#or cutting social security

[snnumntik]

anyone else really scared about the rush of media backlash against the public for supporting the United Healthcare CEO shooter (it's not Luigi Mangione until he's proven guilty) and what it could mean for the upcoming trump administration?

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

Social Security and Medicare might not be important to you, but I guarantee it's important to someone you know, whether it's your parents, or grandparents, or friends... someone you know relies on that money. Plus, you're paying into those programs with every pay check. That's your money. You will never get that money back.

[rejectingrepublicans]

FAFO

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

6 minute YouTube video explaining how Ramaswamy and Musk’s DOGE budget cuts are completely unrealistic. The only way they can save the $2 trillion they proposed is by cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Veterans benefits. They are also planning on cutting the National Institute of Health, and all funding for the arts and sciences among other things. Best of all they are going to further cut taxes for the top 1% while cutting all those services to the bottom 98% of the country.

👆

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Christopher Shields

* * * *

On Thursday, Lucy once again pulled the football away from Charlie Brown at the last moment--to no one’s surprise. Republicans dropped all pretense of helping the “little guy” whose support Trump courted during the election. Instead, Republicans made clear that the working class, unions, retirees, veterans, and disabled Americans will be roadkill in the headlong rush to extend Trump's 2017 tax cut for millionaires and big corporations.

Before looking at the details, I urge readers to maintain a clear distinction between two closely related sets of facts:

Despite the bravado and tough talk of Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Speaker-In-Name-Only Mike Johnson, it is highly unlikely that Republicans will succeed in cutting Social Security, Medicare, Veterans healthcare, and a variety of other safety net programs and federal agencies. See Business Insider, Trump's former chief of staff says Elon Musk will have an easier time getting to Mars than making proposed DOGE cuts.

Notwithstanding the remote prospects of implementing the cuts, Democrats must treat those efforts as a frontal assault on the working class, unions, veterans, retirees, and disabled Americans, converting the proposals into an albatross around the necks of House Republicans going into the 2026 midterms.

So, we must hold firm to two thoughts: (1) Do not panic over every pronouncement from court jesters Musk and Ramaswamy, but (2) raise the alarm about their reckless pronouncements at every opportunity.

The shocking proposed cuts to social programs discussed by Musk and Ramaswamy on Thursday must be treated as the opening salvo of the 2026 midterms.

What happened on Thursday?

Musk and Ramaswamy held a closed-door meeting with the GOP congressional caucus to discuss cutting $2 trillion from a $6.5 trillion annual budget. Other than “tough guy” talking points, Musk and Ramaswamy offered no concrete solutions. See The Independent, Elon Musk came to DC to lots of fanfare. But he said surprisingly little of substance.

After the meetings, Republican lawmakers avoided any discussion of cuts to specific programs—except to say that Musk and Ramaswamy want to “cut waste.” Well, there’s a shocker! Who doesn’t want to “eliminate waste”?

Although Trump has repeatedly promised that he will not cut Social Security, Musk has been amplifying calls on Twitter by Republican Senator Mike Lee to cut Social Security. It is always a bad idea to contradict a president-elect about proposed policies; doing so with Trump is usually the shortest path to a breakup. See MSNBC, Opinion by Ryan Teague Beckwith | Republicans are suddenly interested in cutting Social Security.

As of Thursday evening, Fox News is reporting that cuts to “Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are on the table.”

But the Musk-Ramaswamy proposals don’t stop there. Per Steve Ratner on BlueSky (@steverattner.bsky.social), the bulk of additional savings will come from proposed cuts to

· VA Healthcare - $516 billion (100% reduction) · National Institutes of Health - $47 billion (eliminate NIH) · Pell Grants - $22 billion (80% reduction) · Head Start - $12 billion (100% reduction) · FBI -$11 billion (out of $11.3 billion budget) · Federal Prisons -$8 billion (100% reduction) · SEC - $2 billion (out of $2.1 billion current budget)

A careful review of the above proposed cuts reveals that the Musk cuts will effectively eliminate the following agencies and programs: VA healthcare, NIH, Head Start, FBI, Federal Prisons, and the SEC.

The cuts are nonsensical—which is why you should not lie awake at night worrying about them. But because they are nonsensical, we must begin hammering on those proposals as our opening salvo in the 2026 midterms.

And I dearly hope that all the pundits who have been (wrongly) castigating Democrats for “ignoring” the working class will condemn Republicans with equal zeal for the cuts proposed by Musk and Ramaswamy.

The proposed cuts show that Trump was lying to the working class, using them as pawns to pay for the extension of the 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. Disgusting! That betrayal must be in the opening paragraph of every op-ed, mailer, TikTok, Substack, and speech given by Democrats between now and Election Day 2026.

[Robert B. Hubbell]

[bitchy-peachy]

Some person in one of the chat groups I'm in is flipping out about losing VA benefits cos they voted for Trump.

As always. may you get everything you voted for.

[randyite]

[yemme]

Hallmark should've been sued for lack of representation long ago. I waited a long time to see a black co-star become a lead also plus size white women on my TV. Now we are in the era of ageism... and with a Network that doesn't realize it is the old and progressive that's watching. Holly is expensive because she knows her worth... she looks better than your younger crew. Lacey is aging... her body is bangin' better than your youth. Stop the madness. Netflix and Hallmark... take your hands out of the envelope before you get paper cuts by Snail Mail Queens. You've lost viewership over subtle gay background story lines. Whomever this woman is I'm sure she can see better with that one eye than someone with four. Can't believe you fired a NeverEnding Story Queen... SHAME. Add more independently produced movies and series... that is where you start.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[springacres]

Getting sick really sucks. I genuinely hope it's the flu and not Covid Round 2.

[noodles-07]

I don’t think we talk about how horrible it is to get a haircut as much as we should

[intelligentchristianlady]

If you have time for one long read this holiday weekend, make it this one.

[gilfrespecter]

OH!!! FUCK I FORGOT I GOTTA FIND AN ARCHERY RANGE NOW THAT I DONT HAVE TITS IM SO EXCITED TO LEARN HOW TO SHOOT CORRECTLY

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Have patience . . .

November 7, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

          Republicans can’t help themselves. On a day that should have been non-stop coverage about the NYTimes poll, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that Republicans should cut Medicare and Social Security. See The Hill, Johnson embraces deficit fight, setting up battle over Medicare, Social Security. Johnson faces a November 17 shutdown and has nothing to show for his brief tenure as Speaker. Instead of passing the twelve funding bills necessary to enact a budget, Johnson resurrected Kevin McCarthy’s proposal of a “bipartisan commission” to reduce the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare.

          Before his accidental elevation to Speaker, Mike Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee (RSC), which has long advocated cutting Medicare and Social Security—even though both are fully self-funding programs with sufficient reserves to pay 100% of their benefits through 2031 and 2034 respectively. But Republicans view Social Security and Medicare as “socialist” programs that deprive Americans of the “freedom” to experience financial and medical insecurity in retirement.

          Per The Hill (linked above),

As RSC chair in 2020, Johnson authored a budget that called for raising the Medicare and Social Security eligibility ages. It called for $2 trillion in cuts to Medicare and $750 billion in cuts to Social Security.  It also called for turning Medicare into a premium support program, where private plans compete alongside traditional Medicare. Instead of a guaranteed benefit, beneficiaries would use a voucher to buy coverage on either a private or Medicare plan.   Johnson’s past support for cutting spending on Medicare and Social Security is in line with longtime Republican dogma. GOP leaders in the past have hammered Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as socialist initiatives—"inefficient and anti-American” —that threaten individual freedoms. 

          To be clear, Congress should take action to reduce deficits and the national debt. But the obvious place to start is by restoring the tax cuts gifted by Trump to corporations and wealthy individuals/families in 2017. (Certain cuts to individual income taxes are set to expire in 2025, but corporate, capital gains, and estate tax cuts remain in effect.) Trump's tax cuts (layered on top of Bush’s tax cuts) eliminated tens of trillions in tax revenue and are largely responsible for the increase in the US deficit and debt. See Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio - Center for American Progress.

          Per the Center for American Progress (CAP),

Taken together, the Bush tax cuts, their bipartisan extensions, and the Trump tax cuts, have cost $10 trillion since their creation and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since then. They are responsible for more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if you exclude the one-time costs for responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession. 

          In short, the US has a tax revenue shortage problem created by Trump and Bush. As noted in the CAP report above, the US is a “low tax rate / revenue” country compared to equivalent economies—e.g., $36 trillion in less tax revenue than the EU over the last decade.

          But rather than looking to GOP tax cuts as the source of the US’s current deficit spending, Republicans want to place the consequences of their reckless fiscal policy on the backs of hardworking Americans who earned the right to Medicare and Social Security.

          Americans should be outraged. Republicans are threatening the financial and medical security of retirees—many of whom say they will vote for Trump in 2024!

          I raise this story first on a day of many important stories to help ground us in the facts that matter regarding 2024. The truth about the GOP’s policies and Biden’s accomplishments has not broken through the noise of negative media narrative, but it will—so long as Democrats do their part as messengers for Biden, messengers for democracy, and messengers for the American people.

          The Republican Party relies on deceit, deception, and misdirection in concealing its true agenda. Think of Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia—who presents himself as a “moderate” on reproductive liberty but will impose a total abortion ban if Republicans win control of both chambers of the legislature. In Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State wrote a deceptive and misleading description of Issue 1, the proposed constitutional amendment to protect the right to make reproductive decisions. Across the nation, Republicans have enacted “voter protection legislation” that suppresses the vote of Black Americans.

          If Republicans were confident in their policies, they would not go to great lengths to conceal the true substance and purpose of those policies. Whenever Democrats have broken through the GOP smokescreen of lies, Democrats win most of the time. That knowledge should fill us with confidence after yesterday’s NYTimes poll: The truth is on our side; we need to work harder to break through the veil of disinformation and negative media narrative. If we can do that—and we can—we can win.

          While we cannot rely on Republicans to defeat themselves, they are helping us at every turn. The fact that Speaker Mike Johnson has targeted Social Security and Medicare in his first month on the job is another misstep by Johnson and House Republicans. There will be plenty of additional opportunity in the next ten days as House Republicans use the threat of a government shutdown to slash budgets to make up for GOP tax cuts for corporations and ultra-wealthy taxpayers.