Middle class left paying for cuts to social programs

Wednesday’s editorial on the gutting of social programs was the clearest presentation of the march to destroy the social safety net that I’ve seen to date. NPR ran a program

Wednesday morning focused on the 50-year plan of the Kansas Koch brothers to reduce government and drown it in the bathtub, according to one of their colorful minions Grover Norquist.

Middle-class Americans have seen their path to a satisfying life ripped up as Koch driven interest groups, hiding from taxes and disclosure under the tax code, have destroyed unions, public services and their jobs, pensions, and public schools. Now the baby boomers, who built a middle-class nation, face old age without pensions and the Congressional threat to Social Security. Boomers paid Social Security and Medicare taxes their whole lives, and now the Republican House Speaker is putting cuts to that program into future budgets to pay for his recent $1.5 trillion tax cut for the very fattest cats in the country. As the boomers age, their Social Security checks will shrink to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%.

This nation may never recover from this scam. But it looks like the nation built by the baby boomers will end as a sorry testament to the wisdom of a democratic people who voted for short-term goals of lower taxes and less government. They will pay the IOU from the poor house.

HARRIET H. YOUNG

Source: Middle class left paying for cuts to social programs, Arizona Daily Sun