russ_watters said:
Then do you acknowledge that this was wrong?: Because Medicaid is for poor people and Medicare isn't.
No, I was just accepting the definition as being used for the sake of argument, and I was pointing out that republicans are excluding programs that target old, rich, veterans, and business. I'm curious as to why they should be excluded. In my opinion, the list only includes things republicans don't like while excluding things they do like or need for votes.
And yes, people traditionally use welfare in politics to refer to TANF. IE: Welfare rolls, welfare queens, welfare reform, or just plain old welfare.
Mitt Romney, for example, has been investing quite a bit on running attack ads on "welfare" (TANF).
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-215_162-57499358/the-real-strategy-behind-romneys-lying-welfare-ads/
Of course, those attack ads were wildly false. But quite frankly, I'm starting to agree with the Romney team that
facts simply don't matter. Half of eligible Americans don't vote, and so whatever candidate can rally its partisan base wins.
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Of course medicare is for poor people.
In 1959, for example, 35.2 percent of Americans over 65 were living below the poverty line, compared with 17 percent of those under 65. Today, about 10 percent of seniors are living in poverty. Before Medicare was enacted, the elderly paid 53 percent of the cost of their health care. That share dropped to 29 percent in 1975 and to 18 percent in 1997. The elderly s health costs consumed 24 percent of the average Social Security check shortly before Medicare; by 1975, that share dropped to 17 percent (Gornick, 1976).
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statist...eports/TheChartSeries/Downloads/35chartbk.pdf
Though to be fair...
Elderly poverty in the U.S. decreased dramatically during the twentieth century. Between 1960 and 1995, the official poverty rate of those aged 65 and above fell from 35 percent to 10 percent, and research has documented similarly steep declines dating back to at least 1939. While poverty was once far more prevalent among the elderly than among other age groups, today's elderly have a poverty rate similar to that of working-age adults and much lower than that of children.
Social Security is often mentioned as a likely contributor to the decline in elderly poverty. Enacted in 1935, the Social Security system experienced rapid benefit growth in the post-WWII era. In fact, there is a striking association between the rise in Social Security expenditures per capita and the decline in elderly poverty, as Figure 1 illustrates (with both series scaled to fit on the same figure).
http://www.nber.org/bah/summer04/w10466.html
In addition, half of recipients of Medicare are lower than 200% of federal poverty level. So many of them will also qualify for many of the programs listed.
http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/health/fs149_medicare.pdf
And they get a lot more out of these services than they put into them.
At the end of the day, they only included things that didn't like while not including things they do like or need to win votes. And it's not very useful outside of making some kind of talking point to use on the campaign trail. And many people will likely associate the welfare spending claim with TANF.
If they were serious about dealing with debt, they would be talking about health-care programs and their effects throughout the federal system. For example, states may shift funds away from higher education for the purpose of funding its health-care services; as a result, the cost of education increases leading to higher costing programs like the pell grant.
Health care spending, military spending, and taxes are the largest problems in our budget.
