IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, LIE

This article from the LA Times' Michael Hiltzik is one of the best essays to explain why the deficit hawks aren't really deficit hawks. They're simply using deficits and other red herring arguments to gut programs they don't like. Why? Because the programs - like social security and Medicare - are not only popular but they undermine their utopian world view that that government doesn't work.

Worse, the continued success of social security and Medicare blows up their argument that only market players in the financial, health care, and insurance industries can adequately provide America's retirement and health needs.

As an example, Hiltzik looks at the notion that social security and Medicare amount to little more than "generational theft." Robbing our children of money to pay for old age programs is their tug at your heart argument. Hiltzik correctly points out that the deficit hawks arguments here are wrong on the numbers and an outright sham.

Their position, which is led by the Republican Party, has everything to do with their inability to discredit the services and popularity of these programs. So they have to argue that the programs are uncontrollable, ungovernable, and therefore undesirable.

Read the article. It's a good one.

- Mark