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  #21  
Old 12-01-2017, 11:25 PM
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http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...130-story.html
A painfully earnest Sen. Marco Rubio, right, explains to Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer of Politico why cutting taxes for the 1% is good, but preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits for the working class is bad. (Politico)
Michael HiltzikMichael HiltzikContact Reporter

Advocates for seniors and the middle class have been warning for weeks that the Republican drive to cut taxes for the wealthy is the prelude to a larger attack on Social Security and Medicare.

In a videotaped interview with two Politico reporters Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said the quiet parts out loud. Asked by interviewers Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman how to address the federal deficit, he replied: “We have to do two things. We have to generate economic growth which generates revenue, while reducing spending. That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.” (A video of Rubio’s appearance is here, with his remarks on Social Security and Medicare beginning at the 21:45 mark.)

The only thing that’s new here is the explicit admission by a Republican officeholder that this is the GOP’s master plan to eviscerate the welfare and retirement of American workers. Budget analysts have seen it coming with all the subtlety of a freight train. As we reported earlier this month, the damage begins with the so-called Paygo law (for “pay as you go”), which requires Congress to offset any increase in the federal deficit with spending cuts. The law limits Medicare cuts to 4% of its budget per year, or $25 billion of its $625-billion budget. Because the tax cut proposals the Senate was preparing to vote on late Friday would expand the deficit by about $1.5 trillion over 10 years, it’s likely to trigger the cuts.
The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries. — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) conveniently forgets that GOP tax cuts will create $1.5 trillion in new debt

But $25 billion a year is a drastic cut that “would undermine the delivery of care to the 57 million seniors and disabled Americans who depend on the program,” Max Richtman, head of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said a couple of weeks ago.

The progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observed that the Senate’s plan, which would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, would “create pressure for future cuts.” That’s confirmed by Rubio’s remarks to Palmer and Sherman.

Asked to justify the deficit increase caused by the proposed tax cuts, Rubio replied, “The argument would be, ‘We can’t cut taxes because that would drive up the deficit.’ That assumes that somehow we can fix the deficit through higher taxes, and we can’t.”
Suddenly, the GOP tax bill has morphed into an attack on your healthcare

Rubio delivered his statements in full earnest-wonk mode, all but shaking his head in regret at the painful reality he claimed to be outlining. But his demeanor concealed that he was blowing smoke. His prescription involves two options — generating economic growth and cutting spending. Actually, there are three options — raising taxes is the third. And both of the others are less cut and dried than Rubio suggests. For one thing, economic growth at the moment is near a recent historical high; most serious economists don’t expect the GOP’s tax cuts for the rich and for corporations to have any significant further impact.

For another, even if one is cutting spending, that leaves open the question: which spending? Rubio’s argument that it has to be through cuts to Social Security and Medicare is GOP doctrine because it strikes at the middle and working classes and leaves the wealthy alone, cradling their huge tax cuts.
The chained CPI: Another secret tax hike for the middle class slipped into the GOP tax bills

“The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries,” Rubio said. Also wrong. The driver of the $1.5-trillion deficit over the next 10 years would be the Republican tax cuts, if they’re enacted.

“We still have time to responsibly structure those programs,” he said of Social Security and Medicare, “in a way that doesn’t impact current retirees or people about to retire, but in a way that would probably impact it for me and people younger than me.” (He’s 46.) This could be done “in ways you wouldn’t really notice and wouldn’t really object to.”



But members of those future generations should take notice. Like today’s beneficiaries and those of the past, they’re paying for their future benefits with every paycheck, and they should be profoundly aware that Rubio and his fellow Republicans are merely preparing to rip them off.


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  #22  
Old 12-02-2017, 07:12 AM
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GOP's plan all a long is to bankrupt the country in order to get out of all social safety net programs.



Barney
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  #23  
Old 12-02-2017, 08:18 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oerets View Post
GOP's plan all a long is to bankrupt the country in order to get out of all social safety net programs.



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This.




.
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  #24  
Old 12-02-2017, 11:04 AM
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I wonder if Mexico will build a wall to keep out people from the USA?
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  #25  
Old 12-02-2017, 11:17 AM
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Originally Posted by CarlV View Post
I wonder if Mexico will build a wall to keep out people from the USA?
Only if they can use cheap American labor to build it.
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  #26  
Old 12-03-2017, 01:05 PM
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Am I wrong in thinking this bill is probably going to end family farming and boutique type small businesses, clearing out shopping malls and such?


Oh yeah, I ran across this
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

4.1% unemployment is as low as it ever gets, so much for the creating jobs spin.
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Last edited by CarlV; 12-03-2017 at 01:27 PM.
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  #27  
Old 12-03-2017, 07:12 PM
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No Money for Poor Children, but $1.5 Trillion for the Rich and Corporations

Less than two days after the Senate passed widely criticized tax reform legislation, one of the tax bill’s key proponents came under fire for claiming there’s “no money” for a children’s health care plan he helped create.

On the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) responded to a question from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) about the future of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a low-cost health insurance plan for children from low-income families that Congress has yet to review since it expired Oct. 1.

The question came during a debate on the Republican tax bill, which Hatch presided over as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

In response, Hatch claimed the health insurance program had not yet been renewed due to a lack of funds.

“The reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore,” Hatch said.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/201...plan/23295751/
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  #28  
Old 12-03-2017, 08:55 PM
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And Hatch is supposedly one of the less-evil Republicans....

Ha ha ha.
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  #29  
Old 12-04-2017, 07:03 AM
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Sen. Chuck Grassley defended his party's tax plan this weekend by saying that plans to reduce or eliminate the estate tax mean that people will use their money more wisely.

"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley (R-Iowa) told the Des Moines Register, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”


https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...-movies-277764

The GOP's old "welfare queen" tactic rears its ugly head once again.
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  #30  
Old 12-04-2017, 08:44 AM
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When the republicans finally bankrupt our country they and their wealthy 1% donors will just leave the country taking their offshore cash while the rest of us will have to suffer the consequences. The 1% is sucking every last bit of wealth out of the country and will leave the country in ruins. But they don't care because they got theirs.
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