Cuts in Social Security and Medicare?

To The Eagle:

During the run-up to the passage of the 2017 tax cut, Congressional Republicans, including Washington State 3rd District Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler, told us that the proposed tax cut would pay for itself, because GDP would increase an additional one percent, thus generating more tax revenue than the cost of the tax cut. We were also told that because the net tax revenues to the Federal Government would increase, cuts in future Social Security and Medicare benefits may not be necessary. But on April 12, 2018, less than four months after the tax cut was signed into law, the Congressional Budget Office announced that by 2020 the annual U.S. Federal Deficit will increase to one trillion dollars. That’s an additional one trillion dollars added each year to America’s existing national debt. An increase caused in part by the Republican tax cut of 2017.

To deal with this looming deficit, outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Congressional Republicans are now floating the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits next year, after the November 2018 mid-term election.

The inequity in all of this, is, first, that 83 percent of the 2017 tax cut, benefits individuals and families that already own 38 percent of America’s wealth (the top 1 percent). Families and individuals that didn’t need the tax cut in the first place. Second, the lie that was told to the American people in order to sell the tax cut: - ‘the tax cut would pay for itself, thus reducing the need to cut future Social Security and Medicare benefits.’ And finally, the fact that the Republicans proposal to reform Social Security and Medicare only includes benefit cuts. Republicans are not seriously considering protecting Social Security by raising or eliminating the current FICA cap of $127,200 on upper income individuals.

Please keep these facts in mind when you vote!

Frederick I. Lehr

Grays River