To End Shut Down Republicans want cuts to Social Security & Medicare

Help protect our earned benefits and tax dollars from being raided by Pentagon contractors

Congressional Republicans who voted to partially shut down the federal government are now saying that the ransom they'll demand to open the government and keep the government from defaulting on its debts is "entitlement reform." That's code for cutting our Social Security benefits that you and I have paid for through our payroll taxes.

But it gets worse. The "Grand Bargain" budget deal these Republicans want would not just cut Social Security benefits; it would cut Medicare benefits and raise taxes on the middle class, while turning off planned cuts to the Pentagon budget. In other words, these Republicans want your Social Security, your Medicare, and more of your tax dollars to pay for out of control Pentagon spending like the $1.5 trillion boondoggle F-35 warplane.

And it still gets worse. It's an economic fact that cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and raising your taxes to protect the Pentagon budget from cuts would destroy American jobs, because unnecessary Pentagon spending creates fewer jobs than every other form of federal spending, including tax cuts to promote personal consumption.

The fact that unnecessary Pentagon spending destroys American jobs if the money for it comes out of our domestic economy was documented in a 2011 study by the University of Massachusetts.  But most Americans don't know that yet because prominent public intellectuals who write about economic policy for a popular audience never told the public. Now, with media saying that proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits to pay for bloated Pentagon spending are back on the table, it's crucial that the public find out about this.


Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy