Here is where the factions stand on Social Security and Medicare:
- CLs: Entitlement programs, regardless of the identity of their beneficiaries, are an assault on freedom and a drag on the economy. They lead to socialism and drive the lazy and unworthy into the hammock of dependency. They should be cut to the maximum extent possible.
- CDs: There is no market mechanism which insures that the elderly will have a decent standard of living and adequate health care. Social Security and Medicare must be protected, and even expanded, if possible, because the value of human life is not dictates by economic productivity.
- PBPs: Entitlement programs drive up our costs. Cut them if it is politically possible, which may not be the case. Don’t expand them under any circumstances.
- Reactionaries: Get your government hands off my Medicare! As a hard working white Christian, I am entitled to that money. Don’t even think about cutting programs for which I paid all my working life and which primarily help real Americans!
When the PBPs drove the GOP bus, entitlement cuts were party orthodoxy. Trump and his Reactionary supporters changed all that. A day of reckoning is approaching; the trust funds are running out of money, and something—either tax increases or benefit cuts—will have to be done. Which faction will prevail? We’ll see in a few years.