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With the scribbled ink on December’s GOP tax legislation barely dry, congressional Republicans are promising to target Americans’ earned benefits this year. House Speaker Paul Ryan told a Wisconsin radio interviewer, “We’re going to have to get back… at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.” Ryan went on to make a number of dubious claims, all to justify future benefit cuts for working Americans, millions of whom already are struggling to make ends meet.
Of course, Ryan has been using this rationale for years. The difference now is that he and his party finally have the power realize their long-held dreams of gutting programs that Americans have paid into for their entire working lives. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is not the firewall against changes to Social Security and Medicare that he promised to be during the campaign.
In opposing these attempts to undermine Social Security and Medicare, it’s important for us to continue to correct a few of Ryan’s mendacious fairy tales about these programs:
Social Security and Medicare are the ‘major drivers’ of the debt
This is a canard budget hawks often use to attack earned benefits. The truth is that Social Security and Medicare Part A are self-funded through workers’ payroll contributions. They do not contribute a penny to the debt. However, one of the biggest drivers of the debt moving forward will be the Trump/GOP tax cut.
Read more from our op-ed here via Palm Beach Post.
Lumping Social Security and Medicare together and calling them ‘entitlements’ is also telling. These are earned benefits, not entitlements, which American workers have contributed to throughout their working lives. Conservatives have long used the word 'entitlements’ to make those earned benefits seem like welfare.
via Entitled to Know.
Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
As House Speaker Paul Ryan says “We’re going to have to get … at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”
Don’t let them get away with it.
Social Security and Medicare are critical safety-nets for working and middle-class families.
via Chicago Sun-Times.
We are keeping track of Members of Congress who voice their plans to target earned benefits and health care in 2018.
You can view the full project by clicking here.
via twitter.
Related Reading:
As if to confirm the warnings of seniors’ advocates, Republicans have signaled that their next targets after the tax bill are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Of course, by “structural changes,” Rubio really means cutting earned benefits and turning Medicare into a voucher program.
Read more on this issue by clicking here.
I think any budget that we pass out of the House must include entitlement reform
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.
Related Reading:
New Poll Shows Majorities Do Not Support GOP Proposals for Social Security and Medicare.
Sign Our Petition:
“But at the end of the day…we’ve got to have entitlement reform and that is why we keep pushing for our health care reform and that’s why we keep pushing for entitlement reform.” - Speaker Paul Ryan
This is no surprise to us. Speaker Ryan has been trying for years to cut earned benefit programs.
We have been keeping track of Congress’ actions on earned benefits and health care.
Click here to view our Congressional timeline.
Asked Monday if the Trump administration would address “entitlement reform,” White House chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow said it will “probably” look at “larger entitlements” next year. Entitlement reform generally refers to changes or cuts to large government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or food stamps.
via CNBC.
Related Reading:
Trump Advisor Re-Affirms Commitment to Cutting Social Security & Medicare.
- This aligns with comments from National Republican Congressional Committee chair, Rep. Steve Stivers, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and several other key GOP members about the need to pay for last year’s tax cuts by ‘reforming’ Social Security and Medicare. ‘Reforming,’ of course, means cutting and privatizing.
May is Older Americans Month, but the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are putting a serious damper on the celebration. Yes, candidate Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But his administration has been actively undermining those pledges. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney — who once called Social Security a Ponzi scheme — questioned the legitimacy of Social Security Disability Insurance — and wouldn’t promise a Presidential veto of legislation to privatize Medicare (a pet project of House Speaker Paul Ryan).
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts
Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to
charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
More on this issue here via The Hill.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday said House Republicans will aim to cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs next year as a way to trim the federal deficit.
“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an interview on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show.
Health-care entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid “are the big drivers of debt,” Ryan said, “so we spend more time on the health-care entitlements, because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.“
via The Hill.
Related Reading:
After Passing Senate Tax Bill, GOP to Target Seniors’ Earned Benefits.
- As if to confirm the warnings of seniors’ advocates, Republicans have signaled that their next targets after the tax bill are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
- Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) admitted as much in an interview with Politico last week, declaring that spending cuts in earned benefits programs will be necessary to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and multinational corporations.
National Committee President, House Dems Decry GOP Tax Plan’s "Dire” Impact on Seniors.
- The tax bill will trigger an immediate $25 billion cut to Medicare unless Congress quickly waives the PAYGO provision of federal budget law.
- Both Medicare and Medicaid – which helps seniors afford long-term care – are targeted for deep cuts in the GOP budget plan.
The “real” drivers of debt, according to McConnell, are “Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid,” “entitlements” from which the Senate majority leader would cut off the old and poor if only he could get Democrats to sign on.
(That’s probably unlikely to happen, given Nancy Pelosi’s statement today that, “Like clockwork, Republicans in Congress are setting in motion their plan to destroy the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that seniors and families rely on, just months after they exploded the deficit by $2 trillion with their tax scam for the rich,” and Chuck Schumer’s that suggesting cuts to “middle-class programs like Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as the only fiscally responsible solution to solve the debt problem is nothing short of gaslighting.”)
via Vanity Fair.
Related Reading:
Sen. McConnell Reminds Retirees What They Have to Lose in November.
In fact, tax expenditures – especially the Trump/GOP tax cuts – are the number one drivers of the debt, not Social Security or Medicare. Social Security is self-funded and does not contribute to the debt.