Photo credit: 401kcalculator.org
By now, most middle-class taxpayers have seen through those massive Republican tax cuts that just passed the U.S. Senate. Only 25% supported the tax bill in a recent poll. Most Americans realize billionaires, millionaires and wealthy corporations get enormous, permanent tax cuts, while working people get crumbs for a few years before their taxes start going up again. What they may not know is Republicans are already making plans for the next shoe to drop, and it’s a really big boot that’s going to kick the middle class in the teeth even harder.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio gave the game away last week by revealing Republican plans to deal with the enormous increase of $1.5 trillion to the national debt, the largest in U.S. history, they created to give those tremendous tax cuts to the family of Donald Trump and their biggest political donors. “We have to do two things,” Rubio said. “We have to generate economic growth . . . while reducing spending. That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.”
Who Needs Social Security and Medicare?
“Structural changes to Social Security and Medicare” is Republican code for massive cuts to the two most popular government programs in U.S. history that provide middle-class Americans with economic security and health care after their working lives have ended. Just like that, Republicans are returning to those bygone days when Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, before rising to House Speaker, was issuing dire warnings the country was facing total economic collapse unless it halted the growing national deficit under President Barack Obama.
When Ryan as budget chairman got the House to pass draconian budgets to start dismantling Social Security and Medicare, it didn’t go over real well for Republicans. Remember that infamous political commercial showing a clean-cut Ryan look-alike pushing Granny up a hill in a wheelchair to pitch her off a cliff? Even Donald Trump, the most cruel, insensitive politician in American history, blamed Ryan’s open attacks on Social Security and Medicare for the overwhelming defeat of the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket.
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During his own campaign, Trump promised he would never cut those popular entitlements so many of his supporters depend upon, but then, words coming out of Trump’s mouth have never meant anything. In the latest update by Washington Post fact checkers on Trump’s constant stream of presidential lies, his average has increased to 5.5 lies a day boosted by a breakneck average of telling an incredible nine lies a day over the past month.
As dangerous, ignorant and mentally unstable as Trump may be, Ryan’s cold-blooded, continued attempts to destroy the benefits of Social Security and Medicare for the middle class are just as frightening. Now, Sen. Rubio says Republicans will resume using soaring deficits as an excuse to renew their assault on Social Security and Medicare—even though it’s the Republicans who are poised to intentionally explode those deficits to give enormous tax cuts to the wealthy.
Blind Ideology, Cruel Results
My God, irresponsible politicians are putting the American economy on a completely unsustainable path to increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years! Drastic measures must be taken! Republicans have opposed the popular Democratic programs of Social Security and Medicare from the very beginning—when President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security in 1935, and when President Lyndon Johnson created Medicare and Medicaid in 1966. Their primary objections are ideological.
Right-wing Republicans denounce large government programs that benefit all Americans as socialism. They’re certainly not opposed to all government programs, mind you. They strongly support massive tax cuts and corporate welfare for themselves. But they firmly believe government benefits should go primarily to the wealthiest, most successful people in America. If poor and middle-class people get something for nothing, they will be discouraged from working hard.
Republicans claim Social Security will go bankrupt in just a few years unless drastic cuts are made. They never mention how incredibly simple it would be to guarantee funding. The income cap on payroll taxes to fund Social Security is currently $127,200, increasing to $128,400 in 2018. What that means is most middle-class workers pay Social Security taxes on their entire income, but wealthy folks earning far more only pay those taxes on their first $127,200, a small fraction of their enormous incomes. All Republicans need to do is eliminate the income cap on Social Security taxes, treat all taxpayers the same, and the future of Social Security is secured.
All this political chicanery demonstrates no matter how incredibly bad Trump is he’s not the only Republican threatening the lives of most Americans. Trump didn’t introduce dishonesty or contempt for the working class to the Republican agenda. He’s just more obvious about it. Ryan, Rubio and other Republicans some people foolishly expect to stand up to Trump one day have their own nasty, little agenda, and it’s just as bad as Trump’s.
