"White House Summit Must Spare Social Security and Medicare."

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God, I love Sen Bernie Sanders ! !

• "During the last decade, the wealthiest people in our country have become wealthier while working people have struggled desperately to keep their heads above water. It would be a betrayal of the needs of the middle class of this country if we lowered Social Security benefits or raised the retirement age for Social Security eligibility" said Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee.
• Medicare finances are in trouble, the senator allowed. "There is a financial crisis in Medicare, but that is directly related to the disintegration of our entire health care system -- the most costly and wasteful in the world. The way to address that crisis is to join the rest of the industrialized world and create a national health care program guaranteeing health care for all," he said. (Emphasis added.)

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post Robert Kuttner tells you everything you need to know to battle the fiscal conservatives when they say (and they will) that the "unfunded liabilities" will bankrupt this country and rob our children's future.

• Since the early 1980s, Peter G. Peterson has been warning that future entitlement deficits would crash the economy. Yet when the crash came, the cause was not deficits but wild speculation on Wall Street.
• The overall bottom line? The economy we bequeath to our children has everything to do with getting growth back on track and almost nothing to do with imagined future deficits.
• We need to increase public spending and debt now to restore economic growth and then gradually reduce the debt ratio once recovery comes. Social Security has little to do with this challenge. Nor does Medicare, if we reform our overall health system.

I wrote my opinion on this topic back on 28 Jan 2009.

• I am getting concerned about Social Security.
• Bush 43 tried to put it into Wall Street. Aren't we glad that failed?
• ...as the years passed, and more and more old people began to receive SS benefits, the quality of life of the older population increased dramatically. Their lives regained some dignity.

I have not changed my position.

Medicare for All.

And leave Social Security benefits ALONE.
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