NewsHour regulars protect PBS' taxpayer support by going after 'entitlement' programs

The Public Broadcasting System, funded in part by the nation's taxpayers, has seduced donations from its viewers over the years by boasting about its unbiased news coverage on the NewsHour.  

 Lately, NewsHour regulars have demonstrated their contempt for at least one group of American citizens they apparently deem unworthy of respect – that would be those same seniors whose trust fund has been ransacked since 1983 to bankroll Washington.

On last night’s edition of the NewsHour, Gwen Ifill repeatedly badgered Jacob Lew, director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, in an attempt to provoke him into explaining why the Obama Administration’s budget didn’t address those 'entitlement' programs. Ifill repeated the word 'entitlement,' with its derogatory connotations, at least four consecutive times until Lew finally explained to her the Administration’s rationale for dealing with the issue.

Later on in the program, Judy Woodruff, referring to those “so-called entitlement programs,” pressed Robert Portman, Republican senator from Ohio, on the same issue. Portman, who once held Lew’s position as director of the OMB, at least noted that the government had raided the Social Security trust fund over the years to pay for everyday expenses.

America’s seniors paid into Social Security and Medicare throughout decades of their working lives, believing those high payroll deductions would provide a safety net for their retirement years. Many of them also served in the military in times of peace and war. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into a law an amendment supposedly protecting the Social Security trust fund in a “lock box.”

Those same seniors were deluded into believing their nation respected them and wished them well. Now they are facing the reality that the government violated the law by using the Social Security trust fund to pay its everyday expenses, including support for PBS and funding for its two costly wars, while avoiding the necessity to tax the wealthy and close the tax loopholes of major corporations.

In the meantime, seniors are being treated with contempt by political leaders from both parties and media reps like David Brooks and Gwen Ifill as they try to pressure the Obama Administration into gutting Social Security and Medicare.

On behalf of PBS, the NewsHour may be more aggressive in its zeal to go after those ‘entitlement’ programs in order to protect its own government funding from cuts.

Our senior citizens could justifiably sue Washington for violating the law in its misuse of their retirement funds, and PBS viewers should have second thoughts when considering whether or not to donate money to support its flagrantly biased coverage of programs serving the elderly and disabled.

The Obama Administration proposes cutting off the heat for the poor and Paul Solman’s take on the raiding of the Social Security trust fund

It's seven degrees below zero in St. Paul, Minn. this morning. Photo by VB

The temperature in St. Paul, Minn. this morning is seven degrees below zero, so it was startling to read the following taken from a NY Times article on the turmoil in Republican ranks concerning proposed budget cuts:

But Republicans have succeeded in shifting the focus to budget cutting so sufficiently that the White House will propose an array of cuts in the budget for next year that Mr. Obama sends to Capitol Hill on Monday.

Administration officials confirmed on Wednesday that the budget would propose to cut in half, to nearly $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2012, a federal program that subsidizes energy costs for low-income households.

The big reduction for the popular Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program immediately drew protests from lawmakers and antipoverty groups, as have several other cuts the administration has previewed for community service and environmental programs.

So it goes: Washington deems it acceptable to continue to fund war-making in Iraq (we’re still an occupying presence there) and Afghanistan and prop up dictators around the world, especially those from oil-producing nations, while cutting off heat for the poor and gutting community service and environmental programs.

In the meantime repeated threats to cut Social Security and Medicare are coming from both sides of the aisle these days. It’s very hard to dig up the facts regarding what has happened to the trust fund supposedly set up for the Social Security program in response to the recommendation of the Greenspan Commission in 1983.

In reply to listener Phyllis Koch’s question in Nov. 2010, the PBS NewsHour’s Paul Solman had this to say:

It is true, of course, that the Greenspan Commission concept has been violated from the very outset. When the amendments authorizing the trust fund were signed into law by President Reagan in 1983, they included a provision to be accounted for "off-budget." So the reported budget balance does not include the social security account -- the billions supposedly being socked away or, in the term of a few years ago, protected in a "lockbox."

This is of course your point, Ms. Koch, when you write about "borrowing from social security": the lockbox has indeed been raided, in the sense that the money in the trust fund was never really set aside or meaningfully protected.

Got that? “the lockbox has indeed been raided.”

The way things are going the nation's poor and low-income seniors will soon be abandoned in favor of other priorities like wars, dictators, oil, and such - all coming to you from a Democratic administration.