Jophiel wrote:
I suppose since you realize you can't argue that the GOP is actually concerned about people's medicals needs...
Of course I can. The problem is that you determine how concerned someone is about something based on how much that person is willing to fund government a government program related to that thing. It's completely circular.
Unless you show an ability to break out of the "more spending must be better" mindset, there's no way for you to comprehend the conservative argument I'm making. You've decided that the blue crayon is the best one, so anything drawn in any other color can't be as good. Period. I see that as incredibly limited thinking, but that's what passes for intellectualism on the Left. "Don't support our solution? Then you just don't care!"
Lol!
Quote:
I'll also point out that your statement was:
...not "Medicaid will magically get more efficient" or "We'll make the dollars work better!" but "We would probably have a lot more money..."
Quote:
I will point out that maybe if we weren't spending such a ridiculous amount of money basically subsidizing people whose only "disability" is that they aren't working (enough), we would probably have a lot more money to help out people like you.
...not "Medicaid will magically get more efficient" or "We'll make the dollars work better!" but "We would probably have a lot more money..."
Again, your problem is that you can't see past the assumption that only government can solve problems. "We" is more than "government". "We" can include all of us, collectively, not burdened so much by taxes used to fund these ridiculously bloated programs, who would have more money to spend on helping people actually in need. I'm not limiting my thinking to any specific methodology. It could be more people donating to organizations that provide services for people with vision problems, for example. Or, it could even be funding for a government program that helps people with disabilities (gasp!).
The problem is that you just want to lump "opposition to spending" as one single monolithic thing. You automatically go to the most needy people when assuming who will be negatively impacted by spending cuts, while ignoring the constant argument by conservatives like myself about how our opposition is to the wasteful spending on people who don't really need it. What part of that aren't you getting? If the only money government spent helping people went just to those who truly needed it, I'd have no problem funding that. And most conservatives would have no problem with it either. Because the total cost would probably be around 1/10th of what we currently spend.
Government is just awfully bad at doing that though. Always has been.
Quote:
In reality, the GOP answer is to slash welfare (SNAP) benefits AND slash money for helping people like Bijou
And wouldn't it be wonderful if just once the response from the Left to us conservatives talking about wasteful spending was "Ok. Let's work together and go through these programs and figure out how we can trim them in ways that only affect those who don't really need help, while ensuring those who do need help get it.". You know. Just once. What we get instead? "OMG! The Conservatives want to throw grandma off a cliff!", followed by a refusal to cut a single dime of any spending on any of their precious programs. And when it's not that, it's "Only if you agree to spending cuts for military first". Then followed by complete reneging on that promise when it comes time to cut domestic spending.
We've been around this dance a few times Joph. It's abundantly obvious that the Left will not allow any cut to any domestic spending program, no matter how wasteful. On the rare occasions that we evil conservatives have actually forced such cuts, the result was overwhelmingly positive (such as the replacement of the old AFDC with TANF). Of course, despite this working relatively well, the Obama administration couldn't help but toss an fly into that ointment anyway, in the form of removing the work requirements (which were kind of a necessary part of the whole thing).
It's just hard not to come to the conclusion that the Left just wants as many people as possible to be poor and dependent on government. Silly conservatives for wanting people to *not* be poor and *not* be dependent on government. Heaven forbid we allow people to live their lives on their own terms and stand on their own feet and actually maybe have a sense of pride and accomplishment. But when we do that, or even just propose doing something that might lead to that, we're accused of letting people starve, or putting them out on the streets (or slamming the lid on their pot of food). Sorry, I'm not buying that assumption.
And it really doesn't help that the Left uses this as a political tool. Obama clearly lifted the work requirement so that it would force Republican opposition, so that his party could claim that the GOP was against helping people in need. There's no other reason for his action. Unfortunately, a whole lot of these spending programs are used as political footballs, with the people who are supposedly being helped basically used as pawns. Which, again, is part of the whole reason for not doing this sort of thing in the first place. Dependence on a government program means that those people can be used politically just by talking about the program or any changes to it.
Edited, May 21st 2015 5:25pm by gbaji