Republcans Again Seek to Slash Social Security and Medicare

Older voters tend to vote Republican either out of habit and a blindness to the reality that the GOP they once knew is long dead and gone or because of culture war issues with Republicans time and time again holding up the bogeymen of gays, blacks, Hispanics and those older white voters view as "other" and not "real Americans."  Stupidly, these voters are induced to vote against their own economic best interests even as the Republican Party has become increasingly extreme and ever more fixated on tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations while seeking to  gut the social safety net - including Social Security and Medicare, programs very popular with so-called senior voters.  Now, with Republican extremists with a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and holding Speaker McCarthy hostage, the House GOP appears poised to seek to slash both Social Security and Medicare along with Medicaid which funds much of the nursing home care in the nation.  While the Democrat majority in the U.S. Senate can ostensibly block these efforts, there are serious concerns that the House extremists will block an increase in the debt ceiling and cause a government shut down and default on America's debt obligations if their demands to slash Social Security and Medicare are not met.   This insanity ought to upset all Americans but ought to truly terrify retirees who could see their finances utterly wrecked.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this GOP threat to millions (in the interests of full dislosure, I am now receving Social Security and am on Medicare after paying into the systems for well over 45 years and still have payroll deductions taken for both programs while also paying a Medicare premium every month - the programs are anything but free).  Here are column excerpts:

The Republicans who now control the House will soon try to slash Social Security and Medicare. They plan to achieve this by holding the economy hostage, threatening to create a financial crisis by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling. The interesting questions are why they want to do this, given that it appears politically suicidal, and how Democrats will respond.

Before I get into the puzzles, let me start by pointing out that the plot against the social safety net isn’t a conspiracy theory. The general shape of the scheme has been widely reported for months. The arithmetic is also clear: It isn’t possible to achieve huge reductions in the budget deficit, while at the same time depriving the I.R.S. of the resources it needs to go after tax cheats, without deep cuts in popular social programs.

And beyond all that, we now have it in black and white — well, blue on blue. CNN has obtained a screenshot of a slide presented at a closed-door Republican meeting on Tuesday. The first bullet point calls for balancing the budget within 10 years, which is mathematically impossible without deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The second calls for reforms to “mandatory spending” — which is budget-speak for those same programs. And the final point calls for refusing to raise the debt limit unless these demands are met.

So the plan isn’t a mystery. I would add only that if Republicans try to assure currently retired Americans that their benefits wouldn’t be affected, this promise isn’t feasible — not if they’re serious about balancing the budget within a decade.

But where is this determination to gut programs that are crucial to well over 100 million Americans coming from? These programs are, after all, extremely popular — even among Republican voters.

It’s true that self-identified Republicans say that they are vehemently opposed to “socialism.” But when an Economist/YouGov poll asked them which programs they considered socialistic, none of the big-ticket items made the cut. Social Security? Not socialism. Medicare — which is, by the way, a single-payer national health insurance program, which we’re often told Americans would never accept — also isn’t socialism.

One reason even Republicans support major social programs may be that G.O.P. support comes disproportionately from older voters — and most of America’s social spending goes to seniors. This is obviously true for Social Security and Medicare, which kick in primarily when you reach a minimum age. But it’s even true for Medicaid: Most of Medicaid’s beneficiaries are relatively young, but almost two-thirds of the spending goes to seniors and the disabled, many in nursing homes.

Which means that the priorities of the new House majority are wildly out of line with those of its own voters, let alone those of the electorate as a whole.

So where is the push to gut Social Security and Medicare coming from? Ronald Reagan left the White House 34 years ago. The modern G.O.P. seems much less animated by small-government ideology than by the desire to wage culture war. And there’s no necessary connection between culture war and right-wing economics. For example, France’s anti-immigrant National Rally has, in effect, staked out an economic position somewhat to the left of the Macron government.

Here’s what I think is going on: Even now many, perhaps most Republicans in Congress aren’t culture-war zealots. Instead, they’re careerists who depend, both for campaign contributions and for post-Congress career prospects, on the same billionaires who have supported right-wing economic ideology for decades. They won’t stand up to the crazies and conspiracy theorists, but their own agenda is still tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor and middle class.

And the culture warriors go along because they basically aren’t interested in policy substance.

I’m not completely sure that this analysis is right. But all indications are that at some point this year the Biden administration will have to deal with a full-scale effort at economic blackmail, a threat to blow up the economy unless the safety net is shredded. And I worry that Democrats still aren’t taking that threat seriously enough.

The conclusion: vote Democrat in EVERY election and do not be duped by culture war lies and propaganda.