Beyond Medicare, the major drivers of the deficits are not talked about so much by the fat cats and demagogues because they were either responsible for them, or are reaping gargantuan benefits from them, or both. The country is drowning in a sea of debt because of the obscene Bush tax cuts for the rich, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have never been paid for and the Great Recession.
Bob Herbert, saying what so many others seemingly find so very hard to face or admit. This is who we are, and it’s critical that we face it.
Yapping about Social Security and the necessity of cuts to same is just that: yapping. The money is in Medicare (as in: controlling the costs of) and the Bush tax cuts (as in: all of them, even those marginally aimed at the middle class). Solve those two and get employment rolling and everything else that today seems utterly intractable will simply melt away. Even better: the Bush tax cuts will solve themselves if we can just muster the will to let them.
Yapping about Social Security and the necessity of cuts to same is just that: yapping. The money is in Medicare (as in: controlling the costs of) and the Bush tax cuts (as in: all of them, even those marginally aimed at the middle class). Solve those two and get employment rolling and everything else that today seems utterly intractable will simply melt away. Even better: the Bush tax cuts will solve themselves if we can just muster the will to let them.
Lemkin 