In 1983 the payroll taxes for
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid went up to build savings
("trust" funds) for when Baby Boomers begin to retire. The money in those trust funds was all
borrowed to pay for other US
government endeavors.
Democrats in the US Congress
apparently assumed that the funds would be repaid when needed, blatantly
disregarding the fact that the Republicans (R) might solve that rather massive
debt by doing, with these social programs, what they have always wanted to do:
cancel them!
Recently a legislative
impasse was solved by using a measure that Democrats thought to be so bad that
it would never be allowed to stand as is...
Oops!
The Sequester was precisely
the kind of federal budget austerity the R were looking to do; hoping to blame
the resulting double dip recession (like the Euro zone economy is doing) on the
Obama administration!
We Democrats need to do a
little reality check!!! The R,
currently, are beholden to the really far right, wing-nut, branch of their
party and these things, that those who were moderate R (like me) would probably not do, are
being done.
We Democrats need to be more
cognitive, lest we be caught napping; again and again!!!
