With today's capitulation by Sen. Rick Scott, Joe Biden has now managed to trick the entire Republican Party into becoming Democrats on the subject of Social Security and Medicare. All of Congress is now completely opposed to any cuts in these programs.
This doesn't mean anything in the long run, of course, since Republicans will change their minds soon enough. It will be cloaked in the language of retirement age, inflation adjustments, "nobody currently over 65," and other subterfuges, but it will be cuts nonetheless.
Still, for a brief moment we can all shake our heads at the sight of doddering, nearly senile Joe Biden using the crudest kind of reverse psychology to dupe Republicans into becoming Social Security's loudest defender. How does he do it?
How does he do it?
He has excellent luck with enemy selection.
Oppositional-defiant types are my favorite people to negotiate against. You can lead them around by the nose, and they almost never notice until it is too late. And then you get to enjoy watching them figure it out.
Yeah - I was going to say, it was kind of handed to him on a platter.
Reverse psychology is their only psychology.
You really don't give the man any credit at all? If Republicans are so easy to defeat then how do they ever win elections?
Our screwed up Constitution leading to a packed Supreme Court allowing Conservatives to pick their voters guaranteeing lopsided victories.
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Nobody actually believes cutting or sunsetting Social Security and Medicare is actually a good idea or feasible, so the GOP has to dance around the issue trying to force Democrats into doing it so they can be blamed. Biden's secret trick was to state the obvious. The GOP goal is simply to please rich donors at the expense of everyone else, and that goal is detested by most of the electorate. We need more of this stating the obvious by Biden.
well said.
Yes, but he hasn't done anything to preserve spending on the poor. Sure he may have won on SS and Medicare, but the real targets for Republicans have always been the ones for undeserving poor people who need some tough love to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the way Real Americans do.
If they really wanted to help there, they'd quadruple funds for pre-school, early child development, and student tutoring/support all the way to graduation.
That's why I wish that there were a way to counter the states that haven't maximized the number of their citizens who could benefit from Medicaid.
The trap will result in Democratic liberals supporting SS and Medicare cuts in order to 'save' the social security of minimum and median wage earners.
Are you payed in Rubles or Yuan?
Spasibo, comrade!
Only a few days ago Scott was in full counter-attack mode, arguing that Jake Tapper had been pro-sunsetting in the past (I confess I am paraphrasing here; I did not listen closely enough to know exactly what his point was), so I would guess they must have some very ugly polling on this topic. McConnell seemed ready to dump Scott. You can read this as Scott yelling "But I like being a Senator!"
Pence is defying common sense on this subject.
Medicare and Social Security insolvency is right around the corner!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/medicare-social-security-what-matters/index.html
LOL! No, like commercial fusion energy, it's always 10 years in the future.
"Joe Biden’s Social Security trap is now complete" - my response is true but...
If success means simply no cuts, then agreed. However if success really means solving, or at least presenting ideas that could solve, hard problems then I am left a bit underwhelmed.
Sure, neither party is currently (can change with the weather for the GOP) pushing to cut either program. However, both programs are on a nearish term path to be under funded: meaning, without changes significant (new revenue or benefit reductions) cuts will happen in ten ish years.
What hard problem? The hard problem of how to steal the funds for tax cuts for billionaires without open rebellion from those who are screwed by this?
Calling out Republicans should be easy for Dems. They're starting to do it more and more. I think the general public senses the GOP does not have any positive agenda and will turn on them. Especially with how messy the primary season will be.
Trying to erase an entire population from history,
https://mobile.twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1626646636872011796
I think it's important to consider how we got here. Remember , the bi-partisan deal struck in 1983 was supposed to push out any need for change until at least 2041 so what are the causes of the supposed shortfalls coming sooner ? Needless to say the vagaries of our economy (read first and foremost the 2007-2009 economic debacle) also hurt Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid revenues and the rate at which maximum wage limits have grown has slowly but surely dropped over the past 40 years. Last, but certainly not least, the huge growth of economic inequality mostly driven not by wages but by other sources of wealth accumulation has also hurt the potential tax revenues that fund Social Security.
In any case the logical place to start to "fix Entitlements" is to make up most of that lost revenue from the people who got most of that missing revenue over the past 40 years. The arithmetic for this is not rocket science nor any where as dire as people think but the politics, as tough as they were 40 years ago, is far tougher now because one party is a party of ideologues interested only in owning the libs and protecting the rich. I wish the late Robert Ball were still alive though even he probably couldn't sway the likes of Rick Scott.
Oh and BTW, they knew about the baby boom in 1983 so blaming this on Boomers is a total misdirection.
Yes, the buildup of the Trust Fund, as set up by the 1983 deal, was precisely for the purpose of covering outlays for retired baby-boomers. And if wages and salaries of the 99% had increased with productivity gains, as had been the case for decades, OASDI and Medicare would be in much better condition.
COVID was unleashed by the secret cabal of American deep state socialists concerned about the future of Social Security, using COVID to kill as many seniors as possible without having to compromise SS.
/S
He hasn't sprung the trap, he's set it. Now Democrats have to challenge Republicans to disavow one element after another of their longstanding wish list. They want to compel every American to pay income tax - it's right there in Scott's manifesto! If it's not true, let's hear you deny it. How about increasing the eligibility age for SS and Medicare, as per the House Republican Study Group's manifesto? Repealing Obamacare? Cutting Medicaid entitlements? Food stamps? School lunches?
By the time the election rolls around, Democrats should have an impressive list of extreme measures which Republicans want to pass; we know that because they've refused to deny it, unlike a handful of other changes they once contemplated.
He's a lot more canny than a lot of people give him credit for.