We’ve read/heard right wing reasoning behind essentially gutting Social Security, even John Bolton’s who suggested during an interview on Fox News that the United States should cut Social Security and Medicare to finance the defense budget. But, the vast majority of America wants oversight and cuts to the defense budget.
While debating the debt deal today on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was apparently supporting Bolton’s pro-military, anti-elderly position.
Lieberman stated that he is working with Coburn on a Social Security spending reduction plan and that “we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense…to protect us…with Islamist extremists”.
LIEBERMAN: I want to indicate today to my colleagues that Senator Coburn and I are working again on a bipartisan proposal to secure Social Security over the long term, we hope to have that done in time. To also forward to the special committee for their consideration. So, bottom line, we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come.
Lieberman is dismissing the vast majority of Americans who support cutting out-of-control military spending but so far, the Republican party is not listening to what America wants.
Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated that every plan that was on the table is far worse — cutting more from programs for the poor, exacting pain on the most vulnerable in our society — than anything Jim DeMint, the most extreme right-wing senator of all, was demanding last year.
What Liberberman is suggesting is to take funds out of Social Security which Americans paid into for a lifetime to then bloat the already over-funded military even more. Social Security funds were never supposed to be used/borrowed/abused and that is why it’s in jeopardy now. We already pay for defense funding in our paychecks and now they want more.
What happened to the ‘stop spending’ Conservatives, or was that all partisan bullshit as we already suspected. The Tea Party-led House was highly protective of cutting military spending, as well as bringing in revenue by taxing the wealthy – but, again we’re reminded that it’s not about the economy but it is about a power grab.
Meanwhile, our military spending is close to the entire world’s expenditure combined. Policing the world is expensive.
A big thank you to Think Progress.
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