House Republicans Are Playing With Fire

These charts were made from information provided by the Pew Research Center's report titled The Next America.

Last week, the Republicans in the House of Representatives passed Rep. Ryan's new budget plan -- a plan that is even more hard-hearted than his previous plan. It would devastate the poor by slashing funding from all social programs, including an additional $125 billion cut in the SNAP Program (food stamps). And it would slash funding for education (the best road out of poverty for many), including a $125 billion cut in college Pell Grants (putting college out of reach for many poor and working class students).

But perhaps most egregious is what the plan wants from this nation's elderly. The plan would eliminate the Medicare program -- a program that insures that all of the nation's elderly have health insurance coverage. They want to replace it with government subsidies to help the elderly buy private insurance. This would mean some elderly Americans would not have insurance coverage, since they would be unable to buy it even with a subsidy -- and it would mean all of the elderly would have to pay more in medical costs (to cover what the private insurance plans didn't pay). It would be a step backward in time -- to a time when this country didn't protect its elderly citizens from medical problems.

And they want to cut Social Security also. While the plan didn't specify what cuts they wanted from Social Security, it did say that action would be taken to "save" Social Security. Now you know they don't want that action to be a raising or elimination of the cap on income subject to FICA taxes, because that would mean the rich might have to pay the same percentage that working Americans now pay (and the Republicans always oppose taxing the rich).

That leaves only a direct cut to benefits, a change in the way cost-of-living-adjustemtnts are made from using the CPI to going to a chained CPI (a lower figure that represents a backdoor way to cut benefits), or a raising of the age to qualify for Social Security benefits (why would deny earned benefits to many Americans who spent their lives doing hard physical labor, and cannot keep working to the higher age limit).

The truth is that the Republicans have always hated both Medicare and Social Security. They voted against the establishment of both, and they take every opportunity they have to damage or eliminate both programs (in spite of the fact that these programs have worked as intended, and lowered poverty among the elderly from 50% to about 10%). This newest budget plan is just more of the same old war against Medicare and Social Security (and other help for hurting Americans).

But as the charts above show, the Republicans are playing with fire in their desire to eliminate or cut benefits for the elderly through Medicare and Social Security. These programs not only work, but they are very popular with the American public. And the Republican effort to convince younger Americans that both programs would not be there when they retire has failed. It is a lie and the people know it. Note that support for both programs is about the same in all generations (more than 8 out of 10 Americans across the generations).

The Republicans are playing with fire in their efforts to damage these programs -- and the Democrats need to make sure the American people know what the Ryan budget seeks to do before the vote in November. This is a budget that could (and should) come back to bite the GOP in the butt.