Republicans now control the House will soon try to slash Social Security and Medicare, threatening to create a financial crisis by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling. This could erode the world’s faith that the United States will always pay its bills. Lifting the debt limit allows the government to pay the bills it has already incurred.
Choosing not to pay a combination of Social Security checks, federal workers, bondholders and more, the US would be killing the equivalent of one-tenth of American economy!
The arithmetic is clear: It isn’t possible to achieve huge reductions in the budget deficit, while at the same time depriving the I.R.S. of the resources it needs to go after tax cheats, without deep cuts in popular social programs.
CNN has obtained a screenshot of a slide presented at a closed-door Republican meeting calling for balancing the budget within 10 years. And the final point calls for refusing to raise the debt limit unless these demands are met.
Republicans will try to assure currently retired Americans that their benefits wouldn’t be affected, this promise isn’t feasible — not if they’re serious about balancing the budget within a decade.
But where is this determination to gut programs that are crucial to well over 100 million Americans coming from? These programs are, after all, extremely popular — even among Republican voters.
Republicans say that they are opposed to “socialism.” But when an Economist/YouGov poll asked them which programs they considered socialistic, none of the big-ticket items, Social Security and Medicare made the cut. The latter is a single-payer national health insurance program they would not accept.
Many Republicans consider Medicare a form of “welfare.” Even so, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found far more Republicans approving of Medicaid than disapproving.
Let’s get to the important reason: the G.O.P. support comes disproportionately from older voters — and most of America’s social spending goes to seniors. Social Security and Medicare, kick in primarily when you reach a minimum age.
The attitude of the Republican rank and file, then, seems to be that big government is bad — but when we get down to specifics, the priorities of the new House majority are wildly out of line with those of its own voters, let alone those of the electorate as a whole.
However, history shows that attacks on the safety net come with a heavy political price. George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 surely played a role in the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006; Donald Trump’s attempt to kill Obamacare helped Nancy Pelosi regain the speakership in 2018.
Here is the truth: Advocating a welfare state for white people might well be politically effective. But in America, it’s a road not taken.
Most Republicans in Congress are careerists who depend, both for campaign contributions and for post-Congress career prospects, on the same billionaires who have supported right-wing economic ideology for decades.
They won’t stand up to the crazies and conspiracy theorists, but their own agenda is still tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor and middle class.
Indications are that at some point this year the Biden administration will have to deal with a full-scale effort at economic blackmail, a threat to blow up the economy unless the safety net is shredded. And I worry that Democrats still aren’t taking that threat seriously enough.
The NABWMT membership is, or are approaching retirement age and could be impacted by these developments. Now is the time to organize and fight these policies.