Rebublicans, Teabaggers and Medicare - Oh My!

After you've read this post & watched the interviews on the YouTube video (at the bottom of this page)  if you can figure out what exactly is The Tea-bagger  Political Philosophy I would be very interested in what you think.  Please drop me a comment.   I spent my early years in the Jim Crow, (segregated south) I have my own very humble, uneducated therefor unprofessional opinion: The Tea-baggers just hate, hate, hate that we have a black president.....but that's just me....You Decide.
Patty

An interesting tea-bagger quote:  Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!

GOP Budget Proposes to Ration Medicare, Privatize Social Security | Crooks and Liars

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) VIEWS
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/08/bachmann-remove-socialsecurity/

This past weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) addressed the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis. She had dropped out of the Tea Party Convention occurring on the same day in Nashville to make the appearance. Speaking to a small group of conference attendees and ThinkProgress during lunch on Saturday, Bachmann outlined how the Republican Party and its 2012 nominee must address the national debt. Bachmann referenced Glenn Beck, who falsely warned about a $107 trillion in supposed “unfunded liabilities” from Social Security and Medicare. She then called for a “reorganization” of entitlements where people “already in the system” would continue to receive benefits, but “everybody else” would be weaned off:

BACHMANN: Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we’re not invincible. And we’re so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We’re $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t include the unfunded massive liabilities. That’s $107 trillion, and that’s for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we’re on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can’t let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.

Bachmann is echoing a growing chorus in the GOP caucus. Recently, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced an alternative budget plan which would privatize both Medicare and Social Security. As the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo has noted, the type of private Social Security accounts Ryan proposes would have cost seniors tens of thousands of dollars in the 2008-2009 market plunge. But Bachmann takes Ryan’s effort a step farther and seems to be suggesting a full repeal of the retirement safety net.
Bachmann, who has gained influence within Republican leadership circles, was a star at the event. At his speech on Friday, Glenn Beck proclaimed that Bachmann was the only person he trusted in Congress. Other accolades for Bachmann were heard throughout the conference. At one point, Heritage Foundation scholar Matt Spalding, who had been whispering in Bachmann’s ear while other panelists spoke, exclaimed, “if there’s one person who everyone at Heritage has a crush on, it’s Michele Bachmann.”

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To ‘cut’ the ‘entitlement mentality,’ Rep. Kingston touts privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Think Progress » To ‘cut’ the ‘entitlement mentality,’ Rep. Kingston touts privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Soooooo........why is it that Republicans ALWAYS want to cut 'entitlement' programs benefiting society's  the most vulnerable?  Why not cut CORPORATE WELFARE? Why not ....say..... try NOT STARTING ILLEGAL WARS costing the taxpayers billions & billions of dollars?  That would surely bring down the deficit.  But alas, I'm just bathing in a pool of naivete, pipe-dreaming again.  That's never going to happy because Republican are to Corporations as Prostitutes  are too  Pimps....but that's just my opinion.  You Decide.

In the past two weeks, Republican lawmakers have revived the prospect of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, starting with a push from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose budget proposal radically slashes and privatizes the entitlement programs. On Tuesday night, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) went on Fox Business to lend his voice to the campaign. Kingston said to “cut…programs that are expanding the entitlement mentality,” we should privatize both Social Security and Medicare:

KINGSTON: We need to go in, and we need to cut duplicate programs, programs that are inefficient, programs that are expanding the entitlement mentality. I think we should go back to Social Security, take it off budget, dedicate the funds, put personal accounts on it. On Medicare, I think something like vouchers, where people actually have an incentive to save money.

Watch it:

If President Bush had been successful privatizing Social Security, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in the market plunge. Indeed, as a Center for American Progress report has found, if the U.S. stock market had behaved like the Japanese market during the duration of that retiree’s work life, “a private account would have experienced sharp negative returns, losing $70,000 — an effective — 3.3 percent net annual rate of return.” And a Wonk Room analysis of the recent Medicare privatization plan by Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) found that such an arrangement would shift the cost of insurance from the government to the individual, particularly lower-income beneficiaries. Nevertheless, Republicans, along with their Wall Street allies, are pressing forward to fight again to dismember popular, effective entitlement programs.