The fiscal cliff is just ahead. Be afraid, be afraid! Are you afraid yet? Well, you’re supposed to be. Going over the “fiscal cliff” is the worst thing that can possibly happen – worse even than … I don’t know … losing your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
Friends, this is the oldest trick in the book. Our leaders have done their best to bankrupt the government over the last decade and a half, coupling undeclared wars with massive tax cuts, crashing the economy through their vaunted hands-off approach to the financial sector, etc. Now when it comes time to pay the tab, guess who’s picking it up? Not a big surprise that they’re running out on the check. They only do it every freaking time.
Listening to the series of Republican interviews that is NPR the other day, I heard some talk of raising the Medicare eligibility age as one means of covering their failed fiscal policy decisions. That has to take the prize as the stupidest idea ever proposed. Sure, take the youngest people out of the Medicare system – the people who need the least care! That’s a surefire way to bankrupt the program, which I’m sure is their ultimate aim. The G.O.P. has always hated Medicare, almost as much as they hate Social Security, despite their claims to the contrary. If they were truly serious about saving money, they would be expanding Medicare to include younger, healthier people, not the other way around.
The thing we have to watch like the proverbial hawk is our election year friends, the Democratic Party. We need to remind them who gave them victory a few weeks ago. We need to encourage them to challenge the Republicans on their fealty to the same failed policies Milton Friedman advocated decades ago, on their determination to protect the private tyranny that is the health insurance industry. We need to encourage them to do the right thing, no less.
That is what we should be focusing on, not irrational fear.
luv u,
jp
