Time to Get Tough Read Online Free PDF Page B

Security and Medicare are wasteful “entitlement programs.”
But people who think this way need to rethink their position. It’s not unreasonable for people who paid into a system for decades to expect to get their money’s worth—that’s not an “entitlement,” that’s honoring a deal. We as a society must also make an ironclad commitment to providing a safety net for those who can’t make one for themselves. At least that was President Reagan’s stance. On April 20, 1983, Reagan signed a bill to preserve Social Security. At that bill signing, the president said words every Republican should heed:
    This bill demonstrates for all time our nation’s ironclad commitment to Social Security. It assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It assures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future. From this day forward, they have one pledge that they will get their fair share of benefits when they retire. 4
    President Reagan had it right: Social Security is here to stay. To be sure, we must reform it, root out the fraud, make it more efficient, and ensure that the program is solvent beyond the Baby Boomers. But to listen to some Republicans vilify a system that’s been around for over seventy-six years and that taxpayers have paid into for decades makes me think they should go back and watch President Reagan’s speech again.
    Same goes for Medicare. Again, people have lived up to their end of the bargain and paid into the program in good faith. Of course they believe they’re “entitled” to receive the benefits they paid for—they are!

    The question is, how do we pay for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security when costs are ballooning and deficits are soaring? Here again, both sides fumble the ball badly. Democrats pretend that the answer is raising taxes. But anyone with a brain knows all that will do is kill economic growth. That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Economic growth is the secret to making the entire pie grow larger. When that happens, millions of new workers will become new taxpayers and revenues will rise. As Senator Marco Rubio of Florida put it: “Let’s stop talking about new taxes and start talking about creating new taxpayers, which basically means jobs.” 5 And that’s what economic growth will do.
    But many Republicans also miss the mark. They pretend we can just nibble around the edges by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse and somehow magically make these programs solvent and pay off our massive $15 trillion debt. Neither side is being totally honest.
    Our country doesn’t need cowardice, it needs courage. Here’s the first part of the solution: our leaders need to get tough with the big players like China and OPEC that are ripping us off so we can recapture hundreds of billions of dollars to pay our bills, take care of our people, and get us on a path toward serious debt reduction. We must take care of our own people—we must make our country strong and rich again so that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will no longer be thought of as a problem. We must save these programs through strength, power, and wealth.
    As I explained earlier, China takes us for $300 billion a year, and OPEC is even worse. Washington is so busy squabbling over peanuts that they’re completely missing the mountains of money staring them in the face. Obama and Republicans spent weeks bickering over $60 billion of spending
cuts in the president’s budget. Excuse me, but we have a $15 trillion debt. We need to get serious and get tough with the big rip-off artists who abuse this country regularly. If we do that first, the remaining cuts and reforms we need to make will be substantially smaller, more manageable, and much less painful.
    Stop and think about it: even just leveling the playing field with China for a