I always thought Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is an idiot, but his latest statement, just three weeks from the Nov. 6 election, floors me. He says Social Security, ,Medicare and Medicaid are responsible for record federal deficits, not the Trump/GOP $2.3 trillion tax cut.
That statement came a day after the Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit ballooned to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the result of the GOP’s tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases and rising interest payments on the national debt.
That is an astounding 77 percent increase from the $439 billion deficit in fiscal 2015, when McConnell became majority leader.
I thought Republicans always wanted to balance the budget. But all of a sudden Trump rides into town and cons them into thinking that their trickle-down tax cut actually will pay for itself, so no need to worry. In fact, McConnell said that himself not too long ago.
Looks like that was just so much BS, like anybody with any brains would have known. So now one Republican leader after another claims "entitlements" are to blame. They mean, of course, Social Security and Medicare -- WHICH WE PAY FOR!!!! Oh, yea, Medicaid is in their gunsights, too. Doesn't matter that millions of financially strapped people rely on that for medical care.
But McConnell really knocked me over when he told Bloomberg News it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.
“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.
Say what?
Used to be these politicians claimed they couldn't get anything done because the other party controlled either the House or the Senate and so was blocking their efforts. Now McConnell is saying they can't tackle "entitlements" because the Republicans control both houses of Congress plus the White House?
Does that make sense to you? The man is a bozo. Good thing he thinks that, though.
At any rate, honing in on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is just one more very important reason for voters on November 6 to kick as many Republicans as possible out of Congress -- especially if they care at all about the future of those three important "entitlement" programs.