A few days ago Wall Street honcho Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) went to Congress and said that there must be cuts made to Medicare and Social Security. He thought a good place to start would be raising the age to qualify for Medicare from 65 to 67 years of age. He tried to justify that by saying that people are living longer now. But while that may be true for Wall Street bankers like him, who sit on their butts all day and drag in $16 million a year, it's certainly not true for most Americans -- the people who work hard at a back-breaking job all their lives. For those people, their longevity hasn't risen, and when they turn 65 they need to retire, and they need their Medicare.People like Blankfein live in a bubble. They seem to think that every American could have a life as easy as theirs, if they were just winning to work hard for it. That's a crock. Most Americans work very hard for everything they get -- even poor folks (most of whom work full-time for very little money). And Blankfein is not the only one. Most of his Wall Street cronies agree with him -- and the congressional Republicans eat up their every word, and are only too happy to give them tax cuts while throwing the elderly (and other Americans) under the bus.
But both the Wall Street greed merchants and the congressional Republicans are on the wrong side in this political battle. The American people don't like the idea of raising the age for Medicare. Note the above chart, from an ABC News/Washington Post Poll taken between November 21st and 25th, that shows at least two-thirds of Americans oppose raising the age for Medicare -- including two-thirds of Republicans. That's right. Even the Republican Party's base voters don't want Medicare touched.
In fact, this poll doesn't show anything new. Poll after poll for months now have shown the American people don't want benefits cut or the age for qualification raised on either Medicare or Social Security. These two programs work just like they were intended to work, and the American people know it. If Wall Street continues to demand cuts for these programs, they may find themselves facing a new and even stronger Occupy movement. And if the congressional Republicans continue their quest to harm these two programs, they might find the 2014 election to be a nightmare.
