![]() Congress.įortunately, a majority Democratic Senate and President Biden have the power to block major legislation to cut or undermine Social Security and Medicare. John Larson (D-Conn.), who introduced legislation to expand benefits and has been a fierce advocate for seniors in the U.S. Indeed, the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee will be chaired by a fiscal conservative instead of Rep. The GOP can use these committees as pulpits to promote proposals that could undermine older Americans’ financial and health security. Come January, Republicans will chair the powerful House Ways and Means and Budget committees, which have tremendous influence over Social Security and Medicare policy. We must take Republicans at their word that these are the policies they will pursue, albeit with a slim House majority. ![]() Unfortunately, a party that has never fully supported Social Security and Medicare from the very beginning won the bare minimum of seats needed to take control of the House in January. During the campaign, Republicans were not shy about revealing their plans for seniors’ earned benefits: to raise the eligibility ages, privatize both programs, and hold them hostage to debt ceiling negotiations. It is not a stretch to say that, along with sending strong messages about the importance of democracy and reproductive rights, millions of voters said loudly and clearly: Hands off our Social Security and Medicare! That’s the good news. In fact, more than 70 of the House and Senate candidates we endorsed as “seniors’ champions” emerged victorious. Voters rejected many candidates who supported harmful proposals to “reform” Social Security and Medicare, including high-profile Republican challengers Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire (whose defeats helped Democrats preserve their Senate majority.). ![]() Views known.There was much for seniors to cheer in the outcome of the midterm elections. No doubt, many of these people will very quickly find out who they are as soon as lobbyists start fighting the proposed cuts.Īdvertising, news stories, congressional testimony, and analyses from trade associations and think tanks will all be mobilized to identify, precisely, who will lose from the Republican meat ax and to make their Bartlett notes, this kind of willful ignorance - and the political momentum for government spending cuts that it enables - can’t last forever: Source: Suzanne Mettler, “Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenge of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era,” Perspectives on Politics (September 2010): 809.Īs Mr. The Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler, showing how many recipients of government benefits somehow don’t believe they’ve received any benefits: Percentage of Program Beneficiaries Who Report They “Have Not Used a Government Social Program” Bartlett produces the following chart, from a recent paper by Remember, for example, when a town hall attendee famously told his congressman to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”?Īpparently that bewilderingly blinkered sentiment is hardly unique. ![]() Spending: because so many Americans who say they support cutting government programs don’t realize just how much they benefit from them. In a smart column today, Bruce Bartlett looks at why it will be so hard for politicians to cut government ![]()
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