Don't ignore what Donald says on Social Security and Medicare

The gushing fire hose of Trump's bluster and stupidity makes it hard to catch every lunatic notion he throws out. We've all learned not to be sure he even knows what he is saying -- or could understand it if he did.

But his recent attacks on the funding arrangements for Social Security and Medicare deserve our full attention. Here's Michael Tomasky explaining what you could easily have missed since it seems absolutely unthinkable [my emphasis]: 

Trump not long ago called for permanent elimination of the payroll tax. The payroll tax of course funds both Social Security and Medicare.  ... Trump will end Social Security. Period. Either it will collapse, or financing it and Medicare out of the general treasury will absolutely strafe other functions of government. Social Security pays out more than a trillion dollars every year in benefits, and Medicare costs around $750 billion a year; by contrast, entire non-defense discretionary spending, which is basically all domestic spending on education and the environment and everything, is $660 billion.

 You can do the math as easily as I can. If the federal government suddenly has to finance $1.75 trillion out of the general treasury, it will stop cleaning rivers, building highways, caring for veterans, and a hundred other things that people actually care about. 

But that isn’t even the main point. The main point is that it’s more likely that Social Security and Medicare will just die with their funding source gone. After Trump made his announcement, the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary wrote that if the payroll tax is eliminated, the fund will go broke in 2023. That’s three years. From now.

Republicans in the Senate have been refusing to pass another stimulus bill to care for people out of work, even while 860,000 more people sought unemployment benefits last week. We don't have an economy; we have a human emergency as people who want to work can't because of the spread of the virus. Senators don't seem to care -- maybe they will be if they get fired by the voters in November. The Democrats in the House sent them a plan to help us in May. But from the Republicans, nothing.

Come on Colorado, Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, and Montana voters. Replace your Republican Senators. You have a chance to elect new Senators and win a Senate that cares.