It just amazes me that the media and perhaps the nation as a whole takes for granted that we have to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, disabled and elderly. From the AP:
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Leavitt to Head HHS, Could Cut Programs
(AP) WASHINGTON - Michael Leavitt, President Bush's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, may have to cut billions of dollars from the government's mammoth health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled to pare the budget deficit.
The Medicare and Medicaid programs, consuming nearly $500 billion a year and growing quickly, could be vulnerable in the context of last year's $413 billion budget deficit, the ongoing war in Iraq, costly domestic security commitments and administration plans to revamp Social Security without raising taxes.
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Notice the article doesn't even mention the tax cuts as a reason for the account deficit.
To Democrats, Republicans and the bleating sheep of the national news media, here are other ways to shore up the deficit without abusing the powerless:
1. Bring the troops back home.
2. Stop being the world's oil police.
Reduce the military.
3. Constitutional amendment: Any large scale
military action should be paid for by a
proportional federal tax hike.
4. Release all non-violent marijuana offenders
from prison.
5. Stop the war on drugs.
6. Repeal the tax cuts for investment income.
(You only get a tax cut if you work for a
living.)
7. Restart Clinton's effort to shutdown offshore
tax havens (Bush cancelled this multi-national
program)
8. National healthcare plan that doesn't have
insurance agents and HMOs bleeding the system
dry with greed, fraud and abuse.
Any others?