In a radio interview on December 6th after the passage of the Republican tax cut bill Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House was discussing what will happen when the tax cut legislation is signed by the President and becomes law. He said that the next year the target would be “entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit [including the huge additional debt of one trillion dollars caused by the tax cut legislation].” He added that the Medicaid and Medicare programs “are the big drivers of debt so we spend more time on the health-care entitlements, because that is where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.” But the Republican Party objectives go beyond that. For many years privatizing Social Security and Medicare and destroying these central New Deal and Great Society programs has been the primary Republican Party goal. Ryan added in his radio address that he believes that “the President understands that choice works everywhere, especially in Medicare”—even though during the campaign Trump pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts. Or put differently as was reported in the New York Times on December 3rd, “…Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation (for the tax cut bill): to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits (created by the bill) to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security.”
Paul Krugman in his column in the Times on December 5th noted: “Republicans don’t care about budget debts and never did. They only pretend to care about deficits when one of two things is true: a Democrat is in the White House and deficit rhetoric can be used to block his agenda, or when they see an opportunity to slash social programs that help needy Americans, and can invoke deficits as an excuse.”
And the bait and switch happened faster than anyone imagined that it would says Krugman citing as an example the remarks of Senator Orrin Hatch on the failure of Congress to continue the Children’s Health Insurance Program—known as CHIP—which covers nine million U.S. children. Senator Hatch asserted that he supported CHIP “but insisted that ‘ the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore.’ ―just before voting for a trillion and a half tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent of the population.'”
This is unconscionable, unpardonable, reckless behavior by the leadership of the Republican Party. Everyone knows that the strength of a democracy is the strength of its middle class. Social Security has been an essential part of American life since the mid-1930s (around 80 years) and Medicare since the mid-1960s (around 50 years). An effect of this bill will be eventually to eviscerate the middle class. In the place of our vibrant Republic it would push us toward banana republic status. It is unpatriotic, un-American and contrary to our principles. The Founders of this country would not have liked any part of it. A few examples:
“This branch of Charity [health care] seems essential to the true Spirit of Christianity; and should be extended to all in general, whether Deserving or Undeserving, as far as our power reaches…The Good particular Men may do separately, in relieving the sick, is small compared to what they may do collectively….”
Benjamin Franklin 1751
“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands…the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.”
Alexander Hamilton 1788
“Property monopolized or in the Possession of a few is a Curse to Mankind.”
John Adams 1765
“I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable…But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery in the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property… [a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”
Thomas Jefferson 1785
John Jay