disaster or is it socializing?

vomamike said...

Silverfiddle - you are right - we are "blowing money" we don't have. But we started down that road a long, long time ago. We started virtually with the Reagan era going from a creditor nation to a debtor nation. But Nobel winning economist like Paul Krugman advises us to yes spend our way to fiscal health. Doesn't sound logical on the face of it, but IF you follow his rationale, it becomes clear. FDR had to do it back during the Great Depression. IF you accept the premise that an economy depends on people spending money to make it grow, then you must understand that people won't spend what they don't make. Hense, jobs are #1. The largest disagreement between progressives and conservatives is how you create jobs. They say it is through tax breaks. We say through arbitrary job creations. Given the tax breaks Bush pushed through in what 2002, you would have thought the recession we are going through would not have happened based on their criteria. But it did happen. Here is an analogy. If you happen to let your battery run down in your car, you must give it a boost from an external source. That "boost" is the stimulus bill passed recently. If the boost was sufficient, then the "car" should operate on its own. Or the "wheels of our economy" to continue this play on words. In a robust economy, the debt will take care of itself.

There are other factors at play here that most likely will have a hand in how well we recover. A return to a decent progressive income tax, a return to a good manufacturing base with good paying American jobs and seeking to find and develope those "green" jobs so much talked about. But to dwell on our debt, our deficit at this stage of the game, is the wrong answer.

Jay-Ney said...

Great blog post Bruce. Now your talking. These republicans want all the old people and people of color dead. That is why we need to do an eye for an eye if we don't get our free health care. We put in too much work and money to get these people elected. If we don't get what they promised then we need to push harder. While most of the Progressives are doing next to nothing. The neo-cons are taking Washington over while we do nothing.