Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama, Race and Civil Rights
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Regrettably, the Republican Party is guilty of both.
Threatening to block an extension of unemployment benefits for citizens crushed by the recession, the GOP forced President Barack Obama to bow to its tenacious defense of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, originally bestowed by good ole George Dub-yah.
So I guess it makes sense then, after throwing away nearly $130 billion to ensure that the wealthiest Americans have their cake and eat it too, $250 for senior citizens was an expense that the Republican Party could not accept.
Why?
Because it's just not fiscally responsible.
House and Senate Republicans on Wednesday thwarted Democratic efforts to award $250 checks to Social Security recipients facing a second consecutive year without a cost-of-living increase (COLA).
Barbara Kennelly, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said it was a "cruel irony" that while Congress and the White House were negotiating a deal extending huge tax cuts to wealthy Americans, "today we're told that providing $250 for America's seniors and their families is considered too generous."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the financial aid was critical to seniors facing rising costs and falling home values and was fiscally responsible, "but, unfortunately," she said, "congressional Republicans overwhelmingly chose to oppose it."
Twenty-six Republicans voted for the bill, while 141 opposed it. Democrats were in favor, 228-12.
If this is all the Democrats are capable of now, when the Republican takeover happens in January, they don't stand a chance.
Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, had the perfect rationale for throwing "grandma under the bus":
"Increasing our nation's crushing deficit on the backs of our children by an additional $14 billion is wrong."
I'm no economist, but it seems as if the best way to alleviate the tax burden on future generations -- while continuing to care for our golden one -- is to have allowed the Bush-era tax cuts for citizens making more than $250,000 annually to expire.
COLAs are set automatically each year by an inflation measure that was adopted by Congress in 1975. More than 58 million retirees, disabled people and surviving family members receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income checks. The average monthly check is $1,072.
The COLA increase for 2009 was 5.8 percent, the largest in 27 years. It was triggered by a sharp but short-lived spike in gas prices to more than $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008. By law, the next increase in benefits won't come until consumer prices as a whole rise above what they were that summer.
So how are our senior citizens coping with this news?
"They are absolutely livid that Congress has bailed out banks, bailed out Wall Street, bailed out big car manufacturers and they didn't get a COLA," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst for the Senior Citizens League. "Their costs are going up, and they cannot understand the government's measure of inflation. They feel it's rigged."
I would agree. With the costs of gas, medicine, housing and food skyrocketing since the recession, the formula used to track inflation is outdated to say the least, and criminal to say the worst. Social Security has long been bandied about as a possible means to solve America's deficit ills.
From the lack of a COLA to possibly raising the Social Security age, it no longer is a safe haven for recipients; it has become a source of anxiety as those affected wonder how much longer it will last.
No other culture treats our elderly and disabled with as much disregard as America.
"Basically, they have their benefit levels flatlined at a time when they're encountering higher costs, reducing their quality of life experience and disappointing them greatly about Social Security," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), a member of the subcommittee.
More than one-third of older Americans would be living in poverty if it weren't for Social Security benefits, according to an AARP study.
While many people accuse the Republican Party of racism, this latest move has proven once and for all that they are equal opportunity capitalists. It doesn't matter a person's age, race, sex or creed. No one, and I mean no one, deserves assistance from the American government in their opinion.
So senior citizens need to just man up and sell the china, because those conservative representatives who have infested Congress would rather have them starve than spend a dime to actually assist citizens who truly need it.
Among those who relied on Social Security retirement benefits for at least half of their family income in 2008:
- 53 percent were women
- 51 percent were white
- 50 percent were African American
- 44 percent were Hispanic
- 28 percent were Asian American
And they thought the Republicans were just there to save the world from welfare recipients and illegal immigrants. Let's see what happens when elderly white women across the country can't afford to attend their Tea Parties.
The Republican Party has proven to be heartless, hypocritical and calculating in its political decisions. It could possibly be believed that this was purely ideological, and they were only doing what was best for the economy, if they hadn't just threatened to take their ball and go home if their rich friends didn't get their tax cuts.
The GOP is attempting to turn this country into a plutocracy, and while our senior citizens are sitting in nursing homes and small apartments across this country, counting out pills and paying for half prescriptions just to ensure they have enough money to stay alive, the wealthy continue to thrive.
This is what we voted for, America. Who else has to suffer before we realize that the current conservative philosophy is only conservative as it pertains to assisting the less fortunate?
While the president has shown he knows how to stand with the Republican Party, hopefully on this issue, he'll prove that he can also stand up to them. We cannot continue to allow the most vulnerable in our society to be ignored and mistreated.
There can be no compromise.