“…The social safety net is coming under the most effective assault it has faced in the past 75 years;
Republicans see an opening to finally gouge the New Deal -
- while Democratic leaders openly discuss cutting Social Security in a conversation colored by deficit hysteria.
Half of the Washington phone book, it seems, has recently offered some sort of deficit reduction plan that includes cuts to Social Security.
The keystone of the Social Security Act, its eponymous retirement insurance, has already been fractured by a deal between Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -
- who this month agreed to a Social Security payroll tax holiday as a method of stimulating the economy.
Republicans openly admit that when the holiday’s expiration arrives next year – it will be treated as a tax hike -
- meaning Social Security’s dedicated revenue stream, which has never been tampered with before, may now be compromised -
- at the same time that leading Democrats propose cutting benefits and raising the retirement age.
Unemployment insurance, the leg of the New Deal that saved families from checking in and out of the poorhouse in between jobs -
- has come under attack in the most dramatic fashion since the Great Depression.
When Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) single-handedly blocked an unemployment insurance reauthorization in February, he was treated by the media as a national pariah.
But his position was soon shown to be uncontroversial within the Republican Party – and the media went neutral.
President Obama would later claim as a major victory persuading Republicans to sign off on an unemployment reauthorization as part of the tax cut deal.
Republicans are vowing that no more extensions are coming unless they’re offset by spending cuts elsewhere.
The GOP is after Medicare, too, proposing to turn it into a voucher system, where the elderly would be given a coupon to buy health insurance, -
- but the value of the voucher would rise at a rate much slower than health care costs – eventually making health care unaffordable for the elderly -
- just as it was before the program was implemented.
And the economic engine of the New Deal, the necessity of deficit spending to spur employment and growth -
- has quickly morphed from a near-universally accepted law of economics – to a political toxin Washington has puked up.
The easiest leg of the New Deal for the GOP to kick out from under it was Aid to Families with Dependent Children — more commonly known as welfare.
In a debate stained with racial prejudice, the nation was introduced to the “Welfare Queen,” -
- a largely mythical mother living fat on the public dole – and popping out children for the sole purpose of increasing the monthly stipend.
Democrats gave up defending it – and President Clinton signed it away in 1995.
Politically, “welfare reform” was a dramatic success for Democrats – who no longer need to defend the program during election years.
But the new welfare, now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has been a failure:
While poverty has risen, unemployment has doubled and food stamp use has ticked up forty percent since the recession began -
- welfare rolls have expanded by less than ten percent.
The tattered net is catching far fewer people.
“The Republicans have been after all three of those programs ever since 1935.
They got welfare a few years ago, because that’s poor people.
They could jump on them,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said during an unemployment standoff this summer.
“But unemployment and Social Security is middle-class people — they haven’t been able to get them -
- but it isn’t because they’re not willing to try.”…”
go to source/story>>>The Poorhouse: Aunt Winnie, Glenn Beck, And The Politics Of The New Deal
