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House GOP Want to Cut Medicare, Pell Grants, Social Safety Net—But Shhh! Don’t Say “Cut”!

What do you get from a Republican Congress? Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and not even the courage to call these cuts cuts:

House Republicans called it streamlining, empowering states or “achieving sustainability.” They couched deep spending reductions in any number of gauzy euphemisms.

What they would not do on Tuesday was call their budget plan, which slashes spending by $5.5 trillion over 10 years, a “cut” [Jonathan Weisman, “House Republicans Propose Budget with Deep Cuts,” New York Times, 2015.03.17].

This slash-and-burn proposal is no “moral document”; it is just another Paul Ryan budget out to keep the rich rich and the poor oppressed. Robert Reich gives the straightest summary of the Republican budget proposal:

It (1) decimates programs for the poor (huge cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and Pell grants for college students from poor families); (2) cuts federal aid to education; (3) turns Medicare into a voucher system (that doesn’t keep up with expected increases in healthcare costs); (4) repeals Obamacare (which is now providing health insurance to 16.4 million people who otherwise wouldn’t have it); (5) boosts military spending by nearly $40 billion next year (through an off-budget war funding account); (6) increases military spending in subsequent years while further cutting domestic discretionary spending; and (7) doesn’t raise a dime of taxes on the wealthy and doesn’t close any tax loopholes used by the rich [Robert Reich, Facebook post, 2015.03.17].

Constant war on the rest of the world, constant war on the 99% in America—that’s what you get if you keep electing people like Kristi Noem, John Thune, and M. Michael Rounds to Congress.

The Senate will likely reject this budget, since Thune and several others face re-election next year and don’t want to have to hommina-hommina around their colleagues crazy cuts all campaign. But fellow voters, why not save yourselves much sturm und drang and just vote for Democrats, who won’t propose bad bugdets like the House GOP?

8 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2015-03-18 13:15

    Wingnuts add 370 plus billion to defense spending-way above what sequestration allows,cuts social programs by 360 billion and wingnuts claim it will balance in 9 years. Oh yeah,Romney will also win Ohio in the 2012 race for Potus,too.

  2. jerry 2015-03-18 13:19

    The question to the republican would be this. What are you going to do with the money you steal from the elderly, children, disabled and the veterans? How is that going to help ordinary Americans?

  3. Craig 2015-03-18 16:43

    Perhaps we should start taxing talking points, cliches and euphemisms… we could balance the budget on the backs of the GOP within a year.

    Please tell me they didn’t forget to mention how they need to cut taxes on the “job creators” so they can allow a few of those dollars to trickle down to their employees!

  4. jerry 2015-03-19 09:59

    President Obama fact checks Tehran John and the rest of the phonies that lay the claim of looking out for Americans. Truth is, they are not doing real Americans any good whatsoever. There goal is to continue to enslave us to the 1% who have their long hands up their knickers. This is good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDXlPybx25A&t=48

  5. leslie 2015-03-20 20:01

    “republicans are nut-cutters” one dem election slogan!!?

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