Republicans Vote Against The Elderly

Once again the Republicans in Congress have shown everyone just how mean-spirited they really are.   This time they are picking on the elderly -- those people who are trying to eke out a living on a fixed income (a social security check).   As we already know, those receiving social security are being denied a cost-of-living (COLA) raise for the second year in a row.   Their medical and living expenses are rising each year, but their income is not -- putting many of them even deeper into poverty each year.

President Obama and the Democrats know this, and while they could not give a COLA raise, they did want to help these elderly people a little bit.   They proposed giving those living on social security a one-time check for $250.   That's not a lot of money, but when you're living on a small fixed income every little bit helps.   But the Republicans don't seem to care about the plight of the elderly in this country.

Yesterday both houses of Congress considered the bill, and it was defeated in both the House and the Senate.   In the House, the bill would have required a suspension of the rules and that would require a two-thirds vote of all members.   Most Democrats voted with the majority in favor of the bill, but the Republicans voted en masse against the bill and prevented it from getting the necessary two-thirds majority.   That effectively killed the bill in the House.

It was much the same in the Senate.   Most Democrats voted in favor of the $250 payment and amassed 53 votes (a majority of senators).   But that wasn't enough because the Republicans were filibustering the bill, and it takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster.   By sticking together and voting as a bloc, the Republicans killed the bill in the Senate.

The excuse the Republicans gave for killing the bill is that it would add to the federal deficit.   Considering their support for giving massive tax breaks to the richest Americans, that is a ludicrous argument.   The tax breaks for the rich would add $400 billion to the deficit for each of the two years that Obama and the Republicans agreed to, but the one-time payment to those on social security would have cost far less money than the giveaway to the rich.

Let's do the math.   There are approximately 40 million people receiving social security in the United States.   Giving each one of those a $250 check would have cost the country about $10 billion -- about 1/40 the cost of the Republican tax break for the rich (who don't need that tax cut nearly as bad as those on social security need that measly $250).

If there was ever any doubt that the Republican Party was the party of the rich, this should remove that doubt.   They are willing to throw the elderly under the bus while giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the richest Americans -- in spite of the fact that it will increase the deficit 40 times more than a small check to those elderly Americans would.

Making matters worse, the small check that should have been given to the elderly would surely have been spent and given a boost to the economy.   But the massive amounts given to the rich will just sit in their bank accounts and do little to nothing to help the economy (since they already have the money to buy anything they want).

These Republicans are not only mean-spirited, but shameless and uncaring.