The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

Ever since the time of our acting president, Ronald Reagan (though only in B films), the Republicans spoke of shrinking the government. They did not mean the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, Poseidon submarines, or B52 bombers. You guessed it — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and food stamps. Despite two terms of Reagan and one of GHW Bush, they could not “starve the beast.”  Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton, though, got as far as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, otherwise known as Welfare Reform.

In the Bush-Cheney (B-C) administration, the first four years were spent on energy — oil and war — with economic action limited to tax cuts for the obscenely rich and generous salaries for FBI agents assigned to check out our library records. In 2005, George W was continued in office, courtesy of Ohio’s votes being tabulated by Diebold’s touch screen machines. Not one month into his new term, he announced “I earned political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” He announced that Social Security needed fixing and he would save it by gifting it to Wall Street. Senior citizens — those ingrates — showed no enthusiasm. A few right wingers lumped Medicaid and Medicare together with Social Security and tried to panic the public by predicting that all the money would run out by 2017. Most folks saw through the ruse — only medical services were in trouble, not Social Security. The Social Security Trust Fund was full, and had a healthy revenue stream coming in. What needed “reform” was Medicaid and Medicare, but George wasn’t about to tangle with the medical insurance companies. They had been known to mobilize thousands of lobbyists in a heartbeat. AARP, by contrast,  didn’t need lobbyists — it could mobilize most of 33 million voters with a monthly Bulletin. AARP didn’t much like the idea of private investment accounts that would be subject to the manipulations of Wall Street in place of solid, steady Social Security. With little public support, George soon gave up on privatizing the Social Security Trust Fund. Poor George, he used up the entire surplus bequeathed to him by the previous administration on two wars and tax cuts for the rich-rich but couldn’t starve the beast.

So, we’re at 2010. The moderate Republicans have bolted, and the rest of the party of Lincoln have moved a little closer a the right-wingnut position.  They will not be happy just to starve the beast; they are brandishing their long knives, and this time they will try to stab it through the heart. The latest rationale is the need to bring the deficit under control, else foreign investors will lose confidence in the economic strength and stability of the US. Can you imagine, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s rating US Treasuries below the bonds of General Motors? The present deficit, we know, has been driven way up over the rainbow to the land of Oz by: the bank bailout and the stimulus following two wars in Asia (including excessive payments to Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and CACI), the 737 US military bases abroad, the 21 intelligence services of various federal agencies, and the 2,000 private corporations that have been given security clearance and were secretly paid to assist in “homeland security.” The Gadfly Revelry & Research team, in an exercise in straight common sense, said that the deficit would disappear if all these causes were eliminated, especially the wars.

The second deficit-hawk deception is that Social Security will soon be bankrupt. Actually, Social Security, by itself, is awash in money and can continue apace past 2040. We could extend Social Security to full funding for the next century by taxing workers on their complete salary, not just up to $100,000. One member of the GRR gang thinks we could do it with the salaries and bonuses of Goldman Sachs employees alone. Medicare, on the other hand, does need some help. There, we could start with allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with the companies of Big Pharma, just as Canada does. Then, we can amend the recent Health care “Reform” Act to include a public option. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a public option now would save $68 billion by 2020.