Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes—Donald Trump is coming for your Social Security: How the GOP plans a bait and switch to cut taxes — and pensions:
It seems like a lifetime ago that Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus brokered a meeting between the unexpected presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to try iron out their differences. But it was just a little less than a year ago in a world that seems more and more distant by the minute. They spoke of many things, with Ryan desperately trying to convince Trump that he needed to adopt the GOP agenda and Trump telling him he didn’t know what he was talking about. Bloomberg reported one particular exchange in the meeting that stuck in my mind:
According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”
Trump may not have realized it, but Republicans have never won the presidency by explicitly saying they were going to make cuts to Social Security. They have always used euphemisms, saying they were going to “privatize it” or promising to “save it” from itself. The reason Democrats continually win the day (if not the office they are vying for) is because people don’t trust Republican double-talk on the subject and for good reason. They have been trying to destroy Social Security since it was enacted.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in “The Coming of the New Deal” that President Franklin Roosevelt knew that creating a dedicated funding stream gave workers the “legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions.” He said, “With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.” Schlesinger also noted that Republicans and business leaders at the time were appalled, with one warning that the program would “undermine our national life by destroying initiative, discouraging thrift, and stifling individual responsibility.”
Donald Trump’s comment in that meeting last year that he agreed with Ryan on a “moral basis” indicated that he was on the same page as those earlier plutocrats even if he sings a different tune in public. [...]
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Boehner's prebuttal: Raising taxes 'unacceptable and a nonstarter':
Boehner's statement (which I guess technically was just an announcement he plans to issue another statement) is a complete reversal of his position from last week, when he said that despite opposing tax increases, he was willing to leave them "on the table" to facilitate a discussion about long-term deficits.
His statement comes even though it's not clear what President Obama will actually propose tomorrow. Despite The Washington Post's report that Obama would endorse the Simpson-Bowles plan, both Greg Sargent and Ezra Klein are hearing otherwise. The White House is staying mum, at least publicly, saying only that Obama's plan will "be his own."
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, with Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter: Results from KS-04. The latest Russian Connection allegations. Donnie gets yummy cake for doing a good bombing! Zombie Trumpcare rides again, along with another terrible tax plan. Will O’Reilly ever do it live again?
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