Medicare and Social Security are Not “Entitlements”

Letter to the editor by LD18 Chair, Larry Bodine.

Excuse me, but the news media needs to stop referring to Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements.”

This term is a slur invented by Republicans and MAGAs to disparage retired people like me. Their platform is to defund “entitlements” so that America’s 56 million seniors will wind up sick and living in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk.

Medicare and Social Security must be referred to as “earned benefits.” During the 52 years that I worked for a living, I paid FICA taxes to fund my senior earned benefits. These benefits are not “welfare” — I earned them.

Republicans and MAGAs have been saying out loud and in writing that they want to cut Medicare and Social Security payments and make them harder to get. They forgot that seniors, more than any other demographic, vote during elections.

I will vote those Republicans and MAGAs out of office, and am organizing hundreds of Tucsonans to do the same.

Published February 17, 2023.

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