Trumps Distractions Will Provide Republican Cover to Rip Apart the Safety Net

[workinclasszero]

Trump’s Distractions Will Provide Republican Cover to Rip Apart the Safety Net
BY BRIAN BEUTLER December 9, 2016

Popular government programs like Social Security and Medicare are called the third rail of American politics for good reason. Unilateral efforts to cut or devolve them generate significant public backlash—indeed, the most effective, early political attack on the Affordable Care Act was based on its provisions that cut Medicare spending. But our sense of these issues’ political explosiveness is shaped in a huge way by the fact that conservatives have never accepted the social compacts of the New Deal and Great Society, and have tried to undermine them aggressively for decades.

On a daily basis, Trump has proven able to divert media attention from the plutocratic government he is assembling and on to a variety of shiny objects. His meetings with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio received far more coverage, for instance, than the fact that his designated Environmental Protection Agency director worked hand in glove with polluters as Oklahoma’s attorney general. He has not tweeted about Obamacare or turning Medicare over to private insurers, but he did appoint one of the most fiercely dedicated foes of both programs to run the Department of Health and Human Services.


Democrats can do their best to focus the public mind. They can send their most popular figures (like senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) on to the stump or have them host regular press conferences. They can organize rallies and protests. President Barack Obama himself might even participate.

But it is eerily possible to imagine Republicans pulling off the most regressive social reforms in modern history under a cloak of darkness. And the scariest thing of all for supporters of these programs is that nobody knows for sure how to reverse the dynamic, so that the third rail goes live again.

https://newrepublic.com/article/139245/trumps-distractions-will-provide-republican-cover-rip-apart-safety-net

[shraby]

1. The point the republicans are missing is that Seniors are 65+ and by heading to Washington in

droves if Social Security, Medicare are touched, they have nothing to lose and everything to save. Most cannot live without either programs. Vouchers and what they will not pay for is not affordable for the vast majority.
Considering the medical care that segment of the population needs, vouchers will leave many without care, without a home because of the cost of hospitalization.

Like I said, they have nothing to lose and everything to save. Congress better remember the third rail rule.

Also in 2 years is another election to clean up congress even better for those who think they can forget the third rail.