Appearing on Jimmy Failla’s Fox News Radio show, Congressman Cline admitted that he doesn’t really want to protect Social Security and Medicare, at least not for future recipients. (Pay attention to the word But at the beginning of the fourth sentence.)
He tried to obscure that fact under a blizzard of unrelated, hazy and unspecific language.
“We want to protect Social Security and Medicare. For those who are currently enrolled in Social Security and Medicare, they’ve come to depend on these programs. And we want to make sure that they can continue to depend on them as needed. But for my kids, they need to have a future and an America that is going to still stand for the great things that it stood for when you and I were growing up. And that’s going to have to come through prioritization of other programs where all of the stuff that’s out there is not going to be able to be continuing at the federal level. And whether it’s block granting to the states or whether it’s eliminating federal programs altogether, we’re going to have to start doing it. If we need to put in work requirements for welfare, we’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but we’re going to have to rethink the way that the federal government interacts with its citizens and with the world, because we can’t just continue to, when you’re talking about foreign aid, we can’t continue to just be throwing American taxpayer dollars around the world. We’ve fought a war on poverty both here and abroad. And it’s been a war on poverty that we have not won. So poverty still exists. And we’ve got to figure out some smarter ways to fight it.”
Got that? Me neither.
Cline Watch 
We need to vote the GOP into oblivion.
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This does not surprise me since Ben has clearly demonstrated that he is willing to lie in public . I can only assume that he is motivated by his own self interests. It is a sad commentary on the state of our
politics.
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Let me see if I understand Representative Cline’s thinking: (1) eliminate federal programs that are too weak to withstand an onslaught of Republican propaganda; (2) wherever a federal program cannot be eliminated, make block grants to the states the preferred–and maybe the only–vehicle for funding similar or substitute programs; (3) eliminate foreign aid. (Since he said nothing to the contrary, I assume he meant ALL foreign aid.) I’m surprised he doesn’t also propose funding the national defense on a state-by-state basis…”The US Navy could use a new aircraft carrier. Hey Virginia, how much are you willing to kick in?”
You want a smarter way to fight poverty, Congressman? How about you tackle extreme income inequality? Unlike “poverty,” that’s actually a solvable problem. And Congressman, regarding “an America that is going to still stand for the great things that it stood for when you and I were growing up,” you were born in 1972, three months before I graduated from college and received my commission in the US Army. A lot of us remember what was great and not so great at that time. Please stop pinning your hopes and visions to a past fantasy and focus on present reality.
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