[Occupymendocino] McConnell lobbies for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

[Richard Karch]

Pundits are often quick to jump on Democrats for their messaging blunders, but frankly Mitch McConnell made about the biggest messaging gaffe possible Tuesday when he explicitly put some of the government's most popular programs on the chopping block <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/16/1804771/-McConnell-disturbed-that-tax-cuts-didn-t-pay-for-themselves-says-we-have-to-cut-entitlements>. In an interview with Bloomberg News <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/mcconnell-blames-entitlements-not-gop-for-rising-deficits>, McConnell pegged Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as the key drivers of a skyrocketing deficit, which in reality spiked following the massive GOP tax cuts. 
Asked about the ballooning deficit and national debt, which is expected to reach fully $1 trillion next year, McConnell responded, on camera: 
"It's very disturbing and it's driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular—Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid— that's 70 percent of what we spend every year."
In what appears to have been further interviewing with Bloomberg off camera, McConnell expanded <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/mcconnell-blames-entitlements-not-gop-for-rising-deficits> on his comments in a clear effort to tag Democrats with cleaning up after the mess Republicans made with their tax giveaway to the rich:
“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem [...] it's a bipartisan problem."
“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government.”… cont. on site

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/17/1805164/-Democrats-pounce-as-McConnell-lobbies-for-cuts-to-Social-Security-Medicare-and-Medicaid?detail=emaildksp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.mcn.org/pipermail/occupymendocino/attachments/20181021/493a42c9/attachment.html