Social Security doesn’t contribute a dime to the federal budget deficit. Yet, President Barack Obama is helping the Republican Party to link Social Security to the deficit. Obama is in negotiations with Republicans right now in which he is offering them significant cuts in the Social Security benefits that American workers have earned.
For a generation, I’ve paid into Social Security, and I’ve done so gladly because I’ve known that by doing so, I’m helping to keep my wife and kids at a basic level of financial security if something terrible happens to me. Now, Barack Obama is offering to help the Republicans to steal from me, and from workers like me, the Social Security benefits that have already been earned.
Social Security is solvent. The reason that the federal budget is running deficits is twofold: First, we have a deficit because military spending is out of control, including three wars being fought simultaneously. The Pentagon’s stuffed with pork barrel programs that are militarily unnecessary, but which bring profits to corporations. Second, we have prolonged tax cuts that favor wealthy Americans.
The Republicans don’t want to cut military spending, and they don’t want to end tax cuts for the rich. So, they’re going after working Americans like me, and asking us to pay the bills, out of our Social Security benefits, so that corporations and wealthy families can continue to enjoy the money they’ve got.
It’s not just Social Security, either. They’re going after Medicare as well. Medicare is health care for elderly Americans.
So, the Republicans are demanding to take money from sick people, elderly Americans, and from the families of workers who have died or become disabled… and Barack Obama is pledging to help them do it. It’s disgusting that Obama would even offer to consider such an arrangement.
Progressive Americans are not accepting this betrayal in silence. They’ve finally come to understand that Barack Obama is not going to transform into the progressive President they assumed he would be – not unless they force him to do it.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is gathering the signatures of Americans who supported Barack Obama in 2008, but are now pledging to withhold their support for Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, if he agrees to any package that reduces Social Security or Medicare. The organization has created an online petition that warns, “President Obama: If you cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits for me, my family, or families like mine, don’t ask for a penny of my money or an hour of my time in 2012.”
So far, this petition has 193,303 signatures. That’s nearly two hundred thousand of Barack Obama’s supporters who have agreed to turn their back on the President.
Is your name on the list?
i signed it, but no matter who you vote for in the next presidential election you are voting for an actual Republican in policy, action and ideology. NOT ONE of the candidates, including Obama, even leans slightly Democratic in values or actions.
more on this topic here:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/marty-kaplan/37254/the-obamas-brilliant-strategy-theory
@Tom
“NOT ONE of the candidates, including Obama even leans slightly Democratic in values or actions.”
Uhm, yeah, on the Democrat and Republican tickets. There are other parties and candidates, such as say, the Greens, or whatever other left wing party may run in your state, that are certainly to the left of Obama. You might consider giving them your vote, or at least hearing them out. Let’s think beyond the duopoly eh?
I am glad to hear that progressives are finally rising to oppose Obama, although he has committed so many assaults on progressive values before this that I am dismayed that it took this long. And the idea that Obama can somehow be forced into becoming a progressive seems a little naive, given his long record of attacking progressive values.
When Obama supported extending Bush tax cuts for the rich, when he took the public option off the table and made backroom deals with the pharmaceutical industry, liberals made excuses for him. When Obama refused to prosecute Bush era war criminals, refused to close Guantanamo, expanded the war in Afghanistan, started a new illegal war in Libya and refused to comply with the war powers resolution because he laughable claimed that bombing a country doesn’t constitute hostilities, Obama’s liberal apologists barely batted an eye. When Obama’s justice department raided the offices of antiwar activists, when Obama pushed for greater Federal spying on Americans, when Obama defended the torture of Bradley Manning (and proclaimed Bradley guilty of a crime even though he had not been charged or convicted of anything), Obama’s liberal apologists said little. When Obama called for more nuclear power plants and more offshore drilling, Obama’s liberal apologists said little. When Obama supported the illegal fascist coup in Honduras and responded to complaints from his corporate friends by pressuring the government of Haiti not to raise the minimum wage from 31 cents an hour, Obama’s apologists had little to say about these acts of imperialism.
So while it is nice that social security and medicare are finally inspiring the liberal supporters of Obama to say something, I keep wondering what took them so long.