I just wanted to document this further for posterity:
President Bush defended his federal budget blueprint Wednesday, countering critics from both sides of the aisle who have greeted with skepticism — and even outright hostility — his proposals to trim spending on Medicare and other programs.
Bush's $2.77 trillion budget plan for fiscal 2007, the most austere since the Reagan era, asks Congress to trim Medicare spending by $35.9 billion over five years. Under that scenario, spending on the government health program for the elderly and disabled would grow at a rate of 7.7 percent — instead of 8.1 percent, as currently projected.
All that was said about this on NPR's Morning Edition this morning was that Bush is cutting Medicare and they interviewed an advocate who lamented that this attempt to destroy Medicare will hurt the poor. Don't advocates for the poor realize how much credibility they lose when they say stupid things like this? Of course, anyone who thinks a growth rate of even 7.7 percent can be sustained indefinitely on a program this massive is a freaking dolt. It's not just a matter of all of us having to work for the government, it's that we will all soon enough be working for the governemnt just to provide Medicare. Jumping bejesus, where in Hell are the adults in Congress and in the media who will act like adults on this instead of conspiring to further a meme that, in Donald Luskin's words, keeps you poor and stupid.
But I'm curious about one thing for those who choose to call this a cut -- if you received a raise of 8.1 percent for each of the last four years but this year only got a raise of 7.7 percent, would you be standing at the water cooler complaining about how your boss just cut your salary this year?