Marjorie Taylor Greene complains about "socialist" Medicare

https://lemmy.world/post/1607414

Marjorie Taylor Greene complains about "socialist" Medicare - Lemmy.world

govt spending does need to be curtailed, not sure if I agree with some of her other points though.

Everyone can agree with the statement that government spending needs to be curtailed in the abstract. That’s not useful if you’re not willing to say specifically what you think should be cut.

Medicare is about 12% of the budget. Do you think it should be cut, do you think the government should spend less on that?

Social Security is the largest part of the budget. Do you think it should be cut? What about the fact that its income comes entirely from payroll taxes - not general income taxes - and it still has a huge surplus?

After medicare, social security, and debt interest, the next largest category is defense spending. Do you think that should be cut? If so, how would you do that responsibly?

I’d love to see the defense budget cut, but I think it’s tricky, because most of that money goes to pay for the salaries of people. The money that doesn’t go to U.S. government employees (pentagon, armed services, etc.) go to contractors who employ lots of people. Cut the budget dramatically and millions of people lose their jobs, which could devastate the economy. Again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it - just that it isn’t quite so simple as just cutting the budget and being done with it. There are consequences.

Alternately, we could actually assess taxes against the organizations that use the majority of our nation’s resources, underpay their workers, and are the cause of much of the need for spending for Medicare & social security due to killing pensions and opposing nationalized health care.