Mettler argues that this difficulty is not merely a failure of communication rather it is endemic to the formidable presence of the “submerged state.” This is a fight worth having.“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Such comments spotlight a central question animating Suzanne Mettler’s provocative and timely book: why are many Americans unaware of government social benefits and so hostile to them in principle, even though they receive them? The Obama administration has been roundly criticized for its inability to convey how much it has accomplished for ordinary citizens. If we can stop their looting there, we can stop them in other places as well. Speaking as someone who will be signing up for Medicare within the next six to eight months, I have a vested interest in seeing that it doesn’t happen. Saving Medicare or giving everything in the effort to do so is a tailor-made way for Democrats to cut across the Trump-Clinton divide and undermine the idea that Trump or the GOP have the interests of the middle class or really anyone but libertarians and the extremely wealthy at heart. It can only be accomplished by a mixture of bamboozlement, scare tactics and unified party government which will allow the GOP to push the change through regardless of public opinion. Getting rid of or gutting Medicare is incredibly unpopular. If you look at the faces in the crowds at Trump’s most poisonous speeches I guarantee that you that very few of those people thought they were voting to lose their Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are at the top of that list. Whether or not he believes or believed that he has rapidly allied himself with the Paul Ryan privatizers who want to eviscerate the federal programs which are the bedrock of the American middle class. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to defend the economic interests of ordinary people from the ‘crooked’ elite on Wall Street and in Washington. The final point should be the most obvious. Stopping Republicans on Medicare Phaseout will reduce their ability to push their damaging agenda on other fronts. Power gained or lost in one sphere translates into every other. A president can’t suffer a deflating defeat in one area without it eroding his power in others. But to be really effective anywhere they will need to chalk up wins somewhere because all political power is unitary. There are numerous fronts where Democrats will need to resist Trump and the Republican Congress. First, preserving a program that works, and second, stopping the Trump/Ryan juggernaut of turning the country over to right-wing nostrums and bamboozlement. Josh Marshall at TPM has been following this story closely and he says that if the Democrats can stop the destruction of Medicare, they will have accomplished two things. But those niggling little facts are not enough to stop the GOP from trying to take it away. In reality, Medicare is working pretty damn well for a program that covers millions of people, and it is solvent for the foreseeable future. They claim they will improve it and save the taxpayers billions of dollars.Īctually, their plan is to undo as much of the last eighty years of social welfare as they can in as short a time as possible because nothing works better than the free market, and if you really believe that, I can get you a scholarship to Trump University. The balloons had barely been popped at the Trump victory party when the Republicans announced through Speaker Paul Ryan that the first thing they’d do after repealing Obamacare was to radically alter Medicare from its current state to a privatized system of credits and vouchers. Little did they know that it was their imagined GOP saviors who would threaten it. We all laughed when the Tea Partiers claimed that Obamacare would take away their Medicare, hence the hand-painted signs referenced in the title that were mounted on numerous scooters paid for by Medicare.
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