From Lawrence Hunter writing at
Forbes:
...[T]he larger problem for Republicans is that they are preparing to play Charlie Brown to Barack Obama’s Lucy on Social Security,
again. The congressional Republican leadership is all charged up to
cut Social Security in a Grand Bargain with President Obama ... They better beware though; Lucy is just
about to jerk the football out from under them, again, and they are
going to fall flat on their keisters, again, if they don’t wise up. ...
Mr. Obama has been tempting Republicans with a Grand Bargain on the
deficit in which Republicans would concede tax increases on people
earning more than $250,000 a year in exchange for the president’s
delivering congressional Democrats on Social Security cuts through
so-called “reforms” that would cut inflation adjustments (COLAs), means
test (cut) the program on the benefits side and transform the flat-rate
payroll-tax pension contribution into a progressive income tax by
raising or eliminating the annual cap on the amount of earnings on which
the payroll tax must be paid. ...
From Mr. Obama’s perspective it represents a great deal. With ObamaCare,
the president already has demonstrated his callousness toward old
people and a ruthless willingness to sacrifice senior citizens to
achieve his political ends. A substantial majority of old people didn’t
vote for him, and now he won’t be running again, anyway. The so-called
Social Security “reforms” being dangled before Republicans are a
redistributionist’s dream come true, which is just another
demonstration—as if one is required—of why the Republican Party is the
stupid party. But now it’s worse; it makes the GOP the evil party as
well. ...
Republicans have become so fixated on their mistaken notion that Social
Security is largely responsible for the deficit, and they are so intent
on cutting cost of living allowances for current retirees that they are
willing to help the president transform Social Security into the world’s
biggest welfare program, a major step toward the Democrats’ goal of
putting everyone in America on welfare.
Republicans insist on treating Social Security like welfare, and now they want to turn it into welfare in fact. ... The Republican Party wants to stigmatize retirees by treating them like welfare queens ... Worse than the stupid party; worse even than the evil party; the Republican Party has become the brain-dead, zombie party.
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