Posted on 03/07/2017 10:49:16 PM PST by Drew68
You could almost hear the gasps from both sides of the ideological divide when President Trump unveiled the outline of his first budget late last month, proposing to slice $54 billion from the discretionary civilian budget next year to pay for a beefed-up defense.
That part of the budget pays for pretty much everything the government does other than the military, pensions and health insurance for older people. And it has been slashed repeatedly already. It adds up to only some $500 billion, hardly the best place to balance a $4 trillion federal budget. After Mr. Trump’s proposed cuts it would be 25 percent smaller than it was in 2010, adjusted for inflation.
Even Republicans in Congress, no friends of government spending, argued that the math made little sense. While they share Mr. Trump’s twin goals of balancing the budget and slashing taxes, they would prefer to square the circle by cutting the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare.
And yet Mr. Trump’s approach possesses a powerful political logic: The frazzled, anxious working-class men and women who voted for him like Social Security, Medicare and defense. Other government spending, not so much. Notably, there is little political cost for Mr. Trump — in fact, potential benefit — in going after means-tested programs for the poor.
These programs appeal to two constituencies that working-class voters show little affinity for: the poor and urban liberal elites who can express enormous sympathy for the disenfranchised while ignoring the struggle of the white working class.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Politicians have promised. The government (the law) has never promised future Social Security. The Constitution subjects all spending, including Social Security to Congressional Appropriation.
You do not have an entitlement. You have a promise by politicians. Where will those politicians be and what can they do about it when the government has not alternative but to print extra money to pay your Social Security, which means paying you 50 cents on the dollar?
Next time I am in there I will look for these and if I see them the next thing I will look for is the manager. I will see how much he agrees or if he is putting them up by orders of the fascists that run the company
“Struggling middle-income families may not understand that welfare programs are so meager that the poor hardly get any help.”
Meager...depends on one’s definition. Food Stamps, Section 8, Medicaid, Cash (AFDC), EITC, Day Care...
I think they did a study and for lazy people living in the cities, their ‘meager’ rations totaled about $80,000 per year of equivalent income. Not bad for not working, or barely working.
So, even though the article is pretty accurate discussing the Working Class, it still portrays the Lazy Class as having the deck stacked against them.
I will accept that the working class resent the welfare class.
I resent them.
What is so hypocritical is that the politicians and media resent the working class.
Straight Marxism. ‘Bourgeois’ values (aka middle class values) are inevitably resented by the intelligentsia, who see any transcendental morality as cramping their superior style.
There needs to be a 100% tax on news print that will save square miles of forests and tons and tons of CO2 emissions
It’s not the poor we object to ... it’s the leisure class who are able-bodied but have no intention of working for a living.
Wherever plentiful food exists, parasites, cockroaches and locusts will arrive to feast. There is simply no difference between these and the ones who feast on free government money.
What I resent are the lies and deceit written and posted here by the NYtimes. No one I know resents the poor, but everybody I know resents the lazy parasites that are able-bodied sloths. Hopefully there will be a return to work for welfare. The Africans and others will screech slavery and an assault on their handouts. Who ever met a parasite that didn’t screech for more blood?
“... only $500 billion ...”
How do you even talk to someone who can use the word “only” to describe half a TRILLION dollars?
IMHO the working class has every right to resent the poor.
At least the way “poor” is defined in this country.
Most people would rather work than be on welfare
I’m not so sure that’s true anymore. It seems a large percentage has got addicted to ‘free money’.
What I resent are the lies and deceit written and posted here by the NYtimes. No one I know resents the poor, but everybody I know resents the lazy parasites that are able-bodied sloths. Hopefully there will be a return to work for welfare. The Africans and others will screech slavery and an assault on their handouts. Who ever met a parasite that didn’t screech for more blood?
Sue their s a lot of welfare fraud. But I hate the fact that the USA has been offshoring decent manufacturing jobs to the third world. I find it hard to blame the victim of globalization for their plight.
Karl Marx knew what would happen if Free Traders got their way. His latter day saints, Cloward and Piven, are finishing the job of wrecking like for the under class making the USA ripe for socialism, the last step to Communism.
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People keep asking how Trump can get the money for $54B Defense increase and infrastructure and tax cuts. They don’t seem willing to admit that a booming economy with REAL full employment reduces the need for welfare, food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment benefits, EITC, etc.
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You know what *else* reduces the need for welfare, food stamps, etc.?? A Constitutionally limited Republic.
Get govt off the neck of our Rights and you’d see a SEA of ‘solutions’ over-night
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“We want the poor to work and contribute to the economy.”
Bingo. The purpose of creating jobs is to get the poor off welfare. The reason to deport illegals and end h1b is to offer those jobs to citizens. The reason to improve education with parental choice is to give kids the education that makes hem employable.
Changing incentives is also needed to get the poor to work.
Currently welfare pays better than work. That must change.
Remove all taxes on the working poor. Remove both the employer’s share and employee’s share of SS, FICA and Medicare taxes. That is the same as raising the minimum wage with no negative impact the employer or consumer prices.
At the same time, cut back eligibility for SSI, for TANF, SNAP, EBT, and all welfare programs.
Yes, the government will lose tax revenue by allowing the working poor to keep their own money that they work hard for. So? So what? Whose money is it anyway, the governments?
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Please, tell me you’re joking....”Working poor”, aren’t we all?
KILL welfare. Govt has neither the authority nor capacity for ‘charity’; it only relies upon FORCE. Don’t want to work, rely upon the benevolence of others; not the continued picking of pockets from the end of a gun.
Remove all taxes?? 1) No Citizen should *EVER* pay $0% in taxes, govt and services aren’t free. 2) They use the MOST gov services.
Think it’s best they can claim a benefit w/o having been taxed for the same??
Need to start supporting, supporting and ensuring our Rights; it’s one of the FEW ‘jobs’ govt was created to do.
Easier to shut down programs when nobody is using them.
>Easier to shut down programs when nobody is using them.
And the easiest way to do THAT, restore our Republic and our Rights, is to terminate, w/ prejudice, the same illegal\unconstitutional programs\acts\’laws’.
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