Republicans Target Social Security Disability

Republicans Target Social Security Disability

Esquire – Charles P. Pierce
May 2017

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55260/republicans-social-security-disability/

While we’re all sitting around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release its appraisal of the latest dead-fish healthcare bill produced by the Congress, (update: here it is) let’s have a look at the philosophy governing everything these Congressional majorities believe with regards to a social safety net and the people that it’s supposed to help. Luckily, Mick Mulvaney, a back-bench Tea Party fanatic until the president* put him in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, has been out there defending the proposed federal budget and, in doing so, opening the window wide on how we hardworking taxpayers—and our grandchildren yet unborn—are being played for suckers by the old, the sick, the dying, and the natural wilderness, all of whom are sponging off our money.

Thanks, Mick.

Mulvaney popped up before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday morning. Congresswoman Barbara Lee questioned him about the proposed 25-percent cut in food assistance for the poorest Americans. Mick was moved to comment:

What about the standard of living for my grandchildren who aren’t here yet? Who will end up inheriting $30 trillion in debt? Fifty trillion dollars in debt? A hundred trillion dollars? What about their standard — who’s going to pay the bill, Congressman? That’s what this is all about. That’s what this new perspective is. Who is going to pay for all the stuff you just mentioned? Us? Or somebody else? And I suggest to you if it’s important enough to pay, to have, then we need to be paying for it. Because right now, my unborn grandchildren are paying for it, and I think that is morally bankrupt.

Mulvaney’s squawking deficit-hawkery is belied by the fact that the budget he was pitching has at its heart some mathematics that are outright fraudulent regarding the gigantic tax cut the budget also includes. He also went further than he did on Wednesday the day before, when he played a very old tune on a very old conservative piano.

“If you’re on food stamps and you’re able-bodied, we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you’re not supposed to be, you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work.”

The latter bit is about Social Security Disability Insurance, which will be cut, but which also will be used by the administration to argue that it’s not cutting Social Security per se. This argument comes down to how “your grandmother is deserving but that crippled kid down the block is stealing her dough.” SSDI has been a target for spurious attacks for a couple of decades and now that it’s under assault again, I get to link back to my story of the late Marcus Stephens, from New Albany, Mississippi, who died the last time Republicans in Congress—and timid Democrats in the White House—went after the program.

Rest assured that these basic assumptions will make up the foundation of any budget this Congress and this president produces, even if the present one is as dead as Julius Caesar, which everybody says it is. The welfare queen in her Cadillac still drives through American politics, running over everything in her path.