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.”

Gov. Perry’s Legislative Agenda Bears Strong Resemblance To ALEC’s Corporate-Backed Model Bills

On July 15th this blog published an article about the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC's) connection to Texas law making. ALEC is a “corporate front-group” that represents the interests of big-name corporations by drafting legislation for state lawmakers. ALEC, which has the support of conservative heavy-hitters like Koch Industries, Walmart, and ExxonMobil, has written close to 800 model bills as templates for legislators on a wide range of issues.

Today, Think Progress published an article detailing the close correlation of Gov. Perry's legislative initiatives with the legislative bills written by the American Legislative Exchange Council and circulated to affiliated conservative lawmakers in all fifty states.

ThinkProgress analysis of documents recently released by the Center for Media and Democracy show that ten of Perry’s recent initiatives mirror either ALEC model legislation or policy recommendations from ALEC’s state affiliate, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Rick Perry's 'Texas Miracle' Includes Crowded Homeless Shelters, Low-Wage Jobs, Worker Deaths

HuffPost: It was 105 degrees outside late last week when Vanessa Surita, 24, planted herself on the sidewalk and stretched her legs. Her young daughter sat in a stroller within arms length, outside the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, or ARCH. Her needs were great: housing, a job, a high school diploma.

LiveScience: Record Heat Unlikely to Cool Climate Change Debate

No state in the union was safe from July's blistering heat wave, according to data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center.

The horrible July heat wave, lasting weeks in some cities, the entire month in others, affected nearly 200 million people in the United States at some point. Preliminary data show that 2,712 high-temperature records were either tied or broken in July, compared with 1,444 last year, according to the NCDC. At least one weather station in all 50 states set or tied a daily high temperature record at some point during July.