Free Republic

Israeli police say protesters are marching in Tel Aviv over proposed tax hikes and benefit cuts. … Protesters are angry over the proposed decrees by Israel’s new finance minister Yair Lapid who started his job several weeks ago. Lapid ran in January’s election on a ticket vowing to help the middle class. The proposed budget hits that demographic deep in their pockets with raised taxes and slashed benefits. …

WASHINGTON – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned on Friday that GOP senators will not vote to increase the government's borrowing limit unless President Barack Obama agrees to rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, laying down a high-stakes marker just weeks before the debt ceiling is reached. In an interview with The Associated Press, McConnell complained that Obama has refused his offers — both public and private — to work on a bipartisan plan to tackle the nation's massive benefit programs, which threaten to overwhelm the budget in coming years. "There will be no entitlement reform without President Obama,"...

If you follow politics, even in a cursory fashion, you couldn't miss the Democrats and their supporters attempting to paint Republicans as heartless when the renewal of jobless benefits came before the Congress. The weeping and gnashing of teeth on national TV and in print made good political theater, but distorted the true nature of the debate. Neither party opposed benefits, but the Republicans wanted to pay for the extension with unused tarp money. Democrats want the unused tarp money to remain untouched. Instead of national debate on the role of government in supporting out of work citizens we got...

<p>Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that tax increases probably will be needed in combination with benefit cuts to close the massive funding gap faced by Social Security.</p> <p>For the good of the economy, he said, Congress needs to get most of the savings by trimming benefits.</p>