Why Entitlements Should be Spared.

Let’s forget about the fact that programs like Medicare and Social Security are smart investments, good for people, good for the economy, good for social stability.   Why should these investments — called entitlements — be cut to compensate for a deficit caused by decades of deliberate under funding of government?

It is being said more and more often — and for good reason — we are in a class war.  Plain and simple.  The attack, however, does not come from the needy, resentful left, as conservatives want Americans to believe, it comes from a greedy, myopic right.

Conservatives have gone after government with particular focus and vengeance since the early 1980s.  And they are succeeding.  Today’s conservatives still try to divide us on social issues, but they succeed on economic ones.

We couldn’t even maintain a budget surplus in the post-Clinton years.  We cut and squandered our national treasury.  Then we pushed forward with poorly-conceived tax policy based on failed economic opinions.  The Tweedledum and Tweedledee twins of Republican failure otherwise known as Starve the Beast and Trickle Down Economics.

So when I hear so-called GOP moderates like Representative John Kline whine that entitlements must be cut before Republicans will agree to any deficit plan in the next few weeks, one has to think twice.  Do we really need to cut programs that should be held harmless or is the GOP plan to gut government working?  I will argue that it is the latter.

Entitlements should be spared because they are a social investment, paid for by taxpayers, that are targets of cuts today because the GOP is winning the class war, and not because cuts will strengthen our economic future.  Better management — appropriate and responsible funding — should spare these programs from the Orwellian politics of less-is-more crowd.

The slippery slope is becoming steeper.  Fast.  Time to dig in the heels and hope it isn’t too late.

Related articles

• The Fiscal Cliff Deal Could Destroy Medicare (businessinsider.com)
• Starve the beast:  Fiscal calamity in the GOP’s Plan to shrink government (post-gazette.com)
• Appetite for cutting entitlements not just a Republican thing (tv.msnbc.com)
• The new conservative purity test (salon.com)
• Cliff Deal Spares Retirees — for Now (blogs.marketwatch.com)
• Obama’s Great Society (salon.com)
• 2016 politics already on display (kypost.com)
• Chris Christie, Spare Us Your Anti-GOP Theatrics — You’re Still a Republican (alternet.org)
• GOP Rep:  ”It’s About Time” We Had Another Government Shut Down (thinkprogress.org)

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