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Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said that most Americans do not understand that federal entitlements are not “bank account” programs that hold their money, adding that Social Security is not even a legal guarantee -- "Legally, they're not even promises." Cooper, asked about potential reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, said that the core problem was that the public does not understand the true nature of entitlements. “Many Americans don’t really realize that Medicare is a government program,” Cooper said at a press conference with fellow Blue Dogs on Wednesday.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2011, as National Grandparents Day. I call upon all Americans to take the time to honor their own grandparents and those in their community.

Now that’s something we’ve been hearing for years…we have to fix entitlements to get control of the budget. Government revenues can’t keep up with growing demands.Revenue...if I hear another politician use the term revenue I’m going to go nuts. Tell me, what good or service does the government produce that generates revenue? Absolutely nothing!Government obtains funding through taxation – which means they are funded by the people. Why don’t they call it what it really is, an allowance. And much like the weekly allowance provided to a child, once it’s gone you have to wait until it’s replenished!The problem with...

“Forgiving the student loan debt of all Americans will have an immediate stimulative effect on our economy. With the stroke of the President's pen, millions of Americans would suddenly have hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of extra dollars in their pockets each and every month with which to spend on ailing sectors of the economy. As consumer spending increases, businesses will begin to hire, jobs will be created and a new era of innovation, entrepreneurship and prosperity will be ushered in for all. A rising tide does, in fact, lift all boats - forgiving student loan debt, rather than...

It is an ideological milestone that the emerging Republican front-runner is as skeptical of the New Deal as anyone in his position since the New Deal. During the 1936 election, Republican nominee Alf Landon called Social Security "unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed." Now, according to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that tells young workers a "monstrous lie." It is a "failure" that "we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now." It is true that Barry Goldwater, during the 1964 campaign, said, "I think Social Security ought to be voluntary."...

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that only 11% favor a proposal for the federal government to provide every single American with a basic income grant, or enough money to enjoy a modest living regardless of whether they choose to work or not. Eighty-two percent (82%) oppose this idea. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The Price of Entitlements We face not only current budget problems but a Western European future. Some of a society’s most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can’t get a good thing without paying a bad price. A prime example is our public old-age-pension system, Social Security. It has been completely successful in wiping out poverty among the elderly. Old ladies no longer have to eat cat food to survive. But we pay some prices for this. One is a lower savings rate. China has a humongous savings rate, in part because it...

Some of society's most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can't get a good thing without paying a bad price. A prime example is our public old-age pension system Social Security. It has been completely successful in wiping out poverty among the elderly. Old ladies no longer have to eat cat food to survive. But we pay some prices for this. One is a lower savings rate. China has a humongous savings rate in part because it has no reliable old-age pension system. People have to save if they don't want to starve....

In An Unsustainable System, A Warning of CollapseBob ChapmanAugust 24, 2011 We do not believe that Americans, particularly elderly Americans, understand what the elitists are up to in regard to Social Security and Medicare. The Council on Foreign Relations and the Peterson Foundation has for years been working on plans to terminate Social Security and Medicare. Cuts in these paid for programs were impossible to get through Congress. Thus, the ruse was born of getting around Congress. A flash issue was raised regarding a short-term debt extension that could have been passed in 15 minutes that demanded budget cuts for...

  A Critical Mass in America David C. Stolinsky Aug. 25, 2011 In high-school physics − assuming our high school offered physics − we learned that when radioactive material reaches a critical mass, a chain reaction begins. No further input of energy is required. The reaction becomes self-sustaining. And if the right radioactive material is chosen, and the critical mass is achieved suddenly, a nuclear blast occurs, wiping out the nuclear material, the container enclosing it, and everything else within range. But the concept of a critical mass may also apply to politics. I believe that when the number...

Ancient Athens birthed both democracy and its most penetrating critics. The fundamental contentious issue was whether average people had the ability to manage the state and determine its proper interests, policies, and goals. For the defenders of democracy like the philosopher Protagoras, the politikê technê—i.e. the skills and knowledge necessary for coexistence in a community—belongs to all men by nature. Otherwise, no community could even exist. It would degenerate into a Hobbesian war of all against all. For its critics like Aristophanes, Plato, and Thucydides, radical democracy empowered people who did not have the skills or virtues necessary for seeing...

If the riots in Britain have taught us anything, it is that when government fails in its most basic function — protecting persons and property — civil society ends, and warfare begins. The rise of the welfare state has eroded respect for private property rights and fostered a socialist mentality that dulls individual responsibility. The U.S. is quickly catching up with European welfare states. Entitlement spending has skyrocketed since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Those two programs along with Social Security now account for more than 40 percent of federal spending, which itself has...

REP. JERROLD NADLER (D), NEW YORK: First of all, you have to fight them, second of all, you have to educate the American people. And you have to define that there are two separate problems we are dealing with. And we`re putting the less immediate problems front and center with not dealing with the real immediate problem. SHARPTON: What is the less immediate problem? NADLER: The less immediate problem is the deficit. We can deal with that a couple years from now. Right now, we must do exactly what Secretary Reich are saying, we`ve got to deal with the jobs...

President Obama has again acknowledged the necessity of doing something many Democrats fiercely oppose -- reforming entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. On a Midwest bus tour stop in Minnesota, Obama spoke in favor of changes to entitlement programs being eyed by the 12-member congressional committee charged with finding budget savings that will get past partisan gridlock, stave off future credit downgrades and increase the federal debt. "There have been times when our side, when Democrats aren’t always as flexible as we need to be," Obama said. "Sometimes I do get frustrated when I hear folks say, 'You...

Further: 'I will work hard to protect entitlements... the only problem with the Reid Senate is that we didn't keep a fillibuster-proof majority... " Yeah. The Super Committee is gonna work. /S

Tim Pawlenty is exiting the race for the White House the same way he came in — on a tidal wave of conventional wisdom. He was too even-tempered, they say, to catch on with a white-hot electorate. He was too level-headed, they say, to connect with a grassroots that’s gone to extremes. He was a nice guy — “boring,” in the parlance of our times — so he finished last. Breaking news: The conventional wisdom is wrong. Pawlenty’s personality problem wasn’t a charisma deficit — it was a wimpiness surplus. But the wimp factor is meaningless relative to the flaw...

Two main concerns (and there are many more): 1) If 535 people in Congress are given the task of running the country under the Constitution, why is the abdication of those duties and powers over to a "Gang of 12" considered Constitutional? 2) There is a not-so-concealed dirty joke to the 50/50 cut guidelines of the Super Committee. If cuts can't be derived from their smoky back room chin-wagging, "automatic cuts" are imposed. Cuts will come from the Pentagon and from entitlements. * As for the Pentagon, cuts would be "real". * As for entitlements, Washington has already proven that...

Rick Perry kicks off his campaign tomorrow, but is he electable? In an interview last fall, the Texas governor advocated dismantling Medicare and Social Security. For months, Republicans have complained about their choices in the 2012 presidential race. Mitt Romney seems unprincipled, they’ve said. Michele Bachmann is too flimsy. Tim Pawlenty looks fine on paper, but in person, not so much. And Newt Gingrich is just plain erratic. But now disaffected conservatives think they’ve found their man. His name? Rick Perry. This weekend, while most of the field focuses on the Ames, Iowa straw poll, the three-plus-term Texas governor will...

Nearly one-out-of-two Americans (48%) think that cuts in government spending are at least somewhat likely to lead to violence in the United States, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. But that includes just 13% who feel it’s Very Likely. Nearly as many Adults (44%), however, believe violence as the result of spending cuts is unlikely, but only 12% say it’s Not At All Likely. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Americans under 50 raise the possibility of violence more than their elders. Most adults not affiliated with either party (58%) think spending cuts are likely to...

House Speaker John Boehner's decision not to appoint the Republican Party's financial wizard, Rep. Paul Ryan, to a 12-member super committee tasked with finding more than $1 trillion in savings came as a surprise to almost everyone but Ryan, who said he asked not to be a member of the panel despite earlier indications that he would serve if asked. Several Republicans had rooted for Ryan to be part of the 12-member panel. "I definitely would have Chairman Paul Ryan, just because he lives and breathes these numbers, he knows them inside and out. He understands what needs to be...