Ryan Streeter
President Obama is truly amazing. The Hill reports today that the President told a group of Virginia community college students that "powerful interests" in Washington "are going to "reduce the deficit on your backs."
He, however, cares about their future.
Of the Republicans he said, "Their main plan to reduce long-term deficits and debt is to turn Medicare into a voucher system. That would fundamentally change Medicare as we know it, and I’m not going to sign up for that."
He also said, "We are going to have to ask everyone to sacrifice, and if we are going to ask community colleges to sacrifice…then we can ask millionaires and billionaires to make a little sacrifice."
Let's hope Republicans keep replying to these two charges with two main points, over and over:
- NOT changing Medicare into a defined contribution system is, mathematically speaking, TNT for the deficit. The debt will utterly explode in the next generation under "Medicare as we know it." So far, Obama has offered nothing to suggest he's not going to sink future generations under mountains of debt. OK, Mr. President, so you opposed defined contributions for Medicare. How will you slow the unsustainable growth in the program? So far, to that question, we've only heard radio silence.
- If tax hikes are the way to fix the deficit, then we'll have to screw the middle class. We could confiscate all of the taxable income of the "millionaires and billionaires" and raise only $938 billion. The President talked about "shared sacrifice." That's right, college students - he means you, too. Everyone's taxes will go up under every scenario the President has defended.
The Cynic-in-Chief is utterly unflabble as a campaigner. He stood there in front of community college students, told them Republicans would balance the nation's books on their backs, and then proceeded to tell them how he would dump trillions in debt on their shoulders...and received their applause and cheers.
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