Fields: Bring On The Death Panels, Cut Social Security
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
When it comes to budget deficits, one thing is clear about the Teabagggers and their allies. They don’t have the slightest idea about federal spending or revenues.
All they know is that the budget is out of control.
They have a notion that it if we just eliminate waste, fraud, foreign aid and welfare, along with throwing in another tax cut, we could balance the budget. They have some impression that the cure for deficit spending carries no pain for them
Ignorance is bliss.
The basic numbers are these:
In FY 2009 we took in $2.1 trillion and spend $3.5 trillion. A deficit of $1.4 trillion.
Here’s a scary thought. These numbers understate the deficit.
Thanks to Ronald Reagan, we started counting Social Security tax revenue as part of general revenue to make the deficits seem smaller.
Because of unusually low interest rates, the national debt is temporarily less than half of what it ordinarily is.
It is worse than you thought.
What are we to do?
We Need To Cut Social Security
The first thing we need to do is eliminate the word “ENTITLEMENT from our vocabulary.
It carries with it the notion that Medicare, Social Security, etc. are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Maybe they also are part of The Law of Gravity?
Running for the Senate, Charlie Crist demagogued that Marco Rubio was going to raise the age to collect full Social Security from 66 to 70. Rubio called it a lie.
The responsible truth is that, along with at least a 10-year freeze on increases, we need to quickly raise the age to received full Society Security to 70.
Bring On The Death Panels
We need to tell Medicare recipients we’re broke.
We can’t spend tens of thousands on dialysis for a 92-year-old woman with full blown dementia. We need to close down expensive care for the thousands in a vegetative state. One Terri Schiavo is one too many.
We need death panels.
Nobody is stopping a family from spending their own money to keep to keep the brain dead alive. Just don’t keep spending my money to get over your own guilt.
Cut Overpriced Defense Programs
We need to completely revise the Defense budget. Between 2001and 2009, it grew from $250 billion to $782 billion.
We are currently planning a new generation of fighter jets that will cost over $200 million each. Total cost to exceed $2 trillion (that’s trillion with a “t).
We are maintaining the majority of the world’s aircraft carriers.
None of this has made us safer.
It as if the news of the fall of the Soviet Union never arrived at the Pentagon.
Tax Cuts Are Wrong
On the revenue side, we have to admit that it no time to cut taxes for the rich or even the middleclass.
The Bush tax cuts must be allowed to expire.
Running against the incumbents and Obama is easy. Governing is hard.
For the Teabaggers, and the new Speaker, the day of reckoning , the day the rubber meets the road, is coming quick. It will probably be sometime after the new Congress is seated in January when the current debt ceiling limit is met.
The House will have to pass a law once again raising that limit by agreeing to borrow hundreds of billions more.
Teabaggers are going to have to swallow hard and support a bigger Federal deficit. If not, the GOP will bring the government to a halt and cause us to default on our existing debt.
The immediate effect will be the collapse of the Dollar. And its AAA rating. Beginning with imported oil, prices will go through the roof. I suspect an increase of $20-$30 a barrel within days.
It will be like Greece, only bigger. It would probably trip the Depression we missed in 2008/09
Throughout 2010, Teabaggers demanded lower taxes and an end to deficits. They wanted us to keep our hands off of Medicare and Social Security and the defense budget. They wanted a painless solution.
Let me also add that people in Hell continue to demand ice water.
November 7th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Who decides who pulls the plug, Mr. Fields? You? A group of “medical professionals” trying to meet some financial goal.
People are not lines in a budget. Only the loved ones of a family should be able to decide whether to end medical care.
The way to save money is not death panels, as you so gleefully propose, but means testing the benefits. There is no reason that Warren Buffet should get the same Medicare benefits as a person earning $10,000-a-year from Social Security. Medicare should be treated as a safety net rather than an entitlement.
We all pay for welfare. Only a percentage of society collects it. That’s the blueprint for the future of Social Security and Medicare.
We should also increase the level of income covered by the Social Security tax. The very rich pay Social Security on only a fraction of their income. Wrong.
November 7th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Sam … you should run for Congress in two years and see how widely your ideas are accepted!
November 7th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Sam that’s the joke about death panels…insurance companies are the death panels…you dont have coverage you die…the government is too good, chicken, liberal etc to decide such things
November 7th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Sad but true. Sam is right that Americans can’t go on having their cake and eat it, too. Either taxes go up or benefits go down.
The idea that you can cut taxes and enjoy the same level of service is a Republican delusion. Welfare and Medicade, unpopular services, can only be cut so far before people are starving, crime is through the roof and there are people dying for curable disorders. If America can’t help the most needy citizens, can it be called a great country?
November 7th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
You are going to hell Sam.
Luckily, I am right behind you, so keep the door open as my hands will be full of cold, tasty adult beverages.
November 8th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Withdraw ALL US troops from the unwinnable quagmire that is Afghanistan and make the rich pay the same income tax rate they were paying under Reagan. Deficit problem solved. Next?
November 8th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
This man is clearly a fool. The American public will not accept government telling them who should live and who should die.
Mr. Fields forgets that the Terri Schiavo case was a fight between her husband and her parents. No one came in from government and said to take her off life support until their fight ended up in court. Mr. Fields would have the process reversed, with the government killing our relatives unless we went to court. If going to court was possible.
What’s next? The mentally handicapped. The lame. Jews. Blacks.
Mr. Fields’ idea smacks of Nazi Germany.
November 10th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Twice in my life I have made decisions to cutoff care to a terminally ill person. At the time neither was able to communicate.
But I knew what they wanted and, although I miss them both, I have never looked back on those decisions.
If private insurers are too worried about the money, Medicare is not worried enough.
Those same right-wingers who want to waste billions on the hopelessly terminally ill are freaked out about getting everyone who can’t afford it an annual checkup.
November 10th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Dear Fields is Nuts,
The government did not intervene in Schiavo? I have three words for you “The Bush Brothersâ€.
Perhaps you forgot Bill Frist (R. Tenn) making a jackass out of himself with a diagnosis that she was cognizant based on a video.