Government Bait and Switch

“Means Testing”

For fifty (50) years I paid in for Social Security Retirement Insurance benefits, and thirty seven (37) years into Medicare benefits.  It was mandatory.  If I got paid to work I had to pay for promised benefits.  There was no widely known option.  I never welshed on my obligations, not once.

Now that I’m drawing the benefits I was forced to pay for, the government wants to change how much I get in benefits.  If an insurance company or a private business cheated millions of customers like this the US Attorney General would certainly indict them, and so would most state’s Attorneys General.

What does so called, “means testing” have to do with me getting what I paid for?  Everyone who pays for an advertised product or service, especially in advance, should receive it exactly as advertised.  Remember these are insurance benefits I already paid for.

If you are Bill Gates or Homeless Joe now; that should have nothing what-so-ever to do with whether you get the benefits you paid for and were promised by our government.

 

Benefits are not entitlements.

Many, if not most, entitlement recipients pay in nothing.  Entitlements are an unspecified list of assistance based on someone’s personal circumstance or condition at some point in time, hopefully for a short period, regardless if they ever paid in a penny in tax revenue.

Entitlements definitely should be “means tested”.  It’s one of the primary justification used to determine if an applicant is eligible for aid.  I don’t think enough “means testing” is being done for entitlement programs like, food stamps, child care, and aid to dependent children, Medicaid, school breakfast and lunch, or whatever names these aid programs are known by today.

Benefits come from paid up government insurance and must be delivered as promised.  In no place or time while they were gleefully taking my money did the government ever mention “means testing”. 

The fact that I worked hard my whole life, and planned, scrimped and saved, invested, took good care of myself, and carefully managed my life and what little money the government did not grab; somehow now, I should not get the benefits I paid for. 

But, someone who didn’t do anything of those things well should get some of the benefits I paid for is unbelievably ridiculous, criminal, immoral, and socially and legally unjust.

I provided for myself, they did not.  The government took some of my hard earned money while I was working and now that I’m too old to re-earn it, that they would dare to take any of the benefits that I paid for is a travesty. 

The unmitigated gall of these manipulative, backstabbing, cowardly, hypocritical cheaters, liars, and thieving elected and appointed officials to tout “means testing” is unimaginable.

Shame upon them and their despicable ways; they should be damned to hell, and if given the chance, I’ll gladly help them on their way.