Friday, August 5, 2011

Cantor: Entitlement Promises ‘Frankly, Are Not Going To Be Kept

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he is ready and willing to slash entitlements like Medicare, because, in his opinion, Americans have to “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many“:

What we need to be able to do is to demonstrate that that is the better way for the people of this country.

"Get the fiscal house in order, come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that, frankly, are not going to be kept for many. [...] The math doesn’t lie," said Cantor

[In the 2010 midterm election campaign Republicans nationwide ran as protectors of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on false claims that the Democratic legislative agenda threatened those programs.

Republicans charged that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obama Care) passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on March 23, 2010 endangered senior citizen's Medicare and Medicaid coverage.

Believing Republicans when they said they would protect seniors from the Democratic legislative agenda threatening the social programs seniors voted in large numbers in the November 2010 election to give Republicans majorities in the U.S. and many state legislatures.

But Cantor’s pronouncement is maybe the most explicit explanation that, under the GOP’s vision, Republicans will renege on their 2010 mid-term election campaign promise to "protect Social Security and Medicare" on false claims that American can not afford those government run social programs.]

Of course, the affordability math would look much better, particularly on Social Security, if the GOP were to back off its insistence that the government not collect a single dime in new revenue.

Jacob Hacker, political science professor at Yale University, has called the GOP’s scheme to raise the Medicare retirement age “the single worst idea for Medicare reform” since it “saves Medicare money only by shifting the cost burden onto older Americans caught between the old eligibility age and the new, as well as onto the employers and states that help fund their benefits.”

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