A Moral Assessment of the Attack on Social Safety Nets

[Donnachaidh]

http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=450

IN A post-midterm elections interview, President Obama told 60 Minutes that “we’re gonna have to…tackle some big issues like entitlements that, you know, when you listen to the Tea Party or you listen to Republican candidates they promise we’re not gonna touch.” His budget proposal, which landed on the Hill this week, does not include recommendations to cut Social Security and Medicare. However, the White House defined the budget as merely Obama’s “opening bid” and hinted broadly that the social safety nets may well have to be lowered.

In order to win back independent voters, centrist Democrats are urging the president to show that he can think big and act big by taking on unpopular issues like Medicare and Social Security. Alice Rivlin, a former budget director under President Clinton, argues, “This is a convenient moment to do this. The only better time to fix Social Security than this year is last year or the year before.” She calls on Democrats to get out in front of the problem “by trimming outmoded federal programs and increasing revenue over the long term by raising the retirement age for Social Security and means-testing Medicare benefits.”

Both legislators and media mavens argue that cutting into the social safety net is not merely necessary to reduce the deficit, but that it is mathematically inevitable. They remind us that 60 percent of the federal budget is eaten up by entitlements. We are told that there is simply no other place from which to take a huge sum to reduce the deficit. As Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) put it, “we can’t solve our budget crisis without dealing with our entitlements.”

All these statements fail to hold up—mathematically, morally, and politically

More at the link --

[cutlassmama]

1. they can "fix it by" raising the cap on the wealthy