Summary
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people collect Social Security to justify cutting “waste” and “fraud.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed this, calling Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid “wrong” while supporting Musk’s plan to slash $1 trillion in spending.
Despite Trump’s public assurances, House Republicans’ budget proposals include deep cuts to these programs while prioritizing massive tax breaks for the wealthy.
Experts note improper Social Security payments are minimal, contradicting Musk’s claims.
If it’s wrong, then I want my money back. If they revoke the promise of returning what is due to me in retirement after years of paying into the system, then fuck them, I want it back. Every cent.
LOL, welcome to every government service, and all those immigrants people wanted for cheap labor are on our bill, be behind them for medical, while paying for their homes. WTF i’m libertarian and was like damn, I barely get shit, why are we letting more leeches like me in? Seriously wtf, we are all leaching, and let in more leeches is our policy? FUCK THAT! Sure let me just share my 180 dollars of food stamps, and now i get 130 and food is higher priced, fucking dumbasses.
Helping Americans in their time of need is wrong!.. We should be trying to find ways to pay more for healthcare and give up our houses to those who can work and give money to Elon.
As a masochist, I still regularly check Facebook comments. The vast majority of Republicans are calling this “fake news” and still claim that Trump would NEVER cut their social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, disability, etc. They’re in for a wild ride. And I say that with an incredibly heavy heart, knowing how many people this will hurt.
Sometimes, people only learn when they get kicked in the dick.
Sometimes, they get violent. Guess we will see what happens because this administration is creating a lot of desperate people in a country awash in firearms.
The second amendment was supposed to be about the citizens protecting themselves against a fascist government, right? (Though I don’t think the term existed back then)
Here’s the fascist government, Americans. What are you actually using your second amendment for?
Guess we will see what happens because this administration is creating a lot of desperate people in a country awash in firearms.
What happens is likely to be violence against trans people, immigrants, and minorities who will be scapegoats for breaking the social safety net.
They can’t attack the govt so they’ll attack their supporters. If you’re foreign, it might be a good idea to keep away from the US for a while.
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And when it finally happens, they’ll probably blame it on someone else
They already are blaming Democrats and immigrants for everything that is currently happening :(
I’m surprised they are even calling it fake news instead of celebrating about how it’s going to own the libs with how they will gladly suffer if it means others do too.
Yeah, I’ve heard that half of Trump voters receive some sort of government assistance, and if true, this will hit them hard. These folks won’t be able to put food on their table or get the medical care they need without bankruptcy. I’m torn between “haha face eating leopards” and feeling incredibly defeated because humans are going to suffer, and I never want to see that. It’s such a complicated mess.
I’m a school bus driver and most of my colleagues (and me for that matter) are either already collecting Social Security and Medicare or working towards that in a few years. They are also mostly trumpers and love what is currently happening. They are certain the republicans won’t cut SS or medicare because then 70 million people would be marching on Washington - which is pretty laughable coming from people that have trouble climbing into their buses in the morning.
My fear is that the Muskovites will keep these benefits in place for their supporters and cut them off for democrats, something they could easily do with their control over information technology and social media.
Selective benefit canceling is a wild idea but I would not be surprised at all if it happened
I’m sure people will say “they can’t do that!” lol. They can do anything they like with nobody to stop them.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that Trumpers would gladly destroy their own lives to see me and mine dead (Queer folk), I’d feel somewhat bad for them too. However, they’ve shown time and again that they want us dead for the pettiest and most made up reasons, so I’ll feel nothing but contempt for them as they burn. As for everyone else… for them, I will weep openly, as they do not deserve this fresh Hell.
I think I feel significantly less owned because these dumbasses voted for their own demise. Not that that really helps at all.
LOL! Man… these people. Hopefull that’ll be the wake up call that’ll bring about a general strike.
Either Medicare or Medicaid is funded by the states, not the federal government, can never remember which.
kagis
Hmm. I guess it’s Medicaid, but it’s only part state-funded.
In 2022, Medicaid expenditure totaled around 805 billion U.S. dollars, the highest in the provided time interval. The federal government paid approximately 70 percent of total Medicaid expenditures in 2022, with states picking up the other 30 percent.
I haven’t been following it, but I understand from recent news articles that there’s some dispute between the budget that the Senate Republicans want and the House Republicans want. IIRC, the Senate was trying to get their version moving, as they said that it wouldn’t take as long. House Republicans bill involves more spending cuts, and Trump apparently indicated that he’s onboard with waiting for the the House version.
https://www.newsweek.com/social-security-being-cut-republican-budget-2030704
Is Social Security Being Cut in Republican Budget? What to Know
It sparked fears that Social Security could be on the chopping block, but U.S. Code prevents Congress from considering budget reconciliations that make changes to social security.President Donald Trump also said Social Security would not be up for cuts during his campaign.
House Republicans are asking for a $2 trillion reduction in “mandatory spending,” which includes programs like Social Security, SNAP and Medicaid.
I believe that normally those budget numbers are discussed on a 10-year basis, so that’s $200 billion/year.
Welfare programs are actually where the real money is, not in federal wages. If you want to significantly cut taxation in the US, gotta bite into the welfare programs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_federal_budget
These appropriations bills are classified as discretionary spending, and make up around 22% of federal expenditures. The remainder is classified as mandatory spending, which includes programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as interest on debt.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_spending
The bulk of mandatory spending is for entitlement programs, which are social welfare programs with specific requirements. Congress sets eligibility requirements and benefits for entitlement programs. If the eligibility requirements are met for a specific mandatory program, outlays are made automatically.[3] Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare make up the bulk of mandatory spending. Together they account for nearly 50 percent of the federal budget.[3] Other mandatory spending programs include Income Security Programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Unemployment Insurance. Federal Retirement programs for Federal and Civilian Military Retirees, Veterans programs, and various other programs that provide agricultural subsidies are also included in mandatory spending. Also included is smaller budgetary items, such as the salaries of Members of Congress and the President.
At a high level:
2024 Budget of the United States federal government[1]
Total revenue $4.919 trillion (actual)[1] 17.1% of GDP[1]
Total expenditures $6.752 trillion (actual)[1] 23.4% of GDP[1]
Deficit $1.833 trillion (actual)[1] 6.4% of GDP[1]
And a breakdown of mandatory spending for 2024:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60843/html
Program FY 2024 (billions of dollars) Social Security Benefits 1,448 Medicare 870 Medicaid 618 Department of Education 268 Veterans Affairs 325 Refundable Tax Credits 199 FDIC 37 US Coronavirus Refundable Credits 1 PBGC [sounds like a subsidy for private pensions] 12 Food and Nutrition Service 147 DoD—Military 826 Net Interest on the Public Debt 949 Other 1,051 Total 6,752 EDIT: Yes, the mandatory-spending $2 trillion cut figure is over ten years, so they need to reduce the above numbers by $200 billion. Apparently there’s also a push to do $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the same ten-year period.
Medicaid and Medicare are adminsitered by the states but receive the bulk of their funding from the federal govt. The Democrat states will continue to run these programs but the Republican states will abandon Medicaid and privatise Medicare.
If you’re unsure what’s the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, ask, don’t lecture.
So they will fight the fraud, and all the saved money instead of going to dead people will go to living people, meaning people will get more under these programs?
Right? /s
A bunch of people who fucked around bout to find out
I just want those morons who thought sitting it out was a good idea, to feel this.
I’m tired of you “liberals” looking for every opportunity to punch left instead of facing your real enemies. You’re feeling smug because you did the one and only political action you’re aware of, which is to tick a box every few years.
Every single bit of progress was led by people doing more, by people standing up, by people applying pressure between election days.
I’d trade every liberal that’s now crying with their tail between their legs waiting for a chance to vote for those principled people who were applying real pressure to the government to resist genocide. Guess what: most of them also still voted blue.
All of you “vote blue no matter who” dogs barking at anyone who even dared to demand better from the Democrats are why that party has become complacent and completely and utterly useless. If you were more like the ones wanting more, if you joined them years ago instead of allowing the bare minimum of being “less bad” to be the only fucking platform of the Democrats for my entire adult life, then there would have been a party worth voting for and a party that’s fighting back now.
They’re lazy, out of touch, useless politicians, and YOU are to blame.
I literally don’t know how to respond to the level of cognitive dissonance on display here. Not only have you guaranteed the people of Gaza willl not even have a home to go to, once trump gets on with moving them out, you’ve essentially handed Ukraine and it’s people to the Russians. Not to mention the loss of your healthcare, damage to your healthcare system, erosion of your education, damage to your judiciary, removal of lbgtq+ and racial equality rights, loss of geopolitical soft power, loss of data privacy as Elon runs amok though your public systems, erosion of trust with your allies, rampant pardons on literal insurrectionists, neutering of your governing and legislative bodies, rise of anti intellectualism, curbing of public discourse and media freedoms, and all this in the first 6 weeks.
Well done, sir. I’m sure youre very proud of what you’ve accomplished.
The idea that Gaza would have been a-ok if Harris won is insane.
A Democrat victory would have meant next to nothing to the Palestinian people. Dems don’t care about them either.
It’s also a lie that pro-Palestine voters withheld their votes in any significant number as well. That’s just the MSM trying to pass the buck onto the left while ignoring the fact that the Dems have nobody to blame for their loss but themselves.
You’re buying into propaganda from the Dems’s “good guy” billionaires.
Guy kicked off the thread by wishing bad things on genocide protestors, I find it hard to believe they care about these issues. In any other country they’d be a conservative
how’d you know I’m Donald Trump? this is my alt. Idiot
Just like the DNC and Democrat party leaders you think the solution is to blame progressives and keep attacking the left.
Take some responsibility for your loss.
How about they take responsibility for their choice? If a child makes a mistake, you teach them the bigger picture, but you always make them take responsibility. If you coddle them, they’ll never understand their actions, and you end up creating another trump, acting with impunity and expecting special treatment. Every. Time. Dem or republican, that’s not on.
These morons need to understand that the world is a series of interconnected systems, and that their actions affect others. They’d rather burn down their country for the sake of their oversimplified world view and one trigger issue. They endanger others, so if others need to vent back at them, then boo fucking hoo.
And what did those principled non voters achieve? Nothing and they have made the situation which they where protesting worse. Now Trump well own Gaza notice he never says America he says I well own it.
when genocide is squarely in the middle of the overton window, maybe it was too late to act.
Then go do something, man.
Sitting around and doing a “noble” nothing is not standing up or doing more. It’s doing EVEN LESS than voting. There is an absolutely real possibility that if everybody stays home it doesn’t shift D left, it just results in nothing besides Republican control.
In that case though you wouldn’t have to worry about voting for palestinian genocide, because it would be over and done with. You could be not voting for climate denial or not voting for something else, posting on Lemmy about how righteous you are, and bottling your own farts to sniff later.
I’m walking, stumping, and repping local elections and voting as far left as I can everywhere else. There is no far far left activity/activism you’re touting anywhere to be seen. What value do you add?
wanna know what it might have looked like if millions of people that couldn’t stomach voting Democrat did so?
every single election in my adult life.
when genocide is in the overton window all you can do is brace for impact.
USA is collapsing, and best we can do now is hope for a better future in its ashes. Delaying it for 20 years by letting the Democrats get away with more and more and more wasn’t gonna change that.
right. I’m sure your self-righteousness, apathy and inaction are going to be a great asset when it comes to building a “better future”.
Except that the result so far has only been the exact opposite of ‘building’ and ‘progress’.
and that’s a reason to stop trying altogether?
edit: a word
lol and maybe you can take 5 minutes to vote on the second worst suggestion for how things should be run when someone thinks about it for you
there are more ways to take action than to vote.
I’m just as dissolutioned with the voting system as you are, but I’m also aware that sitting around complaining and acting like you know better than everyone else is only obnoxious accomplishes nothing.
either do literally anything at all to contribute, or go find an empty room to whinge into. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the echo.
USA is collapsing, and best we can do now is hope for a better future in its ashes.
Buddy, look at who are the other major players right now. Russia, China, and the EU. If you think for for a hot second that whatever rises out of this fire is going to be better, have I got news for you.
That is the objective for these types of people. A world where the EU and USA are isolated and China, Russia, Iran, etc. have free reign in ‘their’ backyards.
Seems to me like kind of a long pivot from
Every single bit of progress was led by people doing more, by people standing up, by people applying pressure between election days.
Why not just DO that?
I don’t disagree that the shift in the Overton window is alarmingly far gone, that Dems are out of touch, or that the country is failing in real time. I disagree with the supercilious presentation of “political (in)action” by the people who ought to be easiest to motivate to go raise some hell.
Instead of punching all the way right, you’re doing a big sad to your adjacent right in a huge lefty echo chamber. By letting perfect be the enemy of less worse we are only left with worse, and you still gotta live in it with us.
I don’t disagree with you, my position is that I think people should have done damage mitigation by voting Harris in, but people that couldn’t stomach supporting genocide are not my enemy.
I’m just betting that the people rushing to these threads to smugly feel superior for voting were also the ones trying to silence any opposition to Biden and Harris for their bad positions. The vibe in any discussion on Lemmy was “if you mention Palestine you’re a Trump supporter” and those same pieces of shit are now saying “told you so” as if the way forward is to do LESS resistance.
That’s what I’m talking about. Congrats, you voted and lost. Maybe don’t fucking suppress actual progress the whole time between elections. If these people joined the left in holding Democrats accountable many elections ago, FUCKING GENOCIDE wouldn’t have been a background policy common to both parties.
Now they’re still finger pointing at the people who actually demand more from their politicians.
“Vote blue no matter who” got us here, THAT’S apathy.
When I was 20, I also didn’t comprehend that you could have incomplete data so assumed the real world was wrong.
Imagine dealing with data tracking hundreds of millions of people across multiple generations starting from before the time of computers and having to deal with the reality of missing or lost data/documentation. We can’t confirm your birthdate because that hospital burned down 80 years ago? FRAUD. /s
Remember the Great Depression? This guy doesnt.
They are about to gut the USPS. The ramifications to the economy will be astronomical.
Small businesses exist because of it. So along, and thanks for the fish, I guess?
The govt is in the process of deporting 18 million illegal workers, that’s gonna drive inflation through the roof.
Then Trump will order the Fed Reserve to lower interest rates (like Erdogan did in Turkey). Inflation will go nuts.
Wild times ahead.
I got this cadence inside of me that says “go to your capital”
And whether thats the state or nation I dont care.
If everyone followed that cadence, we could fix this.
Email and similar electronic messaging kind of did a number on the demand for the USPS.
kagis
https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/first-class-mail-since-1926.htm
This says that their peak year was 2000, when 103.5 billion pieces of mail were sent.
In 2024, it was down to 44.3 billion. So 57% of the service’s usage went away over that 24-year period.
In that same timeframe, the population also increased, so that decrease is despite the US population rising from 281 million to 340 million, a 21% increase.
But but the Boomers kept telling us Trump would never go after Medicare!
The boomers also said that they need the Affordable Care Act, but that they don’t support Obamacare, so…
The Boomers all have lead poisoning and the entire group should be declared mentally unfit for any sort of office, public or private.
this is the kind of shit that didn’t ever happen even in the most brazen ripping-copper-from-the-walls years of 90s privatization in eastern block. yall elected your own yeltsin and now you’ll deal with consequences
This entire endeavor, basically the work they’ve been doing for the last century, is to undo the entirety of the new deal. We didn’t lock them up and execute them after the business plot like we should have. Just a bunch of robber barons trying to take us back to the Gilded Age.
This time we should televise it.
So I’m going to get a refund plus interest for everything I’ve paid into the system, right?
I’m thinking Libertarians will be celebrating until they find out the answer is no.
I guess that’s what happens when you appoint a Bond villain as commerce secretary
Phew! I thought it was the insurrectionist rapist felon grifters fault. Good thing we didn’t vote Kamala!
/s for the triggered fuckers
So Trump is anti-Zombie too?
Being anti-Zombie is pretty common sense, so I’m doubtful.
