Well folks, the 175 member Republican Study Committee came out with their proposed budget
this week. That is possibly one of the worst things the Republicans in Washington DC have
ever come up with. The Republicans this year have spent months, months screaming at the
top of their lungs that they do not want to cut social security. They do not wanna cut
Medicare. They're not doing all these horrible things that President Biden and the Democrats
say they're doing. Those people they say are liars. A Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up during
Biden's State of the Union and called him a liar when he said Republicans want to cut
Social security in Medicare. So it should come as a surprise to no one that this Republican
study commission's. First item up for cuts is of course, social security followed secondly
by Medicare. What Republicans would do with this budget proposal is increase the retirement
age for social security, raising it from 67 to 69 years old because they say, Hey, people
are living longer, so we may as well raise the retirement age so we can squeeze a couple
more years of work out of them.
The only problem with that is that for the first time in a hundred years, uh, life expectancy
here in the United States has actually declined. And for the record, life expectancy for someone
born today in the United States is actually 10 years lower than somebody born. Right now
in Japan, we're about five or six years under the life expectancy for England. Life expectancy
in the United States is not increasing as Republicans tell us. So if they go through
with their dastardly plan here to raise the retirement age of social security, you're
probably looking at maybe four and a half years, five and a half for women, four and
a half for men. Because there is a one year discrepancy in life expectancy between the
two genders. Um, you are gonna only have a couple years to enjoy your retirement. And
of course, the Republicans know that they have these actuarial tables.
They know that life expectancy is not increasing in the United States, but they also know that
corporations want workers. So your retirement can be damned. They don't care. That's also
why as part of their provisions here, they have a plan to privatize parts of Medicare,
which would of course increase costs for those on Medicare, but it would save the government
a couple of dollars here and there. So what's the big deal? Right? That's not the only thing
it does. In addition to screwing over elderly retirees, Republicans also wanna make the
tax cuts from 2017 permanent. So a big handout to the wealthy elite corporations get their
fair share, of course of that tax cut, even Republicans and some Democrats in Congress
Will be the beneficiaries of those tax cuts. But if you're an elderly low income retiree,
you're screwed because Republicans want you to be screwed. The cruelty is the point, and
that's not even the only cruel thing that this piece of legislation does. It also increases
work requirements, of course, for every single person in this country on a federal, uh, subsidy
program. You know, there there's no work requirements of course for the wealthy elite, right? You
get your tax cuts no matter what, but you don't have to work. But if you wanna get food
stamp benefits, that average, what? $6 a day on the high end? Yeah. You have to show that
you're actually out there busting your to get your $6. It would also repeal the part
of the Inflation Reduction Act that allows the federal government to negotiate drug prices
for people on Medicare. So you're gonna be paying more for your prescription drugs. All
of this seems like something out of a bad movie, right? Like you couldn't write a villain
more stereotypical than these 175 Republicans on the Republican Study Commission, a a, and
yet, here it is, this, this isn't a a bad movie. This is our reality. This is what Republicans
want to do.
And the problem is this is gonna be their plan. So when they go to negotiate with the
Democrats, they're coming from this extreme position already, and Democrats are gonna
have to compromise on some of these issues. So there will be cuts, there will be drastic
cuts, and the poorest Americans, as per usual, are going to be the ones to pay the price.
If the Democrats had any sense whatsoever, they would stand up right now and say, this
is trash. Put your study in the recycling bin because we're not even gonna negotiate
on that. We're not gonna start from your extreme position and try to pull you a little further
away. It's crap and we're not even gonna talk about it. That's what the Democrats should
do. But I think, as we all know, they're gonna start negotiating and poor people are gonna
suffer.