Thursday, July 14, 2011

Republican's Sick Priorities - The Nation

How deceptive for politicians to stress “entitlements” when they talk about gutting Social Security and Medicare, two programs long paid for by their beneficiaries. The Republicans make it sound as if they’re doing us a favor, cutting government waste by seeking to strangle America’s two most successful domestic programs.

And now Barack Obama seems poised to join their camp in undermining the essential lifeline for most of the nation’s seniors, many of whom lost their retirement savings in the banking meltdown.

These threatened programs are not government handouts to a privileged class, like defense contractors and bailed-out bankers, who do feel eminently entitled to pig out at the federal trough.

On the contrary, Social Security and Medicare have been funded by a regressive tax that falls disproportionately on working middle-class income earners, while caps in the system leave the wealthy—most notably the hedge fund hustlers who helped cause today’s economic crisis—largely untaxed.

The full article is available here