Steven D. BooMan Tribune: Social Security is NOT an Entitlement!

Last night in Youngstown Ohio, 200 or so people, seniors and activists and politicians, met at a town hall event at the United Baptist Church. Senator Sherrod Brown appeared and spoke at the event that was sponsored by the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The message from the people of Youngstown who attended was clear: "Social Security is NOT an entitlement; it is a promise to the American people who have paid into the system," Williams told the audience. "Proposed cuts will force recipients to pay higher insurance premiums and co-pays, and deny us money for essentials like prescription drugs and groceries." Williams has reason to be angry, with all the talk in Washington about cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. She had to take an early retirement as an X-Ray Technician who worked hard for 24 years because of an injury. She now depends on benefits to survive, but she wasn't the only person last night to tell her personal story, and express her anger at official Washington's out of touch attitude toward the suffering of working people who rely on our "social safety net". These people paid for these benefits with their taxes, and now our government is "pulling the rug out from under their feet". Now, they don't want the wealthy and corporations to avoid paying their share of the deficits brought about by the Bush tax cuts, the needless and illegal wars he fought, and the borrowing by the Treasury to fund the deficits. They haven't forgotten what former Vice President Dick Cheney said about deficits to the Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, when the GOP was in control of the government: "Fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December of 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts, and said the "president" balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals, because of opposition from "the corporate crowd". O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits were expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone, which posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off: "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter". A month later, Cheney told the told the Treasury Secretary that he was "fired"!!