THE BIG GOP LIE

THE BIG LIE

Written by Ken_Sayers

The GOP claims that Social Security and Medicare are out of control and are major contributors to our National Debt. This is simply not true. Social Security and Medicare will need tweaking later to meet their goals of providing healthcare and a minimal retirement program for seniors and our disabled. However, as you can see above, while they are included “on budget,” they are not part of it.

In early 1968 President Lyndon Johnson made a change in the budget presentation by including Social Security and all other trust funds in a”unified budget.” This is likewise sometimes described by saying that Social Security was placed “on-budget.”

It was argued that the reason to place Social Security and other Trust Funds “on budget” was to unify the various ways the budget was described. Notice that they said “on” and not “in.” The facts were that they are/were trust funds which are contributed to by working people and are disbursed to them at a later date. They had a lot of money in their funds and they still do. By bringing them “on” the Federal Budget, they could show that the Federal income was “bigger,” even though they could not touch those funds. By Medicare and Social Security inflating the total budget, it made defense look like a relatively smaller part of the total budget.

Notice that any change made in either Medicare or Social Security will have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the Federal Budget OR our National Debt.

The only thing that will effect our Federal Budget are the items on the left of the above diagram. We either need to increase the income (GREEN) or decrease our expenditures (RED). To suggest anything else is TREASONOUS given the consequences of not dealing with this problem honestly.

Before we attack the problem, one must realize that the items listed under expenses of the government are, in addition to being some of those things that make this country great, they are also JOBS which contribute to income. National debt, to the extent that it is spent on positively contributing programs, also contributes to income. Weapons may or may not contribute to our well-being.

Since we must increase income and decrease expenses it is easy to see what must be done. We must look hard and long at subsidies and we must decrease the amount we are spending on defense and wars, and reduce waste throughout. If done correctly, we could even increase our actual security. We must eliminate tax loop holes. And we have to increase jobs and taxes.