GOP wants SS cuts

Ryan Cooper, correspondent for The Week, recently wrote, “Eight out of 10 poor people are students, children, elderly, disabled, or involuntarily unemployed, because those are people who have trouble working and the market gives you nothing if you can’t work (and aren’t already rich).”

These are the exact people helped by Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance. Both do fundamentally the same thing: protect people who fall through the cracks of our market society.

Republicans are beavering away to cut these programs. Since the two funds are held separately, Republicans can gin up some fiction about how “SSDI is failing! Cut it!” this year, and then, next year, trot out the very same arguments to cut Social Security. It amounts to machete by increments until the conservatives get their wish: Those who cannot hack their way through the reigning capitalist system can just fade quietly away.

The Democrats propose to merge the programs. Why not? The move would simplify administration and thus be cheaper and better run. But then Republicans couldn’t hide like rats while nibbling both programs to death with their “cut this this year, cut that next year” strategy. You bet they oppose such a merge.

Nancy Runyan

Spokane