Here lies Mike Pence
Few organisations have perfected the dark art of virtue signalling quite like the Republican Party. Take, for example, the performative outrage that was on display at the President’s State of the Union address. Now there was an instructive case in point.
When the President mentioned that some (but not all) Republicans wanted to sunset social security and Medicare, out came the pearls to clutch and the hankies to dry the tears and the fake fainting spells. President Biden was met with an obstreperous volley of outraged boos and catcalls and gravely shaking heads. It was an impressive display indeed — even by Republican standards.
Oh, and how the rightwing media turned into a pack of screeching monkeys! The audacity, the cheek, the very idea that a President of the United States would stoop to saying something vaguely negative about unspecified members of the opposite party! Who but the senile old coot in the Casa Blanca would dare to do such a thing?
But then out came the fact-checking quotes. Senator Rick Scott was on record as saying he wanted every government program — even so-called entitlements (e.g. social security and Medicare) — to expire after 5 years. Senator Ron Johnson was even more destructively aggressive, wanting to enjoy annual sunsets, and he even called social security “a Ponzi scheme.”
Several Republicans have disparagingly compared social security with the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats and found it wanting. They claim they could do better.
Republicans are so out of touch with the average American that they speak of social security benefits as if they were nothing more than part of any good money manager’s investment portfolio, something that can go up and down in value and no one will notice or mind.
Now Mike Pence has got into the act. “We all know where the real issue is in terms of long-term debt for the United States,” Pence told CNBC on Wednesday. “I respect the Speaker’s [Kevin McCarthy] commitment to take Social Security and Medicare off the table for the debt ceiling negotiations, [but] we’ve got to put them on the table in the long term.”
Then on Fox News — the network that excoriated Biden for “attacking” how Republicans want to sunset social security — Pence suggested the same thing last week. “We have to have a conversation about reforming entitlements in the days ahead,” Pence said. “We can replace the New Deal programs with a better deal. In Social Security, you can keep all the promises that you made to seniors and people that will retire in the next 20 years — no changes. But to give options to younger Americans to invest a portion of their Social Security in a private savings account, I think is an idea whose time will come.”
Why do Republicans hate social security? In part, because it originated with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Roosevelt was a Democrat. They want to replace it with “something better,” much the same way they wanted to replace Obamacare with “something better.” But they always get a little vague when their feet are held to the fire.
It’s because what Republicans really want is that colossal pile of cash all for themselves and their rich friends, but they dare not ever say it out loud. So they speak in code, referring to social security and Medicare as entitlements when in fact they are rights every working American has earned by paying into the program their whole working lives.
It’s always the same story with Republicans. They hated Biden’s infrastructure program because, again, they claim to want to replace it with something better. But it’s the same lie they’ve been telling for the last 20 years. They have nothing better to replace it.
They also hated the President’s Executive Order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to explore additional actions it can take to lower prescription drug costs. Republicans claim they could do a much better job. But, again, it always comes to the same thing. When it comes to the specific details, Republicans are nowhere to be found.
Social security isn’t part of a retirement portfolio. Most retirees need it to live on. Social security is something every working American pays into all their lives. It is not an entitlement any more than your savings account is an entitlement. It is an earned benefit that no one should be allowed to take away. Republicans want it for their pet programs and their rich friends, and never let them tell you otherwise.
Mike Pence is no different, he can’t wait to reclaim power, this time as president, so he can steal social security and Medicare benefits from ordinary Americans. Republicans are no friend of the common people and they never will be. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.