From Julia Manchester, writing for The Hill:
A poll conducted on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee found that a majority of battleground state voters would be less likely to support Republicans if the GOP moved to end Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Sixty-five percent of respondents said they would be less likely to support the GOP “If Senate Republicans have a new plan that would end Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in five years,” according to the poll ...
The findings come as Senate Democrats launch an onslaught of attacks on their GOP colleagues, pointing to Sen. Rick Scott’s (Fla.) GOP platform proposal that his office independently released in February.
While Senate Republicans have not released their official agenda, Scott, who also chairs the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, released one in his own capacity. ...
In the plan, Scott calls for all federal legislation to sunset within a period of five years. Such an action would allow the possibility for those programs to end if Congress did not approve them. ...
The republicans will never openly commit to reducing or sunsetting Social Security/ Medicare openly. They will reduce benefits for American's who are not on Social Security yet.
ReplyDelete@9:14
ReplyDeleteAs a whole I think you are correct. The problem is that special interests who would love to reduce, privatize or eliminate the program keep stuffing dollars into our lawmakers pockets. Polls like the one posted remind those lawmakers that overtly messing with Social Security is a quick way to infuriate their constituents and get unelected. So, they keep nibbling at the edges and proposing half-baked gambits to undermine the program while trying to appear like they are not against Social Security. The clever ones do just enough for the anti-Social Security special interests to feel they are getting their money's worth, but not enough to be easily labelled as trying to get rid of Social Security. A five year legislation sunset would send lobbyists and special interests flocking to lawmakers with more cash every time laws came up for renewal. Politics as usual, all about the $.
How exactly have Republicans nibbled away at benefits lately? Proposals may have been made but children, widows, disabled and retired people are still being paid, getting larger COLAs than federal employees.
Delete@12:55
ReplyDeleteA sample of Republican approved nibbles and attempted nibbles: Lots of dedicated funding for CDRs because that gets people off benefits, but cut funding for other agency operations which help people get good service for other things. Change the treating physician rule to one that allows adjudicators to not even have to mention obviously relevant categories of supportive evidence in decisions. Change the medical vocational guidelines and other rules to ignore the fact that people who are illiterate or can't speak English are at a great vocational disadvantage in the workplace. A rule that forbids SSA adjudicators from considering the fact that a veteran was rated as 100% disabled by the VA. Push (not yet successfully) to either get rid of or further weaken the claimant-favorable medical vocational rules.
That would never happen, does anyone realize what a s**t show that would be? Everyone on SSR and SSDI, along with all of their family and friends would rebel in such a way never experienced in this country. Millions of people suddenly without income and severely desperate! The very fabric of this country would come undone!
ReplyDeleteIt will never happen!I rely on SSDI and am not even worried about that and I worry about everything.......