While I'm somewhat encouraged that it appears Bill Maher has finally evolved somewhat on the issue of Social Security and the fact that it does not contribute to our deficit, Maher can't seem to stop continually siding with the deficit scolds who want to find any excuse possible to gut our social safety nets if given the chance.
Following a discussion during this Friday's Overtime segment of Real Tim on racism in the United States, voter discrimination and whether we're really willing to talk honestly about race, The Daily Caller's Jamie Weinstein asked Rev. William Barber about his claim that the denial of Medicaid is one based on race. He then proceeded to recite the deficit scolds' favorite talking points about how Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on our debt is going to supposedly take up all of the revenue being brought in by the federal government, and asked him whether he thought it “was a serious problem” or not.
Before he could answer, Barber was interrupted by Bill Maher rightfully pointing out that Social Security is solvent for decades to come. Then the audience was treated to former Rep. Jane Harman and Maher both giving credence to just how “reasonable” a so-called “grand bargain” would have been that we all know Republicans were never, ever going to agree to, disregarding the fact that anything that was on the table was extremely one-sided towards the one percent and calling for further cuts that many seniors cannot afford with the proposal for chained CPI.
After that discussion, Barber got a chance to speak and respond to Weinstein:
BARBER: But he problem with your question is the premise. First of all, you have extremists who make themselves out to be Republicans. You rob the bank, give all the money to the wealthy and then say the bank will be broke.
And that's been going on for the last how many years. If you look at the racial dimension on entitlements, once entitlements became open to more brown people and black, all of the sudden everything that helped many whites come up was somehow bad.
If you did fair tax cuts to the right people, we would not break the bank. You are breaking the bank when... sick people cannot inspire an economy. They won't help an economy.
WEINSTEIN: All I'm saying is the numbers don't add up. You can tax the rich all you want.
BARBER: No, it's not about taxing the rich.
WEINSTEIN: You're not going to be able to touch entitlements.
BARBER: It's about fair taxes and in our state, the Republicans raised taxes on eighty nine percent of North Carolinians. They didn't raise taxes, they raised eighty nine percent of North Carolinians, raised their taxes, so they could give eleven percent of North Carolinians a tax cut. That's wrong! That's immoral and that's why we have these problems.
[ad]
