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How Donald Trump is coming for your Social Security!
From Salon: Donald Trump is coming for your Social Security: How the GOP plans a bait and switch to cut taxes — and pensions:
It t seems like a lifetime ago that Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus brokered a meeting between the unexpected presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to try iron out their differences. But it was just a little less than a year ago in a world that seems more and more distant by the minute. They spoke of many things, with Ryan desperately trying to convince Trump that he needed to adopt the GOP agenda and Trump telling him he didn't know what he was talking about. Bloomberg reported one particular exchange in the meeting that stuck in my mind:
Acccording to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”
Trump may not have realized it, but Republicans have never won the presidency by explicitly saying they were going to make cuts to Social Security. They have always used euphemisms, saying they were going to "privatize it" or promising to "save it" from itself. The reason Democrats continually win the day (if not the office they are vying for) is because people don't trust Republican double-talk on the subject and for good reason. They have been trying to destroy Social Security since it was enacted.
.............//snip
The Republicans will never give up on trying the destroy the safety net. It's one of their fundamental organizing principles along with promoting tax cuts. Other issues may come and go but these two are perennial. And according to the Associated Press, the administration has decided to scrap Trump's previously announced tax plan in favor of a new "reform" agenda that will accomplish both the dismantling of the Social Security guarantee and the GOP's cherished tax cuts for the wealthy.
.............//snip
But Trump's rumored innovation is to replace the money with a form of value-added tax, which means that typical workers, who spend most of their money on consumer goods, will still pay taxes; they will just lose their retirement guarantee. Rich people will get their tax cuts and don't need Social Security anyway. It's a GOP win-win.
What this means is that Social Security will become part of the normal budget process, subject to the whim of each Congress as legislators appropriate money for wars and pet projects and their favorite form of fearmongering nonsense: "deficit reduction." It is inevitable that the basic contract all workers have with their government — that they will commit a portion of their wages to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act account and will be guaranteed a pension 40 years from now — will be declared null and void. That contract has resulted in payouts to several generations of workers since its inception in the 1930s, no thanks to the Republicans who have consistently tried to find ways to dismantle it.
https://www.salon.com/2017/04/12/donald-trump-is-coming-for-your-social-security-how-the-gop-plans-a-bait-and-switch-to-cut-taxes-and-pensions/
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