
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 22, 2011
/ 20 Tamuz, 5771
Mean opposition to means-testing
By
Jay Ambrose
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"… the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
- H.L. Mencken, journalist, "In Defense of Women," 1918
Many liberals who want to soak the rich with taxes also want to soak the poor to give the rich welfare, not the least of these hyper hypocrites being the only confessed socialist in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
We could pick on others, but let's pick on him as the first winner of the Mencken Alarmist Award given by me to whatever hoaxer has best lived up recently to the above quote. Sanders did it to perfection in a California speech.
He took on the balanced, thoughtful Medicare reform plan courageously put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., telling his audience get ready to clamor that it would produce death panels, not disputed Sarah Palin death panels, but real death panels under which 45 million Americans just might perish, G0d bless their souls.
That's a large pile of bodies, and I guess it's enough to upset anyone, although it's an obvious phantom invented by this politician who is paid $174,000 a year to know better. Maybe he really, honestly doesn't, in which case the people of Vermont really, honestly ought to vote to put him on a pension instead of the salary.
He also ought to know that if you do not reform Medicare, there will eventually be no Medicare, and he ought to know that means-testing extending aid to the people who need it and not so much to the people who don't is one way to begin to get there.
Ryan has it in his Medicare plan. The Heritage Foundation wants more means-testing for both Social Security and Medicare. The majority on President Barack Obama's sadly neglected debt commission think it's a good idea for Social Security, as does Peter Orszag, former budget director under Obama. Sanders, however, hopes to rescue Bill Gates from being one of the 45 million corpses.
Why the solicitude from a senator who has never met a rich person he didn't wish to strip of all belongings so they can be given to folks as poor as he'd like the rich to be?
Doesn't he know that the people footing the entitlement bill include minimum wage earners and that the elderly include many of the best-off people in the country?
Is he aware that fewer and fewer people are going to be supporting more and more recipients, causing one of my friends to advise me to choose my worker well?
The answer of course is politics. If the rich and near-rich don't get theirs, he figures, they'll turn their backs on the programs. I hope not, but even if there is a risk, it's crucial to act because Medicare spending is going crazy, we've spent Social Security surpluses on other things and we borrowed $37 billion last year to make up for it. There is no way to tax our way out of what's now a $61.6 trillion unfunded liability.
Nobody is proposing means-testing that will affect current recipients or anyone for years. It would be phased in gradually. And by the way, it probably won't be enough. You might have to make Sanders happy by also raising the income cap on Social Security taxes. You might have to raise the retirement age. You will certainly want to slow benefit growth for the better off through a revised indexing formula for initial benefits.
But we need to understand that the whole range of safety-net programs and entitlements constitute 60 percent of our budget while defense comes to roughly 20 percent, meaning everything else is 20 percent. If we don't address entitlements, we don't address the debt and the great American experiment could maybe go kerplunk. And that's not hobgoblin talk.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|