BCT Editorial – 7/18/10

This is another in a series of editorials that alternate between lobbying for more spending and complaining about spending.  You’ll recall this paper cries crocodile tears about deficit spending and debt one day and the next day pitches a fit if anyone proposes spending cuts or adhering to “pay-go” rules.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Times to admit it’s part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The editorial wraps up by talking about “the big tickets [sic] items like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending and paying interest on the debt, which account for 80-85 percent of federal spending.”  The Times fails to note four of the five “big ticket items” are the result of extra-constitutional, income/wealth redistribution schemes and fails to acknowledge Obamacare (supported by the Times) will make matters even worse.  As for the difficulty of dealing with Socialist Security and Medicare, it’s by design.  Responding to SS payroll tax critic Luther Gulick in 1941, FDR said, “I guess you’re right on the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics.  They are politics all the way through.  We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits.  With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”