It’s time to face a mathematical reality. If the incoming Trump administration really wants to cut the $2.5
trillion that they’ve said they want to cut, you either need to cut all discretionary spending, not going to happen, or you need to start cutting from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How do we know this? Because of second grade arithmetic, let me explain. And first, let me back up a little bit recently, giga billionaire Elon Musk met on Capitol Hill with Republican senators who, on average, are millionaires, so top level the people that are going to figure out what to cut mostly from Americans with middle class salaries and income and net worths. Mostly it’s going to be an unelected bureaucrat named Elon Musk, who hasn’t won anything, and who has hundreds of billions of dollars working in concert with millionaire Republicans. Fine, that’s where we are starting. The average Social Security benefit is $1,700
per month, and when they came out of that meeting, Republicans and Fox News reported it, everything is on the table. Nothing is sacrosanct. Was the phraseology that they used, meaning we would consider, do we make cuts to Medicare? Do we make cuts to Medicaid? Do we make cuts to Social Security? Now, some were surprised by this, and I’ve been talking extensively about how there are a lot of people who voted for Trump who are about to get crushed and punished, and it’s going to happen more to those red state Trump voters than than anybody else. I’ll explain why Trump is, again, said I’d like to get rid of Obamacare, all right. Well, a lot of blue states have health care exchanges so that everybody, regardless of ability to pay, can get health care if Obamacare goes away. If you live in California or Connecticut or Massachusetts or New York, they have state exchanges. It’s not really going to make a difference for you, those states have done the Medicaid expansion. They’re good. However, if you live in a red state that does not have its own health care exchange, has not done the Medicaid expansion, if Trump succeeds, and Maga Mike Johnson said, we’re going to try to get rid of Obamacare. If they succeed, it’s the red state voters that will quickly find themselves without health care and without the ability to afford care that they might need. Similarly, similarly when it comes to this social security safety net thing, it is going to overwhelmingly impact a lot of these rural, lower and lower middle class Trump voters in red states who said, Yeah, we like Trump. And now the math of it points to Social Security cuts. Now let’s get back to the math of it. The budget has three major components. It has mandatory spending, which is stuff we’re committed to spend Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It has discretionary spending, a whole bunch of other programs, and then we have interest on debt. Those are the three components. The interest on the debt you have to pay. You can negotiate pauses, etc, but you’re not going to just cut it. You can’t just say we don’t owe anybody any money anymore, as Republicans often like to remind us, the discretionary part of the annual budget is 2.5 trillion. My math tells me that if you want to cut 2.5 trillion and the discretionary budget is 2.5 trillion, that means that unless you touch mandatory spending like Social Security, you must cut 100%
of discretionary spending, that’s not a serious proposal. And so where that leaves us mathematically is that if you’re surprised to be hearing Republicans now say we’re going to consider social security, nothing is sacrosanct. We’re thinking about it. If you’re surprised to be hearing that, it’s because you didn’t do simple second grade arithmetic, which is to say, can they get 2.5 trillion without touching Social Security only if they cut all of it? And they’re not going to cut all of it, because it’s a country and it has stuff it needs to spend money on. I guess it’s coming out of Social Security. Now, if you’re hearing this and getting immediately worried, I can give you a couple of optimistic words. Number one, hopefully Trump will fail, right? I mean, that’s one aspect. Hopefully it’s not actually going to succeed at happening, because Republicans are going to say, Wait a second, we will all lose re election if we actually start cutting Social Security. That’s number one. Number two, and this is a small saving grace. It.
May only affect people who aren’t yet receiving benefits. So what the way they may do it, if they do is that if you’re already retired and receiving benefits, your benefits don’t change, but if you’re currently paying into the system, you’re what you can expect to get is going to decline. It’s not really a saving grace, but at least you would have a little more time to plan for it. It’s a disaster. It’s a disaster, but this is what they voted for, and this is what they’re going to get so.
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