Tag: Budget

In a previous post Yours Truly talked about a radical plan by Koch Brothers and its outfit American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) to change the U.S. Constitution. Here is a little explanation as to how they plan to do that and why you should be worried about it.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides two paths for amending the U.S. Constitution. The first one is by a two-third(2/3) vote by both chambers of the U.S. Congress(House & Senate). The other path, which Koch Brother/ALEC are gunning for is by getting two-thirds(2/3) of state legislatures to support such an amendment--the method commonly referred to as Convention of States. Two-thirds of state legislatures in the U.S. comes up to 34. In essence Koch Brothers/ALEC are trying to get 34 GOP-controlled state legislatures to support their effort by calling a Convention of States to amend the U.S. Constitution. Their argument is that because of crippling national deficits, the U.S. Constitution needs to be amended to include a provision that mandates the federal government to pass a balanced budget--the so called "Balanced Budget Amendment".

On its face this sounds like a very noble idea. However as is always the case with the GOP, the devil is in the details. What Koch Brothers/ALEC conveniently leave out of the debate as they push for this Balanced Budget Amendment is the fact that their "noble" efforts to balance the budget targets the social safety nets like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and even Public Education.

Critics(likely GOP) will certainly counter this argument by saying its a giant leap of faith--that simply wanting to balance the budget doesn't necessarily mean they want to eliminate/drastically cut Medicare and other social safety nets.

First of all as you can see from the featured image, abolishing Medicare and Medicaid was the Koch Brothers declared position in the 1980s. It is not too far-fetched to conclude that they are still pursuing that goal

Secondly but more importantly we have a very recent event yhat proves GOP's intentions as regards "entitlement" programs. We saw this a few months ago after the GOP passed the Tax Reform Bill. The major bone of contention prior to passage of the bill was the effect it was going to have on the national deficit. The GOP-controlled Congress ended up passing the bill eventhough the Congressional Budget Office(CBO) had projected it would cause massive deficits. A few weeks after President Trump had signed the bill into law House Speaker Paul Ryan spilled the dirty GOP secret, that inorder to address deficits that would result from the Tax bill, the GOP would start to tackle "entitlement" reform. He singled out Medicare and Medicaid as the biggest drivers of national debt and that they needed to be reformed.

House Speaker Ryan's rare moment of candor is to date the clearest evidence as to GOP's real intentions with Medicare and Medicaid.Eventhough this has always been the insider GOP position, they are terrified to say that in front of their base, most of who are seniors who rely on Medicare and Medicaid.

It was therefore very telling how quickly the GOP establishment silenced Speaker Ryan's entitlement talk, given the fact that 2018 is an election year.It appears even the GOP establishment knows that the way they want to go about balancing the budget is so radical that their own base would not suport it. Which is why as we approach Midterms 2018 Dems must expose the GOP/Koch Brothers/ALEC's radical mission to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, & Social Security all under the guise of a "Balanced Budget Amendment."

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