Re: With this talk of cutting Medicare and Social Security....

mpercy®

Paw Warrior [4884]

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Feb 10, 2023, 10:47 AM [ in reply to Re: With this talk of cutting Medicare and Social Security.... ]

Pres. Biden during SotU:

"Some Republicans -- some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset," Biden said as he pledged to prevent Republicans from cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Biden claimed that Republicans “say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history,”

He doubled down the next day:

The president pointed to a proposal from [Sen. Rick] Scott, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee last cycle, that would sunset federal programs every five years, including Social Security and Medicare, forcing Congress to regularly re-approve them. Biden called the plan "outrageous."

"Maybe he has changed his mind, maybe he has seen the Lord," Biden said. He promised to veto any such changes if they ever crossed his desk. "If that's your dream, I'm you're nightmare," he said.

Flashbacks:

The legislation Biden put forward in the Senate back in July 1975, when, like now, the US economy was in a nosedive, would have terminated “all provisions of law” which allow “new budget authority for a period of more than four fiscal years,” the congressional record shows. The Biden sunset provisions would have applied to the defense budget, and entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“It requires every program to be looked at freshly at least once every four years. The examination is not just of the increased cost of the program, but of the worthiness of the entire program,” Biden, then 32, said of his fiscal crunch bill in 1975.

In spring 1984, Biden, along with Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Nancy Landon Kassebaum, R-Kansas, proposed an across-the-board freeze on federal spending. The bill would have eliminated all cost-of-living increases in federal employee pay, as well as Social Security and Medicare benefits, for fiscal year 1985. In a joint Washington Post op-ed, Biden and three other senators claimed they supported the freeze because “federal deficits are a clear and present danger to our economic recovery.”

In an October 1984 floor speech, Biden claimed a total federal spending freeze would work because voters “are not stupid…They are not dumb. These folks understand. They know that to cut the deficit, everybody has to be in it.”

In October 1984, Biden supported an amendment to a debt limit bill offered by Sen. Paul Tsongas, D-Mass. The Tsongas amendment would have provided for a smaller increase in the debt limit than the underlying bill, and prohibited further debt limit increases until Congress acted on a spending freeze for the following fiscal year. Biden said he supported Tsongas’ action precisely “because it says we cannot increase the debt limit again until we have acted on a budget freeze”—one that would, like Biden’s spring proposal, have frozen Medicare and Social Security benefits. When the Tsongas amendment failed, Biden voted against raising the debt limit.

In July 2011, President Obama stated that “if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.”

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TigerAidan said:

It doesn't really matter the people who keep track of things like this say these programs like Social Security will be completely broke by 2033. If the Government don't quit spending we are going to be in serious trouble. The most horrible of the Democrats ideas is this tax against unrealized capital gains. Meaning you'll pay taxes on money you don't have. They also keep up with this fair share nonsense they are going to push the rest of America's companies overseas. It makes you wonder if the top 55 companies in this country pay zero taxes like Biden says all the time then why isn't Bden's DOJ not prosecuting them? I'll tell you, bc he's lying. The top 1% of earners in this country pay more than the lower 90% of tax payers. The people at the bottom of the tax bracket, yu know the one Dems say are paying more, pay negative taxes. That's right they get more back in taxes than they pay. It's all a grif bc they think you're stupid and that you want look things up. The sad part, they're right. People will gladly be blindly led bc of feelings. Of course you should feel something when the Dems say a teacher pays more taxes than a billionaire, it would make anyone mad if it were true. That's why Dems are so good at messaging. They appeal to feelings. That's why you have activist out there that still spew the thoroughly debunked women make 76 cents of a dollar a man makes. Washington is a joke and until we realize that all of Dems and most of Republicans could careless bout you. It's time to get term limits in Congress and cut the bureaucracy at least by half. It's time to get back to our fundamental roots of the Constitution

I do want to address two of your points.

First, rich people do pay more in total taxes... because they have high incomes. But they can utilize tax laws to pay lower percentages of their income in taxes. That is kind of the point of what Biden (and many) complain about the rich not paying their fare share.

Re companies paying zero taxes, this has been an Amazon strategy (obviously not exclusively theirs). I'm not criticizing it and they aren't breaking the law, but they are kinda gaming the system. Their strategy is to plow any potential profits into expansion, so they could avoid ever paying taxes. It's why a corporate minimum tax rate is a good idea. I have no objection to a company reducing its tax burden by investing in the business, but it shouldn't be able to escape any tax burden whatsoever.

With this talk of cutting Medicare and Social Security....