Inspired by bahbah lamenting that it's too hard to cut entitlements that benefit children and other vulnerable populations, I thought this might be a good idea for this forum. Post all your half-cocked crazy ideas for entitlement reform here. No need to censor yourselves. If you want to fire the poor from a cannon into the sun, go right ahead and admit it. I'm fairly sure hating the poor is okay here.

Example for unemployment:

First, no change for permanent or temporary disabilities (physical and mental).

If you are between jobs, you get a portion of your old income after means testing. You are allotted an amount of time between jobs based on a national average of length of time it takes to find work when switching jobs (possibly state or regionally based). After that point, you do not get any money. In essence, you are only paid for not working when you are transitionally unemployed.

Once you hit that cut off, you have the choice of receiving no money from the government or going to work in one of two ways. You can either do basic infrastructure repairs on a national or statewide level, or enter into a low-paid retraining program. Both are to be considered forms of employment for the sake of your employment history. (i.e. No discriminating against people who have gaps in their employment history they filled with the program)

A slight tax increase on the low or middle class may be necessary for this program to ward against inflation, but that's not really the main part of the idea.

Anyhow, tell me how awful this idea is, or tell me yours.

With the brief time I have now the very first thing I do is get rid of the loaded and emotionally appealing term: entitlement.

shut up <insert random former poster's name here>

OP, I like the thread idea, which probably means most on here will hate it.

BTW- You would get murdered in the media if you shared any of those ideas. If you suggest cutting unemployment your opponent is going to immediately hold a press conference and talk about "a single mom he met last week" that is on unemployment, that has 3 kids, and can barely put food on the table. He is then going to say how if you get your way her unemployment will be gone and her and her 3 kids will be on the streets.

Raising taxing on the poor or middle class and your opponent talks about how one rich person pays only x% of his income (obvs doesn't mention the millions the guy wastes paying to get out of some taxes). Then he goes with the story about how the rich aren't paying their fair share and how all you want to do is take money from the hard working middle class (he's probably going to talk about some "family he met last week" that is middle class and is struggling to pay bills).

I'm not sure what you replace it with, but I'm not a fan of the word entitlement either.

Thats nice, the OP didnt suggest cutting unemployment benefits off though.

Any ideas besides playing martyr again?

There are easy ways to fix entitlement spending for everything outside of Medicare spending (For example, raising or donut holing the SS cap marginally and adding some means testing fixes SS pretty easily), so focus should be on how to fix healthcare spending.

Food stamps and Unemployment and things like that definitely cost money, but are not a real fiscal problem. We can keep or expand that part of the safety net pretty easily and indefinitely if we want. Medicare is the whole ball game.

Really....

He went on to add that the unemployed either receive no compensation or start working for the government. Which I am pretty sure is cutting benefits.

How am I playing the martyr? I didn't even talk about myself.

No **** there are easy ways to fix entitlement. The problem is every is scared to suggest real changes because of the fear of being hung in the media. When you say we should slightly cut SS benefits or push back full retirement age your opponent immediately talks about little old ladies that can barely afford their medicines now.

How are food stamps and unemployment not fiscal problems?

Literally the first thing you posted

Because we can quite easily pay for them and they are a super small percentage of the overall budget. We don't have a near term deficit problem.

reform cis privilege now

A lot of people think the world owes their SUV a road. I'd cut that. Make them buy their own roads.

AC hijack!

SS fix is trivial compared to healthcare like lets gambool stated but the sooner we address the better. We have known about the issue for decades.

Yeah... lets keep EXPANDING those...especially food stamps...for all those able-bodied 20 somethings out there on them.

****ing brilliant idea...just keep increasing on the 40 million on food stamps...

But give the idiots their food for free.

Why does Silver_Man 2 hate Americans so much?

Keep people from driving their SUV's...

But give the idiots their free food...

Right?

Oh oh oh....but the elite and Obama or whoever are giving dem free foobz because they caaaaaaarrrrrreeeee. Only reason.....because they caaaaarrrrreeeee.

I'm no leftie Silverman but don't know of any Obama related SNAP expansion initiative outside the stimulus boost. Outside that is seems to be mostly* the same old formula and the cost growth is due to the crappy economy. What's your beef?

*some shaky stuff related to heating subsidies that the last farm bill corrected

mental imbalances or deficiencies?

we're still trying to work that one out

I liked putting SNAP and beef together. I forget this is PU and should go HAM.

Pork >>>>> cow.

Remember when Silverman told us that he doesn't really think poor people are idiots and pregnant women are sluts and that he isn't racist? That he was just speaking for "how the elites views them". That was fun.

SNAP is like two percent of the budget. It's not causing a systemic fiscal problem. There might be reasons to limit eligibility for SNAP, but it's not a major fiscal issue

Running Man style gameshow for all the poors, olds, and cripples sucking the teat. Weekly winners get $10k in scratch tickets. Losers get extraordinarily renditioned to Guam or some **** and are off the teat.

Olds rolling around in their mad-max scooters with uzi's.

I would watch.

You are gonna be on the scooters too some day.