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Center for American Progress Action Fund / Flickr)” width=”308″ height=”462″ />Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). (Photo: Center for American Progress Action Fund / Flickr)The Great Shutdown/Default Debacle of 2013 is thankfully dwindling in the rearview mirror, but look sharp! Signpost dead ahead: The Great Shutdown/Default Debacle of 2014 is just around the bend, and if you think the Tea Party terrorists in Congress have learned their lesson and won’t try to blow the whole thing up again, I have a big orange bridge over scenic San Francisco Bay I’d like to sell you.
Between now and then, however, another all-important battle is brewing. A Congressional Budget Conference has been cobbled together to try and fashion an actual budget… so, of course, the so-called “Grand Bargain” to slash Social Security and Medicare is being bandied about again as “the responsible thing to do.”
This time, there are just as many Democrats as Republicans who want to see this done. Just the other day, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) went on Fox News to spew the same old tired lies about the social safety net being the reason for America’s economic woes.
No mention of the bloated “Defense” budget, or the grotesquely expensive wars that were funded off the books, or the obscene tax breaks for wealthy people and corporations, or the Wall Street criminals who stole our future. Nope, it’s Grandma and her Social Security checks that are to blame.
Truthout has no intention of allowing these lies to go unchallenged, nor will we stand idly by while the neediest among us are plundered all over again. Here and now, the lies stop.
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