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Thursday, February 10, 2011

We Don't Know How Good We Have It, and the Republicans Want to Keep Us that Way.

When the nation found itself balancing the budget and pulling in big surpluses, voters took the good times for granted. They felt cocky enough to vote a Republican president, like George W. Bush, into office (I know, the Supreme Court made him president, but Bush got a lot of votes).

That brought about 9/11 and the Great Recession.

Now a majority of voters who have taken our social safety nets for granted, along with a multitude of government programs and services, are giving the Republicans a chance to cut spending and government largess.
HuffintonPost: According to new data crunched by Cornell University's Suzanne Mettler, large numbers of Americans who receive benefits from government social programs nonetheless tell pollsters they "have not used a government social program." And when I mean large, I mean large. For example, a majority of those who have received federally subsidized student loans, 44 percent of Social Security beneficiaries and 40 percent of G.I. bill recipients say they have not used a government social program. 
These numbers go a long way to explaining why the economic debate in our country is so insane. 
Indeed, at a moment when taxes have hit a historic low, most politicians -- from presidents to governors to state legislators -- insist we must further cut taxes and shrink allegedly "Big Government." And they are finding a receptive audience in the general public because, as the numbers show, so many Americans wrongly believe they don't receive direct financial benefits from government

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