To me, any candidate unwilling to intelligently and candidly deal with the entitlements issue, is the ultimate flawed candidate. They need to get the heck out of Dodge - all of those cowards - all of them. I'm done.
This has happened in many other states and nationally, as I'm sure you are well aware.
The root of the problem isn't entitlements. The root of the problem is that the middle and working classes of this country have been hollowed out by decades of corporate deregulation, tax giveaways to the rich, the systematic busting of unions, draconian cuts in the social spending net-not to mention the huge losses of the wealth of said middle class in the economic recession (which a relatively small but powerful number of people profited from), or the fact that millions of Americans don't have job security, or health insurance, or access to even adequate education. Many millions of Americans are now in poverty, and many millions more are working desperately hard to not fall into poverty.
The "entitlements" you speak of are called that for a reason. People who have been paying into those programs throughout their working lives are legally
entitled to receive benefits from them. Yes, the long-term demographic and fiscal picture for them looks bleak, but what's your point? That's not the fault of the people who payed into those programs; that's the fault of squandering the programs' solvency in recent years , and both parties are complicit in that.
My larger point is this:
with the base and middle of the economy/country so hollowed out and over-stretched, why are they on the hook for the stupidity and arrogance of the wealthy? The government has been giving the rich "incentives" to create jobs and start businesses to stimulate economic growth for years now-meanwhile, real wages have fallen or stagnated, with few exceptions, since the 1970s. Yet I am to believe that nope, it is the social safety net itself that is the problem?
The social safety net's problems are
symptoms of a deeper ill in our economy, not the cause. It would be foolish to drastically cut it.
/rant
