The Right Tries (and Fails) to Justify Its Assault on Social Security

[Omaha Steve]

http://ourfuture.org/20150109/the-right-tries-and-fails-to-justify-its-attack-on-social-security?utm_source=progressive_breakfast&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pbreak


Richard Eskow JANUARY 9, 2015

How does the right justify the kind of action Congress took this week, when it moved to cut disability benefits for millions of people by 20 percent? Answer #1: With buzzwords and rhetorical dodges. Answer #2: Not very well.

For details on the House’s action, we pointed yesterday to a number of well-informed analyses – by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, Kathy Ruffing, Alan Pyke, Dean Baker, and Michael Hiltzik. Republicans moved to cut Social Security disability benefits by blocking a routine reallocation of funds. That’s bad enough, but their end game is even worse: broad Social Security cuts and the privatization of the entire program.

That would be bad for most Americans, but great for the people who finance the Republican Party – and think tanks like Heritage. There would be less pressure to increase taxes on billionaires. Wall Street would have more money under its control. And the far right’s antigovernment ideology would have claimed another scalp.

Heritage’s defense of the House is a good example of the right’s time-worn strategies for concealing – perhaps, at times, even from itself – the moral and human implications of its actions. It’s written by Romina Boccia, the “Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs in the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation” – (now there’s a title!) – and is called “The House Just Made It Harder for Politicians to Steal From Social Security Retirement Fund.”

FULL story at link.

[misterhighwasted]

1. What do you call Privatizing an entire Government, our Democracy

What the hell!!

[femmocrat]

2. Why does no one pay attention when we try to warn them at election time?

I do not get it.

[Skittles]

5. propaganda works

the corporate media is not telling Americans the truth and most people neglect to research the truth for themselves

[meow2u3]

3. RWNJs are not about to let facts get in the way of their assault on Social Security

In fact, the right wanted to get rid of SS from Day One and will pull out all the stops to dismantle it, even if it takes a repeal bill. They have no qualms about robbing workers of their hard-earned benefits.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Posted to for later.

[Scuba]

6. You gotta give them one thing - they're consistent ...