A Bad Joke

What perfect timing for Democrats to propose another "one-time" $250 payment to Social Security beneficiaries. The "Obamacare" herring has stopped flopping around on the House floor, and the GOP has emerged from the woodwork with it's genuine agenda. Good to know the DieSooners haven't gone anywhere.  Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are their baby.

President Obama opened a door sometime ago, stating he favored tying Social Security to the Chained Consumer Price Index, which would reduce benefits. The reductions would be smaller for current beneficiaries than for future beneficiaries, smaller for impoverished Americans than for other groups. The cuts would be greatest for high earning retirees. Is this supposed to make us feel better? One journalist said she could think of lots of struggling young families who could use the money. Apparently she is not a member of a family that helps elder members with day-to-day needs, such as groceries.

Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries. -Bill Cosby

Now the President is talking out of the other side of his mouth about seniors in this country, who are struggling just to keep food on the table. He's saying we will receive, at best, a token Cost of Living Increase in January, and, as a group, we are not faring well. -Really? 

Let us be clear. President Obama is using the life lines of senior citizens, Medicare and Social Security, as bargaining chips AGAIN. Is the $250 proposal based on his fear of the sheer numbers of older Americans who vote? I'd say it's some more smoke and mirrors by a man with a talent for rhetoric, but the lack of character to fulfill his promise.

Cleaning up waste and fraud are critical. Social Security should be strengthened. There are rational, reachable, methods for doing both. As a nation we do not have to engage in austerity measures we know create chaos and do not work. I am in doubt, personally, whether the current failures of government are not a product of manipulation by a particularly nasty faction, wealthy power brokers and acrimony. The GOP lost the last presidential election and the war over the Affordable Health Care Act, but they came out with their bag of dirty tricks intact.

One statement is fair in describing what has happened in America. The voices of the majority of Americans have been squelched. We were already drowning in special interests, the step children of a burgeoning crop of wealthy plutocrats. Now we're collateral damage, not in a war of ideologies, but in a war between elected officials with no stomach for anything other than winning.

Meanwhile, what do you think, will we get our lunch money? More to the point, will we forget the fear and loathing we've experienced, as the government shutdown and debt crisis threatened American lives? Hmmmm?