Social Security and Medicare
 

As many here are apparently of a certain vintage...;)

"Tom Leppert, the former mayor of Dallas who, it was announced Monday, is a member of Donald Trump's "landing team" for the Social Security Administration, once released a plan calling for the privatization of Social Security and Medicare.

The "landing teams" interact with federal agencies in helping to set up the government under President-elect Trump after he is sworn into office.
Leppert, who released the plan during a failed bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Texas in 2012, most recently served as the CEO of Kaplan, Inc. Leppert supported Trump during the Republican primary and the president-elect thanked him at the time in a tweet.
But Leppert's past plans advocating privatizing both Social Security and Medicare make him a peculiar choice to run point on the Social Security Administration. Trump has unabashedly opposed any effort to change entitlements throughout the campaign, saying economic growth would keep entitlements from needing cuts. Emails to Leppert and Trump's spokespeople were not immediately returned.

Trump talked about entitlements earlier this year with a local Wisconsin radio station, saying, "Now, I want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. I want to do a lot of things to it that are going to make it much better, actually. But I'm not going to cut it, and I'm not going to raise ages, and I'm not going to do all of the things that they want to do. But they want to really cut it, and they want to cut it very substantially, the Republicans, and I'm not going to do that."

"We're gonna save your Social Security without making any cuts. Mark my words," Trump said in February.

Yeah right, that warm yellow rain gently wafting down from atop Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue ain't manna from heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ex-...ex-m-eEKsg#t=0

Read more here - http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/21/news...ney_topstories

Social Security and Medicare are effectively dead.

Who was just elected President of the United States?

Was it Tom Leppert?

Or was it Donald Trump?

So you think if worst case scenario comes true, and Trump decides to let Paul Ryan and whathisname? Leppert run the show, that the pussy Dems won't be able to scare up 41 votes in the Senate to block it, even though they have 48 seats?

You may be right about that.

The Dems are pussies.

So I'll count on Trump to save my Social Security.

You watch,Joad, and find out what it means to put your faith in a liar's promises.

Who said, "I'm going to hire the best people"?

I hope the elderly learn to enjoy the taste of catfood on crackers cause it surely won't be pate.

It wouldn't be the first time he's been scammed. More'n likely he's got some prime land out there in the 'Glades somewheres. Hmmm, I've heard gators taste like chicken. I wonder if there's any truth to that?

You guys are fucking hilarious with your chicken little doom and gloom scenarios dancing like sugar plums all in your head. :D

Meanwhile, you try to sugarcoat a neo-Nazi.

You are wrong on both counts.

Number one: Trump is not a Neo-Nazi.

Number two: I'm just providing a little objectivity to counter the anti-Trump hysteria that has taken over this forum.

That remains to be seen. He sure did run as a proto-fascist and selected another as his closest advisor.

I hope they realize what that would do to the economy - it would make the 2008 recession look like a church picnic.

"WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump once declared that campaigning for “substantial” changes to Medicare would be a political death wish.
But with Election Day behind them, emboldened House Republicans say they will move forward on a years-old effort to shift Medicare away from its open-ended commitment to pay for medical services and toward a fixed government contribution for each beneficiary.
The idea rarely came up during Mr. Trump’s march toward the White House, but a battle over the future of Medicare could roil Washington during his first year in office, whether he wants it or not."

"For nearly six years, Speaker Paul D. Ryan has championed the new approach, denounced by Democrats as “voucherizing” Medicare. Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the House Budget Committee chairman and a leading candidate to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, has also embraced the idea, known as premium support." NY Times

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politi...cid=spartandhp

FYI, you need to work on it a bit my friend. There is certainly no objectivity and you really do come across as a shill and nothing else.


Carl

I don't care what "Republicans in congress" say or think.

They didn't win this election, Trump did.

Without their help as most of them did not support him.

To think that now they are going to get Carte Blanc to do whatever they want and he will rubber stamp it is naive as Hell.

Your comments assumes Trump has an ideology and really gives a shit about governance. His presidential run was never about that. From day one, it was about his brand and his ego. We'll have to see what the neo-fascist behind the curtain who's pulling Trump's strings (Bannon) has in store. BTW, Trump was walked back almost all of his campaign promises already. Why should SS and Medicare be the only things he doesn't renege on?

As much as he'd like to be and as much as you'd like him to be, Trump will not be King of America. With the Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, Trump will need their cooperation in order to govern. If they want to scrap Medicare and privatize Social Security, and they do, Trump will happily go along.

We'll see.

If Trump turns out to be a working class Hero, I win.

If he turns out to be a scam artist, the Hillarybots lose. ;)

Heads I win. Tails they lose. ;)

You know.

I know you know. And you know that too.

All this shit is just your way to try to cope.

Cognitive dissonance, just like everyone that supports Trump..... or so I'd like to believe but I know too well that there are many out there who like what he stands for just fine.

It is.

As far as politics goes, the world ended the day I realized that Hillary Clinton was going to be nominated and not Bernie.

Everything else since then has been my way of saying "Fuck it"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RJH7GdvjP0

What do you mean "if?" Dude's a grifter from the word "go." I guess you're just a bit slow on the uptake. Hell, he still has 75 lawsuits against him in America's courts.

What you're seeing here IS objectivity. We all want the country to succeed. But, there is a price to pay for this so-called "Greatness" that some seem to seek. Historically, leaders who bellow the loudest about greatness and extoll the virtues of nationalistic and patriotic fervor turn out to be a nightmare and ultimately bring nothing but shame.

The cause for concern is not unfounded.

Go ahead, tell me you don't know this is true.

Don has helped me see the light.

Now that I understand myself better, things are going to be a lot easier from now on

Fuck it.

Good Lord. I thought we dispatched that "proto-fascist" talk track in another thread. I'll give you this much, Finn: you're obviously a fan of recycling, and you're obviously a fan of William James, who famously said: "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

I understand your unwillingness and inability to grasp that you voted for such a dangerous cretin.

Social Security and Medicare are one of the largest pyramid schemes of all time. They didn't start out that way. But that's what they've become as they've been blown by Washington political winds over the years. The pyramid will begin to crumble during Trump's administration, according the latest annual report of the Social Security Board of Trustees:

"The Trustees project that the combined OASDI Trust Funds will continue growing through 2019 as total annual income exceeds total annual costs. Beginning in 2020, however, they project the OASDI annual cost will exceed total income, so the trust fund reserves will be drawn down until they are depleted in 2034—the same year as estimated last year. After trust fund reserve depletion, continuing income is sufficient to pay 79 percent of program cost, declining to 74 percent for 2090."

The attitude of "it ain't broke, so don't fix it" regarding SSA always strikes me as shamelessly self serving, since by 2034 most of us might not be around to argue about it any more. But my kids sure will, and I'll be damned if I'm going to live in well and then stick my kids with the bill. This financial albatross needs to get fixed, and soon.

Still waiting for you - for several days now - to provide one self-sourced example to support your claim that Pence and Trump are "mainstreaming" neo-Nazi-ism. But I'll be patient.

There are hundreds of examples nationwide that you are obviously intentionally blind to. If you're truly interested, find them yourself. For starters, however, I'll give you Richard Spencer and his merry band of neo-Nazis who met to celebrate Trump's victory in the Ronald Reagan building, a Federal building on Pennsylvania avenue a couple of blocks from the White House. Then spend a few days on Breitbart.com to better understand the political philosophy of Trump's foremost political advisor, Steve Bannon (whose first choice of puppet to install (with Russia's help) and manipulate as President was Sarah Palin). Trump was his second choice who he described as a "blunt instrument" to implement his white-nationalist agenda.

I understand your desire to ignore these things in favor of believing that Trump is indeed the only guy who can fix the country (itself symptomatic of fascism). If you find staying ignorant to be blissful, knock yourself out. The Germans were also blissful about Hitler for almost a decade ... until they weren't.

You could have saved yourself a lot of typing and copy/pasting and just said "I don't know", or "I don't have any quotes that support my statement".

...and, of course, what would a liberal verbal assault on a Republican politician be without at least one "Hitler reference."

Keep it up, Finn. You're on your way to becoming a caricature.

https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hp...30415431_n.jpg

For the record, I supported Kasich from the beginning. You can continue to deny what Trump/Bannon represent if it helps you sleep at night.

I probably will, just 'cuz it makes you look silly. By the way, the WaPo article on Bannon that you linked to contradicts your position. But hey, don't let the facts get in your way. :rolleyes:

It doesn't at all contradict the notion that Bannon is the man behind the curtain using Trump as the vehicle to implement his (white-)nationalist agenda. In fact, it's pretty much the point of the article.

Feelin' your oats, eh Whell? :rolleyes: Have you taken a look at Bannon?

Sure. He's latest incarnation of Karl Rove for the left. In other words, he's the left's latest bogeyman, and I'm sure you guys will conjure up many more over the next 4 years. :rolleyes:

Not hardly. Rove falls within the bounds of normal political behavior/discourse. Bannon, OTOH, doesn't come close. However, your conflation of Rove criticism with Bannon criticism illustrates my point that Trump/Bannon have mainstreamed racism, xenophobia and misogyny.

Here's an example of the chickenshit that passes for journalism from the IN THE TANK FOR CLINTON media. I'm just going to focus on what the dipshit author wrote about Medicare, since that's what this thread is about.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/20...d-his-policies

Are you fucking shitting me? "The question going forward, however, is did we elect President Donald Trump or President Paul Ryan?" Jesus Christ Almighty.:rolleyes:

TRUMP IS THE GODDAMNED PRESIDENT MORON!

And then there's this shit:

Attentive or shrewd enough? Trump has just gotten finished making fools of the entire Republican and Democratic establishment. And this idiot is suggesting that he's not smart enough to use his Veto power? :rolleyes:

If republican politicians did not so embody racism, bigotry and fascism perhaps it would be considered assault, but since republicans pretty much embrace those "values", it's nothing but the truth.

The issue really is whether Trump has any intention of implementing anything he ran on. He's flip-flopped on nearly everything already.