The Congressional GOP's Biggest Lie

As you know, the congressional Republicans have shut down the federal government. While they originally did that to try and kill the Affordable Care Act, they are now realizing that will never be agreed to by Democrats (or the president). So many of them are now returning to a desire they have had for many decades -- to abolish or privatize Social Security and Medicare, and while they know they cannot do that outright, they think they can do it by chipping away at the benefits of those programs.

So now they are once again talking about reducing benefits in "entitlements" -- their pejorative term for Social Security and Medicare. They tell us the benefits given the recipients of these two programs must be reduced because the national debt is too large -- and to prove that they will show charts like the one above (which shows that 22% of all federal spending goes to Social Security and 23% to the Medicare and Medicaid programs).

The inference is that these programs contribute to the national debt and eat up a big chunk of revenues received from income taxes -- and that cutting these programs will allow more of that income tax revenue to be spent for other purposes, and will lower the national debt. That is a LIE -- and may well be the biggest lie the Republicans are trying to sell the American people.

The truth is that not a single penny of income tax revenue goes to funding of Social Security. Security is now, and always has been, completely funded through the FICA tax (more commonly called the payroll tax). This payroll tax is put in the Social Security Trust Fund, and all payments to Social Security recipients come from this fund (and always have). None of these payments have required any money from discretionary spending (spending funded by income and other taxes). And because the Social Security Trust Fund has always had sufficient funds to pay Social Security benefits, it has not added anything at all to the national debt (however large that debt may be).

And the same is largely true of Medicare. Almost all of Medicare is paid through either a payroll tax or payments made by those who receive Medicare benefits (usually automatically subtracted from their Social Security checks). Only a small portion of Medicare comes from discretionary spending funds -- which means the money added to the national debt by Medicare is a negligible amount.

When the Republicans tell you that Social Security and Medicare benefits must be cut to help control and reduce the national debt, they are telling a huge lie. Cutting benefits to these two programs will do absolutely nothing to reduce the national debt, because they have done nothing to add to that national debt.

Social Security and Medicare benefits are badly needed by most senior citizens in the United States, and those benefits are not overly generous to begin with (with the average Social Security benefit being slightly over $1000 a month, and Medicare only paying 80% of hospitalization). Cutting these benefits even a small amount will seriously hurt millions of elderly Americans. And it will do nothing to cut the national debt.

Don't let the Republicans get away with this outrageous lie, and cut these benefits. They know it will not lower the debt. They are just doing it because they have always been opposed to both programs, and will take any opportunity to damage those programs.