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<H2>Obama renews calls for slashing Medicare, Social Security</H2>
<H5>By Andre Damon <BR>16 March 2013 </H5><FONT size=4><STRONG>President Barack
Obama continued his closed-door meetings with congressional leaders Wednesday
and Thursday, seeking to work out a budget deal that will slash more than a
trillion dollars from social spending over a ten-year period.<BR>In these
meetings, Obama made clear that he is seeking to make deep cuts to Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security, the core social programs that date from the 1930s
and 1960s.<BR>On Wednesday afternoon Obama met with the House Republican
Conference and on Thursday afternoon he met with House Democrats, followed by a
meeting with Senate Republicans.<BR>In a spending proposal released last month
in connection with the debate over the “sequester” budget cuts, Obama called for
$400 billion in cuts to the government health care programs Medicare and
Medicaid, as well as the implementation of a new measure of consumer prices that
would slash Social Security benefits by $130 billion.<BR>But in his talks with
lawmakers this week, Obama appeared to go even further, saying he would be
amenable to implementing means-testing for Medicare. This would end Medicare as
a universal social entitlement, turning it essentially into an anti-poverty
program, a major step toward its eventual elimination.<BR>Facing a token show of
opposition within his party to slashing entitlements, Obama reaffirmed his
determination to make the deeply unpopular cuts. According to Bloomberg News,
“Several Democrats, including Senator Tom Harkin … said Obama rebuffed their
demands for an assurance that Medicare and Social Security benefits wouldn’t be
touched in any ‘grand bargain.’” The news service noted that Obama “insisted
that Democrats should be open to changes in entitlement programs.”<BR>In between
his meetings with members of Congress, Obama found time to give a speech before
75 major campaign donors, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who paid
$50,000 apiece to take part in a fundraiser by Organizing for Action, a
non-profit committee supporting Obama's legislative agenda.<BR>On Thursday, the
Senate Budget Committee approved a budget proposal drafted by Democrat Patty
Murray, the committee’s chairwoman. The budget proposal calls for $1.85 trillion
in deficit reduction over the next ten years. The proposal would include $975
billion in tax increases and another $975 billion in spending reductions. The
Democratic budget includes $275 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other
social programs.<BR>The proposal was the Democratic counterpart to the budget
proposal released by Republican Paul Ryan Tuesday, which would slash $4.6
trillion in government spending and purportedly eliminate the federal budget
deficit within a decade.<BR>The new round of austerity proposals comes only two
weeks after the onset of $1.2 trillion in “sequester” budget cuts, also phased
in over a ten-year period, which will slash payments to the long-term
unemployed, lay off tens of thousands of education workers, and kick hundreds of
thousands of families off of housing assistance.<BR>House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi, a representative of the nominally liberal wing of the Democratic Party,
echoed Obama’s insistence on slashing entitlements Thursday.<BR>“If we can
demonstrate that it doesn’t hurt the poor and the very elderly, then let’s take
a look at it,” Pelosi told the press at the Capitol. “Because compared to what?
Compared to Republicans saying Medicare should wither on the vine? Social
Security has no place in a free society?”<BR>She added, “If the goal is to
strengthen Social Security, if the goal is to strengthen Medicare, if the goal
is to recognize the importance of Medicaid and how we make all of these
initiatives fiscally sound … then we’re ready to have that debate.”<BR>Pelosi’s
arguments are entirely fraudulent. The claim that cutting social entitlements
will “strengthen” them, once the stock-in-trade of the far right of the
Republican Party, is nothing but a sophistical justification for the dismantling
of these programs. The reality is that Pelosi, like the rest of the Democratic
Party, supports the evisceration of what remains of the social reforms of the
previous century.<BR>The Democrats are seeking to present their agreement to
slash entitlements as a response to Republican “intransigence” and a concession
to the Republicans in exchange for adopting measures that would raise tax
revenues from the rich. In fact, whatever revenue increases may be passed will
have a negligible impact on the wealthy and will be more than offset by cuts to
corporate taxes, which both parties say they
support.<BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>