Monday, March 11, 2013 | 2:01 a.m.
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I have long contended that the hullabaloo surrounding Social Security and Medicare has been created by the GOP and its patrons in the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and other right-wing “think” tanks with the help of right-wing media writers such as David Brooks. For example, in his column “D.C. dance moves are exhausting,” Brooks couldn’t help getting in his slap at these programs, saying “sequestration carefully spares programs such as Medicare and Social Security that actually contribute to the debt problem.”
If Mr. Brooks and his cronies in the media and the GOP were honest, they would admit that these programs cause very little, if any, part of the debt problem; especially Social Security, which, up until the Bush recession hit, was running a surplus and has never caused any part of the budget deficit, as it and Medicare are funded from the separate payroll tax entirely.
This is a fact, but the GOP has always wanted to eliminate these programs, although if it did so, it would have to eliminate the payroll tax that pays for them. That would mean that no deficit reduction would result. Get it?
These programs are definitely not any part of the deficit. That is the truth.
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