Where is the Money ?... Excerpts...Follow the trail in the party’s recent budgets and what you find (...) are deep cuts to programs for the poor. That’s the inevitable consequence of Republican commitments to favored constituencies. The party promised its anti-tax wing no tax increases and lower tax rates. It promised older voters that Medicare and Social Security would not change for those over age 55. It promised defense hawks that sequestration cuts to military spending would be reversed. And it promised its tea party allies that it would cut trillions from government spending and balance the federal budget. The only way to square all those promises is through draconian cuts to programs for the poor (...) account for two-thirds of proposed Republican budget savings (...) 37 million Americans would lose access to Medicaid, Yet all the Republicans now talking about poverty -- Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and Rand Paul and Rep. Paul Ryan -- either voted for or, in Ryan’s case, authored these cuts. The notion that the main problem of the poor and jobless is their generous indulgence by the federal government is apparently too seductive to resist. Senate Republicans this week filibustered an extension of emergency benefits to the long-term unemployed. This is a correlation/causation mistake of staggering size and consequence. In effect, Paul sees that people who take medicine are more likely to die and concludes that we need to take away their medicine. When there are three job seekers for every open position, it’s pretty clear that a lack of jobs, rather than lack of interest in getting jobs, is the core problem for the long-term unemployed.....Read more washingtonpost/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/17/a-simple-test-for-conservative-poverty-proposals/
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:16:37 +0000