GOP’s not-so-secret plan to dismantle government services: Defund, degrade and then privatize

[misterhighwasted]

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/24/behold-the-gops-not-so-secret-plan-to-dismantle-government-services-defund-degrade-and-then-privatize/

SATURDAY, SEP 24, 2016 05:30 AM CDT
Behold the GOP’s not-so-secret plan to dismantle government services: Defund, degrade and then privatize

One side effect of the three-ring circus this presidential campaign has become is the distraction it provides so that other damaging agendas can be advanced with little or no attention.
Take for example, the Republican Party’s long-standing efforts to dismantle America’s internationally modest, but still crucially important welfare state, which helps keep tens of millions of Americans out of poverty.
Social Security and Medicare have both been top targets via various schemes over the years, and this budget cycle is no exception, regardless of what noises Donald Trump may make.

Snip

Those attacks are already well under way, thanks to the austerity measures imposed since the Tea Party first arrived in Washington with the GOP congressional wave of 2010. (The money comes directly from workers — not from the overall Federal budget — but Congress controls the spending.)
During the current budget cycle, the attacks are getting worse, even as baby boomer retirements continue to swell the rolls.
This erodes confidence in the system, thereby weakening it for even further attacks, privatization and dismantlement — the true conservative dream.

Snip
Among the impacts already felt, Romig listed:

A hiring freeze in 2011, leading to “a deterioration in SSA phone service that the agency has only partially reversed,” with average hold times of over 15 minutes on SSA’s 800 number, and nearly 10 percent of callers getting busy signals.

Cuts to SSA field offices, “where people can apply for benefits, replace lost Social Security cards or report name changes.” Since 2010, 64 field offices and 533 mobile offices have been closed, with hours reduced at the remaining offices. “Before the budget cuts, more than 90 percent of applicants could schedule an appointment within three weeks; by 2015, fewer than half could.”

Disability Insurance applications and rejections rose dramatically during the Great Recession, but SSA lacked the resources to cope with with appeals. Between 2011 and 2016, the average wait for a hearing rose from 360 to 540 days, with more than 1 million applicants waiting, “an all-time high.”

Understaffing has delayed critical behind-the-scenes work needed to pay benefits accurately and on time (awarding widows’ benefits, adjusting benefits for early retirees and disabled workers with earnings, etc.). Wait times now average four months for these tasks.

Unless you’re one of the people affected — and there are millions of them — all these might seem like minor inconveniences, but the underlying aim is to destroy the system: death by a thousand cuts … or in this case, by millions upon millions of them.

Snip

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Back in May, Joshua Green reported for Bloomberg on Trump’s courting of the GOP establishment.
The meeting with Speaker Paul Ryan was well worth recalling:

According to a source in the room, Trump criticized Ryan’s proposed entitlement cuts as unfair and politically foolish. “From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’”

So there it is, as clear as day:
Trump will be happy to sign off on Ryan’s agenda after getting elected.
He just knows damn well it’s not what the American people want.
The core of the agenda is first cuts, and then privatization.
But slashing services in the meantime is key to souring the public on fighting against what’s coming next.

[vlyons]

1. The Republican party is a vast criminal enterprise

[lonestarnot]

2. No shit.

[Auggie]

3. They've been working on this since Reagan

[Sunny05]

4. K&R. This is important. / nt

[phallon]

5. Reagan said to Moral Majority hate group:

"Get involved. Run for your school boards"

And they did brother, and kept on going till they made it to Congress.

[world wide wally]

6. Trump's promise to the GOP:

"Give me your support and I will do anything you want as long as you let me do my deals with Putin"

[jtuck004]

7. No Republicans could have made those cuts without help/ n/t

[Delmette]

8. It is self fulfilling.

When a program is defunded then the services collapse. When the services collapse then someone else obviously needs to take over. Well DUH!
The Republicans have done this with more than Social Security. Republicans have defunded education, welfare programs, state election offfices and now we can see what has resulted.

[Martin Eden]

9. Republicans need HUGE BUDGET DEFICITS. Republicans want HUGE BUDGET DEFICITS.

Popular programs like Social Security and Medicare and popular agencies like the EPA cannot be eliminated through a direct legislative process based on the principles of representative democracy. The only way they can accomplish Grover Norquist's long term goal of shrinking government to a size that can be drowned in a bathtub is with HUGE BUDGET DEFICITS.

Government programs have to be made unaffordable, forcing the people to accept "hard choices."

Republicans portray themselves as "fiscal conservatives" but when they wield power budget deficits explode, as they did under Reagan and GW Bush. It's easy to denounce them as idiots for thinking huge tax cuts combined with increased military spending would somehow balance the budget, but I think we need to consider the possibility their policies are achieving the desired effect. They espouse the theory of "supply side (trickle down) economics because it provides a veneer of legitimacy to their agenda.

We have to keep reminding ourselves what that agenda is:
Enrich their corporate benefactors while dismantling FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society.

And this can only be done with HUGE BUDGET DEFICITS.

[LakeArenal]

10. -”If you control the food supply, you control the people” – Henry Kissinger

"Is water a free and basic human right, or should all the water on the planet belong to major corporations and be treated as a product? Should the poor who cannot afford to pay these said corporations suffer from starvation due to their lack of financial wealth? According to the former CEO and now Chairman of the largest food product manufacturer in the world, corporations should own every drop of water on the planet — and you’re not getting any unless you pay up". By True Activist (2013)

Billionaire Farmers Scheming to Privatize California's Water AlterNet 2010

And I couldn't find the quote I was looking for!