On Social Security Cuts: "Get Voters To Notice"

 

Many Americans have been fighting Trump/ election fatigue for months now.  It shows up in traffic on blogs, in ratings for news programs, in flagging political donations, or wherever some level of engagement is required.   Disengagement now is a problem, but disengagement in the form of not paying attention during an election can lead to, well, what we've got now.

One of the issues many voters were oblivious to in the last election was what the Malignant Fascist and his ultra- reactionary Project 2025 crew wanted to do with Social Security.  Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote in his Substack article, "Social Security: A Time for Outrage," about the disconnect with voters on this important issue, making clear that simply getting voters to notice, especially working-class voters, was a basic priority that Democrats failed to achieve in 2024.  Democrats have been given another chance, if they have learned that lesson, as Krugman concludes:

"... [W]hat’s clear is that working-class voters weren’t paying attention; they thought they were voting for lower grocery prices, not an assault on Social Security.

"And the fact that so many voters seemed oblivious to   Clear signs about what Trump would do if he won ought to inform every discussion about how to oppose him.  [snip]

"On one side there are relatively conservative Democrats and Democratic-leaning pundits telling us that the party must move to the center. But when it comes to Social Security, which is really important to most Americans, Democrats — who want to preserve the program — are very much in the center, while Republicans — who want to kill it — are extremists. Yet last November, the voters who have most to lose from this extremism didn’t notice.

"On the other side there are progressives who argue that Democrats are in trouble because they abandoned the working class. But even if you think that Democrats have been too friendly toward globalization, or deregulation, or low corporate taxes, the Democratic Party has been far more favorable to workers than the Republicans. The Biden administration was especially pro-worker. But working-class voters didn’t notice.

"What all this says is that the priority for Democrats isn’t to pursue whatever you think is a better policy mix. It is to get voters to notice.

"This almost certainly requires new leadership, if only to help persuade voters that the party isn’t run by tired careerists. The problem with someone like Chuck Schumer isn’t that he’s too centrist, it’s that he’s a 74-year-old (writes a stripling of 72) whose instinct is to try to deftly navigate his way through a political landscape that demands not careful calculation but vocal, visible outrage, both to motivate the Democratic base and to get other voters’ attention.

"And the attack on Social Security is something that should both inspire outrage and offer an opportunity to connect with working-class Americans."

As the MAGAt Republicans close in on their goal of gutting Social Security (a "Ponzi scheme," as President Musk has called it), the job for Democrats is, as Krugman stresses, to get voters to notice what's being done to the social safety net that they've invested in.  

It's a lesson to apply to every MAGAt Republican effort to create a dystopian, fascist America:  Keep the message simple, keep repeating that message, and get the best messengers to deliver the message with passion and conviction.  

BONUS:  Tengrain has more on what needs to be done.

(Photo: simple message delivered with passion by grassroots / Adam Gray, AP photo)

Republican 2024 Budget Plan's Attack On Seniors

 

Once again showing their aptitude for comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, House Republicans are planning to reduce or limit earned benefits for seniors in their upcoming 2024 budget plan. Their agenda will be to make the Malignant Loser's tax giveaway to the ultra wealthy and major corporations permanent, while at the same time hammering senior benefits due from Social Security and Medicare. From Roll Call:

"The largest bloc of House conservatives offered up a fiscal blueprint Wednesday that promises to balance the federal budget in seven years, make GOP tax cuts permanent, and slash domestic spending.

The plan offered by the 175-member Republican Study Committee would gradually raise the age at which future retirees can start claiming full Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, a politically fraught proposal that's all but certain to appear in Democratic campaign ads. [snip]

While defense spending would be allowed to grow modestly, nondefense spending would gradually shrink over the decade, though both categories of spending would decline as a share of the economy.

Base budget authority for defense would grow from $886 billion fiscal 2024, a 3 percent increase over the current fiscal year, to $969 billion in fiscal 2033. But nondefense budget authority would be slashed by about 30 percent next year to $522 billion, inching up very slightly to $553 billion in fiscal 2033. 

The plan also promises to shore up the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, though the budget document is light on details.  (our emphasis)

The Republican budget document is "light on details" because they know the details would be so unpopular that they'd lose the House in 2024 if they had to run on them honestly. The same is true for the Malignant Loser's tax giveaway being made permanent, which blew a giant, multi-trillion dollar hole in the deficit.

President Biden and the Dems should be out on the hustings talking loudly about this Republican agenda, before the Republican House starts shutting down Government agencies in the fall over this reactionary plan.

The Long History Of Republicans Trying To Undermine Social Security And Medicare

Paul Krugman reminds the willfully ignorant about Republican claims that they're not out to gut Social Security and Medicare:

... Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.

So, about that history. It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a “Leninist” strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived.

To that end, Cato created the Project on Social Security Privatization, calling for replacing Social Security with individual accounts — which George W. Bush tried to do in 2005. By then, however, Cato had quietly renamed its project; “privatization” polled badly, and Bush insisted that it was a “trick word” used to “scare people.”

So there’s a history here, and there’s a similar history for Medicare. Many people probably recall that Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in 1995. I don’t know how many people realize that Gingrich’s key demand was that President Bill Clinton agree to large cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

After Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, Paul Ryan began pushing for major cuts in spending. One key element was converting Medicare from a system that pays medical bills to a system offering people fixed sums of money to be applied to the purchase of private insurance — that is, vouchers.

But many though not all supporters of the Ryan plan insisted that calling vouchers “vouchers” was a left-wing smear.

So are people who claim that Biden was over the top unaware of this track record? Do they really not know that Republicans have spent more than four decades trying to find ways to undermine Medicare and Social Security? Are they unaware that there’s a long history of Republicans whining that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe Republican policies using exactly the same words Republicans used themselves until political consultants urged them to find euphemisms?

There's also the history of a collection of compulsive liars, scoundrels, crooks, hypocrites and sociopaths otherwise known as "the Republican Party" whose core philosophy is "Comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted."  That perspective shades all of their thoughts and actions, but never more evident than in their decades- long effort to gut social welfare programs.  

Republicans haven't undergone a miraculous conversion;  they're just searching for different euphemisms to disguise their plans.

BONUS:  We ask you --

 

Does this look like the face of a man who would take away your Social Security? https://t.co/fxWbHkZsCf

— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 15, 2023

 

(Photo:  Republican Senators Rick Scott (FL), Mike Lee (UT), and Bill Cassidy (LA) jeering President Biden at the State of the Union Address for telling the truth about their plans)

Nope, Didn't See This Coming At All

It takes more gall than most turtles have, but rancid human/ turtle hybrid Republican Sen. Mitch "Missy" McConnell (R- Dystopia) is playing the card all but the least sentient among us knew he would play:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called the ballooning budget deficit “very disturbing” but said large federal spending programs were to blame, dismissing criticism that last year’s GOP tax cuts are saddling the country with more debt. 

McConnell, in a Bloomberg News interview, also said there was little chance Republicans would be able to cut government spending next year if they retained control of Congress because any changes would need leadership from Democrats. 

Three weeks to midterm elections, McConnell (R-Ky.) said that tackling the mandatory spending programs such as Medicare and Social Security, as well as Medicaid, could not be done by Republicans alone, suggesting that it was unlikely to occur unless Democrats controlled at least one chamber of Congress. 

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell told Bloomberg News.  (our emphasis)

This suit overflowing with toxic cynicism, this thing who kneecapped Merrick Garland and wrecked the Senate is now saying it wasn't the $2 trillion Republican tax cut for the wealthy that he and his co- sociopath Paul Ryan jammed through Congress last year that ballooned the deficit -- oh, no.  It's those darned "entitlement" programs that lower- and middle- class families have paid into and depend on that are the real villains here!  Their latest grossly irresponsible tax cut upward wealth transfer proposal would add another $3.8 trillion to the deficit, a plan they're trying to get through the House before a new (Democratic) House is elected.  But, look over there at those "entitlements"!

Of course, the plan all along by these social Darwinist jamokes was to shovel tax benefits to the wealthiest 1 percent and corporations, blame the ensuing deficit explosion on "entitlements," then tell everyone they've got to be cut to bring down the deficit they created in the first place with their wealthfare. Oh, and shift blame to Democrats for not helping "fix" the "problem" (by gutting the social safety net). We'll see in three weeks if they managed to convince enough credulous voters to let them proceed with their plans.

BONUS:  More, please --

Heads up for the "Dems have no national message" people: The McConnell comments on entitlements are driving today's state Dem messaging. pic.twitter.com/OzCvauPMax

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) October 16, 2018