Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
One thing about treasonousbastards like Mitch McConnell. They never rest. Fresh off his victory in making American democracy look more like the Communist Chinese government he really represents in the Senate McConnell cannot wait to get back to work. Yes, the work of lying through your teeth and squeezing the most helpless among us to insure your enablers do not pay their fair share is never done. Unfortunately for our country this lying Communist never tires.
Now McConnell is setting his sites on the "Super Congress" that will be created out of the disgrace that was the debt-ceiling "deal". Fresh off his victory over an impotent Democratic Party McConnell simply cannot rest. He is already promising that the "Super Congress" will indeed be another puppet to protect Corporate America and the very wealthy from sacrifice and will give working Americans a whole new round of "shared sacrifice" shared presumably amongst themselves:
Now that President Obama has signed the agreement with congressional Republicans to avoid default, all eyes are turning to the bipartisan "super committee" that will be tasked with devising the next round of deficit reduction before the end of the year. Last night on Fox News, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made it clear that his appointees to the committee will "focus on entitlements," and Medicare in particular.
After stating that revenues will be "no more on the table" than they were in the recent negotiations, McConnell argued that the super committee should target the safety net because "Medicare's got about five years before it goes broke, Social Security a little longer." The Affordable Care Act, he added, left Medicare in "deeper trouble" than it was before.
http://politicalcorrection.org/...
Of course in his never-ending quest to justify the greed and arrogance of himself and his base the Senator for Communist China has a Santa's list of talking points to trot forward. The problem is that all of them are lies. And no lie is too big to try and keep folks like McConnell from paying their fair share:
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: The joint committee is also going to focus on entitlements. The trustees of the Social Security and Medicare system appointed by the president himself have said Medicare's got about five years before it goes broke, Social Security a little longer. We need to be looking at entitlement reform if it's even going to be there for the next generation. [Fox News, On The Record With Greta Van Susteren, 8/2/11, Via Nexis]
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Medicare is even in deeper trouble as a result of "Obamacare" than it was before. It was already in trouble. It got turned into a piggy bank to finance half of the trillion dollars of new spending in "Obamacare." We think that was a mistake. It only exacerbated the Medicare problem and made it even more urgent that we deal with trying to save Medicare. [Fox News, On The Record With Greta Van Susteren, 8/2/11, Via Nexis]
As always the truth disagrees:
In an interview with Slate's David Weigel, Richard Foster, the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, said: "Under current law...including the Affordable Care Act, we're estimating that the trust fund would be exhausted in 2024. In the absence of the savings under the Affordable Care Act, a corresponding date of exhaustion would be 2016. So the Affordable Care Act, in the new projection, postpones the exhaustion by eight years. That's down from 12 years in last year's projection."
http://www.slate.com/...
As for the lie about Social Security?? It is just that. The only problem with Social Security is that we cannot keep thieves like Mitch McConnell from raiding it:
According to the Social Security Board of Trustees: "The projected point at which the combined Trust Funds will be exhausted comes in 2037 - the same as the estimate in last year's report. At that time, there will be sufficient tax revenue coming in to pay about 78 percent of benefits."
http://www.ssa.gov/...
Of course the truth matters little. What should really be discouraging to us all is that McConnell and the Republicans plan to use the debt-ceiling blueprint with this "Super Congress". They will insist on no taxes for them and offer up a myriad of sacrifices for working Americans to endure yet again. Then if they do not get their way they will simply allow the across the board cuts to kick in.
Either way we are screwed once more. The Democratic Party and their leaders seem not to have the will or moxy or common sense to fight any of this and force any concession whatsoever from McConnell or any Republican. They will roll over and die yet again and we will be stuck paying for McConnell and his ilk to party hard and let the good times roll.
Welcome to the new era of American Democracy.