Breaking it even more

Several readers have written to the Spokesman describing how “the system is broken.” President Trump has dug us into a looming financial disaster and he recently indicated how he plans to address it.

With a $22 trillion dollar deficit increasing $1 trillion annually, the federal government has only three choices ahead: Increase taxes, cut military spending, or cut social programs. Guess which one President Trump favors?

At the Davos Conference for the super-rich, Trump said he’d consider cutting Social Security and Medicare. Although he campaigned with promises not to cut those programs, Trump is now facing budget shortfalls created by his stupid corporate tax cut. His just-released fiscal 2021 budget proposal includes cuts for Medicaid and food stamps.

Republicans refer to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as social “entitlements,” ignoring the fact that every person earning a paycheck literally buys into those programs. By labeling them “entitlements” Republicans are pandering to the ultra-rich who don’t pay into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

For the rest of us who paid into those programs all our working life, Trump and his Senate sycophants now want to deprive us of the benefits we earned.

Paul Oman

Clarkston, Wash.