David Brooks pens another humdinger today. While the whole "did Paul Ryan really whine to him about not being invited to lunch by Obama" aspect is kind of fun, the real message is far more slippery, pernicious, and slimy, true to standard Brooks form.
It's all summed up in this:
Obama believes Ryan wants to take America back to what he sees as the savage capitalism of the 1920s (or even the 1760s). Ryan believes Obama wants to turn America into a declining European welfare state.
And reinforced by this:
Obama, meanwhile, does not believe the current welfare arrangements are structurally unsustainable. They have to be adjusted, but not fundamentally altered. He does not believe the seniors and members of the middle class have to suffer significantly in the course of these adjustments. The approach he outlined Wednesday mostly shields these groups from cuts, even if Congress can?t reach a deal on deficit-cutting and a fiscal trigger kicks in.
Get that? America's social insurance programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance: they're all welfare.
It's a narrative that's been building, with Rep. Paul Ryan equating Medicaid with welfare and Majority Leader Eric Cantor saying that Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries just have to learn how to be like everyone else, and "do more with less" (because your average Medicare/Medicaid recipient lives such an extravagant life).
David Brooks is just parroting this GOP narrative, and an old one at that. It goes back to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens. Alan Simpson's "greedy geezers" on Social Security. Republicans are in for the long haul on this one, demonizing all social insurance programs, turning every social program into welfare, since they did succeed in making that a dirty word, and a despised concept. They see an opening for finally achieving their goal of dismantling the New Deal and Great Society in the Shock Doctrine they're cooking up with this " debt crisis."
But now they're expanding it far beyond the old idea of the "underclasses." How are America's senior citizens, disabled, and unemployed going to react to being told they're on welfare? Will the entire middle class become the nation's 21st century welfare queens?
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