Let’s say Paul Ryan and some of the right get their wish and both Social Security and Medicare are slowly wound down and all privatized. We’re all on our own to provide for ourselves.
How would the Base react to this?
I already know how the left side will react, but will the Republican base cheer this screwjob or feel betrayed?
I believe the reaction of those who are already receiving Social Security would argue that they should continue to receive payments because they ‘paid into it for 30 years’. Unfortunately for them, that’s not how it works.
If you look back at GWB’s proposals to privatize Social Security, I think you can reasonably assume that the base’s reaction will not be favorable. I assume if the plan is sold as an attempt to privatize Social Security or Medicare, there will also be a strong reaction.
However, if the plan is sold as an attempt to save the programs after Obamacare has bankrupted them, it might play better. From what I can tell, this is the frame that has been chosen and we’ll just have to see if it works.
They won’t care. They are willing to give up money to pursue the jingo agenda, they’ve been doing it for 35 years now, they’ve just never gotten the payoff.
Ryan will try to get it jammed through very early. You think Trump gives a shit one way or the other? He doesn’t.
But it’s not entirely a “pay as you go” system, either. In the early 1980’s, Social Security taxes were increased because it was recognized that the large number of Baby Boomers who would start retiring in about 20 years would create too large a burden on those still employed.
Yes, most of what I’ve paid into Social Security has gone to pay benefits for my parents’ generation. But some of it has been to fund my own payments.
I really don’t want to have this argument again but the idea that there’s a Social Security savings account is an illusion. The excess SS taxes you paid were transformed into general revenue and spent as it came in. Any future SS payments will have to be funded through future taxes.
IANAR but I fear much of “the base” will accept it on Faith Alone when told that this is what needs to be done so as to avoid the tyranny of Big Government.
The difference, of course, is that Medicare and Social Security are not programs that are primarily benefitting “those other people” whether that be the poor, blacks, illegal aliens, gays, atheists, etc. These are programs that help grandma and grandpa so they don’t die destitute. On the other hand, if anyone can figure out a way to get people to support something against their own interests, it’ll be Trump.
The thing is, Medicare and SS take care of Grandma and Grandpa and if those programs go away, guess who is going to be supporting the old folks, buying their expensive meds, and paying their doctor bills? Bubba & Mary Lou, that’s who. Someone’s going to pay.
MediCAID (which is for poor people, whereas MediCARE is for old people) is already toast. Texas was one of the misguided states that turned down that Medicaid expansion that wouldn’t have cost the state anything. They did it just to roadblock and punish Obama, to make it seem like HE was a failure.