Why We Have The Entitlement Programs We Have

Henry Blodgett, Business Insider

“There are solvency problems with both programs (Medicare and Social Security),” Sen. Olympia Snowe said in an interview on Friday, “They have to be addressed but not as part of the debt reduction talks.”

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(Bangor Daily News)

This cowardice displayed by Senator Snowe in the face of reality, is the key assumption in the Democratic Party’s strategy to win the debt ceiling showdown and make The United States a nation that is more equalitarian and hostile to individual freedom, innovation and initiative. Democratic Senators, leaned hard to get to Olympia Snowe’s left-hand flank. They reacted with hostility to any suggestion that President Barack Obama offer to reduce entitlement spending as a part of any debt-ceiling agreement.

“We shouldn’t be giving away our advantage on Medicare,” said a source familiar with Murray’s thinking, in characterizing her objections in private meetings. “We should be very careful about giving away the biggest advantage we’ve had as Democrats in some time.”

(Greg Sargent, Washington Post)

So that is what may well prevent the US from ever amounting to anything in the future other than a failed socialist looter state. We currently make 60% of our Federal expenditures towards wealth-spreading government programs; Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other entitlements. In FY10, we spent $2Tr on those programs alone. We spent $1.5Tr on every other activity the Federal Government engages in.

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The government specifically taxes for entitlement program support with the Social Insurance Taxes on payrolls. This brought in $865Bil or maybe 40% of the necessary revenue to fund current US entitlement expenditures.

This means that Democratic leaders of the US Senate are perfectly content with unquestioning support for a series of programs that accomplish nothing other than transfer of wealth and are only 40% paid for in the current tax codes. This explains why President Obama’s new budget proposal requires $1Tr in tax increases over the out years and backs away from previous promises to reform and reduce Medicaid and Medicare.

Without the Free-Stuff Army to intimidate weaker opponents of the full-blown Eurosoc welfare state, the Democrats lose the current argument going away. Without what Cloward and Piven once termed “The Weight of The Poor,” Democrats lose the leverage they require to defend their fiefdom of subinfeudated welfare recipients.

The Party of Government requires a host of retainers who live dependent upon government. This is what Senator Patty Murray means when she speaks of the Democrat Medicare Advantage.™ Take this weapon out of the Democrat arsenal, and these people would become about as frightening as a George Romero movie without the brain-munching zombies.

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Stand the Democrats down on entitlements just once, and they are a bunch of busted criminals in search of a new raison d’être. The entitlement programs exist in their current form as a source of continued oxygen to the dying Blue Social Model. Bring them under control, and the Modern American Progressive Movement is left naked in a blizzard of its own unintended consequences.

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