The MAGA House wants cuts in Medicare. Dems want it privatized.
If you can’t follow the debt limit conversation in Washington, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.
It’s not meant for folks like us to understand.
It’s certainly not intended for us to have any input.
I do believe, however, that if somebody like George “The Liar” Santos has a say in it, why can’t we?
One part I do get is that in exchange for raising the debt limit the Republicans want cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
That’s personal.
It has only been a few weeks since the new Speaker, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, was elected to lead the MAGA majority in the House (with the help of Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene) and has pledged austerity, a willingness to leverage the fight over the debt ceiling — and the threat of a fiscal doomsday — to seek cuts in essential social programs.
In the short term the MAGAs are focused on cuts to federal health care, education, science and labor programs, perhaps by billions of dollars.
It’s not just specific programs they want reduced. It’s any part of government that helps poor and working people.
Like down here in Florida, where we are on a brief respite from Chicago weather, the Republicans and Governor DeSantis are debating whether abortions should be entirely illegal, illegal after a heart beat is detected or illegal after fifteen weeks.
Bad choices all around.
One result is that doctors and other medical professionals are fleeing the state in droves.
President Biden has said he will not negotiate deal to cut programs with Republicans.
“This is something that should be done without conditions, and we should not be taking hostage key programs that the American people really earned and care about — Social Security, Medicare, it should not be put in a hostage situation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday.
Well, that’s good to say.
You can’t negotiate with terrorists, right?
But the irony is that Biden has already committed to a Trump initiated ten year plan to privatize Medicare, moving everyone into a Medicare Advantage-type plan with or without our individual consent.
So, that’s our choices?
The Republicans want to cut social programs.
Democrats want to sell them to the highest corporate bidder.