GOP Considers 'Doomsday' Fiscal Cliff Plan ("Becoming The Most Likely Scenario")

How is giving Obama WHAT HE WANTS a plan!?! Extending the "middle class tax cuts" without extending the tax cuts FOR THOSE WHO EMPLOY THE MIDDLE CLASS is exactly what Obama has wanted all along!

HOW IS CAVING A "PLAN"!?!

(...and this is the point where I stop typing before I get banned or accused of having Tourette's.)

“The elderly are not touched.”

The elderly have been creamed by the Bernanke, Bush II, Obama policies of using the Federal Reserve to artificially suppress interest rates in order to hold down the interest rate on the ballooning federal deficit. The self reliant retiree who could earn 6% on a safe, federally insured CD ladder at the beginning of the Bush II regime in 2001, now earns 1%. Or, had that same retiree invested in a conservative diversified portfolio of stock mutual funds in 2001, that retiree would have lost 50% of the savings in the 2008 market crash.

Whichever path the retiree took to invest savings in the private sector over the past decade, the real after tax and inflation return on savings was negative. A negative return on savings over a decade is not going to encourage people to be frugal nor will it give them faith in the private sector options for conservative savings. For many of the elderly, who paid into Social Security for 40 years and did accumulate enough savings for a self sufficient retirement the last decade has moved them from a comfortable middle class lifestyle to poverty. Add to that the bailouts of Wall Street speculators by the government, and the government shoveling money and free phones at third generation non working urban parasites and you call the elderly greedy?

I was referring primarily to a poster's comment that the elderly's entitlements were the first to get cut.

I pointed out that the elderly won't be touched by such cuts; the reforms are only directed at those under 55.

I didn't comment on the interest rate realities. Only the entitlements. There's no denying that a major portion of entitlements (social security, Medicare) are retirement programs.

I don’t know how old you are, but I do know how old I am. I first started putting $$$ into the Social Security and Medicare funds when I was only 15.

I put in plenty of money for over 50 years.

I paid my income taxes—as a single person for all but 4 years of all those tax returns. I was in the higher category—not married—no kids, etc. Earn $3 to bring home $2, was the mantra.

I haven’t used one single penny of Medicare.

I was promised my Social Security benefits and I live now on less than $1100 a month.

Reducing that money to people like myself is out and out fraud. I paid what was demanded into the fund. I didn’t steal the money out of the fund—the Democrats did.

I'm 51 so I'm in the "limbo" zone (not young enough to plan again for retirement...not old enough to get all benefits).

Yet I still want Medicare reformed because if they don't do it it will go bankrupt for EVERYONE.

I'm OK with the voucher proposed by Ryan. I like the idea of being free to shop around for healthcare.

I don't know why you're worried about SS benefits. You will get those.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.