True Colors: Republicans Hate Poor Old People

You might remember that just about the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election, Paul Ryan started bleating about privatizing Medicare. He couldn’t wait. Nobody was talking about privatizing Medicare during the election, but Ryan acted as if the election gave him a mandate to do so.

Now Republicans are going after Social Security already. They aren’t even waiting to seat the next Congress.

A key House Republican on the issue of Social Security introduced a bill Thursday that would impose major cuts to the program. The bill, the Social Security Reform Act of 2016, was introduced by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), the chair of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security.

It would, among other things, gradually raise the retirement age from 67 to 69 on Americans 49 or younger at the present. It would change the formula that determines the size of a retiree’s initial payments. And it would switch the program to a less generous formula for raising payments according to cost of living increases. …

… The cuts in the bill lean more heavily on high income-earners, but most workers would see cuts — some of them drastic — if Johnson’s bill became law.

They want to make Social Security more “solvent” by cutting it. Raising funds, such as by raising the cap on Social Security taxes, is not even considered in this bill.

If you’re a Republican, you screw old folks. It’s just what Republicans do.

See also How The GOP Social Security/Medicare Doomsday Machine Works