Janet Yellen sees Nothing Wrong with Massive Entitlement Spending

In 2015, about 65% of the entire federal budget of $3.8 trillion was spent on entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing assistance, and such. But this can’t possibly be the cause of the national debt and permanent deficit spending. No – of course not. It’s the Trump tax cuts that are killing us. The fact that they’re only months old is completely immaterial.

The socialist Nanny-State has been constructed over a period of about 80 years, where as tax cuts have been few and far between, happening only four times since JFK initiated the first. Yet are we expected to believe that it is not entitlements which are blowing up the budget, but tax cuts.

Now what idiot would believe such a thing? Unfortunately, considering the source of the claim, many will tend to believe such a ridiculous assertion.

And the source is none other than Janet Yellen, former Chief of the Federal Reserve. She also served as Chair of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers – so she’s got that going for her.Yellen recently penned an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, along with four other “economists,” entitled: “A debt crisis is coming. But don’t blame entitlements.” All five are former members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, for either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. In other words, all five are leftist political swamp dwellers.

Naturally these esteemed economists (probably all Keynesian) would never blame government entitlement spending. Tax cuts, on the other hand, deprive government of needed funds.

Long, long ago, in a nation seemingly far, far away, Ben Franklin wrote:

“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

Those days are long ago extinct. We now treat “the poor” in an entirely different manner, and it is mostly due to a simple change in language.

The left effectively won this argument, as they often do, just by commanding the language we use. Social Security was the original “entitlement,” owing to the fact that one at least paid into the system, so therefore was “entitled” to withdraw from it at a later date.

But today all government give aways, assistance and welfare are now “entitlements.” And what makes people think they are entitled to other peoples’ money? A simple shift in language. Those who control the language, control the dialogue and ultimately the agenda.

A good explanation of this control of agenda is base line budgeting, where the government’s base line or floor for spending automatically increases every year. With this system, there can be no debate about cutting spending or shrinking government. The base line is set and there is no dispute beyond how much or how little the budget will grow. And it never grows just a little.

The same can be said of entitlements. The word “Entitlement” has become the base line. Once this word was established as the base line for all government assistance, there can be no debate beyond how much to increase that which one is already entitled.