TOM DECOURSE Y

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T he Re publican Pa rty ag ain holds the U.S. at gunpoint, ready to demand any radical plans their lunatic fringe may propose. The GOP Fictio n Faction won that power by successfully holding hostage Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker position.

It is time to call the bluf f of these domestic ter rorists. Let the gover nment def ault and stop paying Social Security and Medicare. I realize that tens of millions of Americans would suf fer, and many would die. But it is time for Americans to lear n what the GOP really stands for.

For half a century, the Re publican Party has declared its desire to abolish Social Security, Medicare, and all other gover nment progr ams that benefit working Americans. Re publican strat egist Grover Norquist wanted to bankrup t the American federal government so it could be “drowned in a bathtub,” and there would be no money to pay fo r social progr ams Re publicans call socia l progr ams “entitlements” to make them sound like undeserved handouts. The GOP intend to rob every working American of our Social Security and Medicare, which we have paid into our entire working lives [2].

Whenever the Social Security Trust Fund runs low, the GOP resists fixing it, which could be done by removing the upper limit to income that pays into the fund. Every worker now pays 6.2% of their ear ned income (up to $160,200, the limit for 2023) into this fund. If you ear n $320,400, you pay only half that, 3.1%. If you make $1 million, you pay less than

1% payroll tax.

If this upper limit, which is a huge tax break for the rich, were abolished, the Trust Fund would be solvent for many years. Eliminating the income limit plus increasing the payroll tax from 6.2% to 6.7% would eliminate any possibility of a shor tfall over the next 75 years, according to an analysis by the Cong ressional Research Service [3].

Do Re publicans want to keep Social Security alive and healthy, or do they want to bankrupt it, steal our lifetime payroll taxes, and funnel our money to the rich? Watch and lear n!

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/worldus-canada-14428930

[2] https://www.nytimes. com/2023/01/19/us/politics/debt-limiteconomy.html

[3] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/ RL32896.pdf