The House just passed a budget that would gut Social Security and Medicare by $1.5 trillion. Is it just a coincidence that $1.5 trillion was the projected budget deficit the Congressional Budget Office calculated would be created as a direct consequence of the recent Tax Bill just passed and signed into law? The answer is a resounding “no.” It was 100 percent by design. By the way, not a single Democrat voted for that bill. It would make the bottom 90 percent pay for the $1.5 trillion budget shortfall created by the tax cuts to the rich. How fortuitous is that?

What will be the Republican argument now for wanting to gut Social Security and Medicare by $1.5 trillion? They will argue falsely and deceitfully that Social Security and Medicare are the primary drivers of both the continuing budget deficits and the growing public debt. Reality, logic, and 3rd grade arithmetic, however, argue against that outlandish position. Not one person with an IQ higher than about 90 could ever accept it. That leaves about 40 percent of the adult population who can be tricked into believing their nutty argument. Let’s cut it down to size.

Since 1984, both Social Security and Medicare have produced approximately $7 trillion in excess funds, i.e., funds above those needed to pay all Social Security and Medicare accounts in full. Neither program is funded by the income tax, rather by the payroll tax. And since payroll taxes are limited to approximately the first $117,000 dollars of income, both are very regressive. That means that the poor and the middle class pay a much higher percentage of their incomes into these tax streams than do the wealthy. But have those “excess” $7 trillion gone into a Trust Fund, to be saved and used only for Social Security and Medicare so that both programs will be solvent far into the future? Here is the mystery of what has happened to that $7 trillion of excess funds produced by you and me via the payroll tax intended for Social Security and Medicare recipients.

Back in 1984 budget accountants set up a means for protecting Social Security and Medicare funds by creating a mechanism called “Off Budget” accounting. Excess Social Security and Medicare funds were accounted for separately via this method. By law no one could touch those funds while a part of that other budget, called the “Unified Budget.” But there apparently was no provision of law that could stop government agencies from “borrowing” from the Social Security and Medicare funds that were resident in the Off-Budget accounts. And so, the borrowing began.

Fast forward. Here we are 34 years later, and guess what? In place of those $7 trillion dollars that were intended to be safely tucked away, there are now $7 trillion of IOUs, also known as “intra-governmental” borrowing. “Not to worry,” say all those borrowers. “It’s just money we owe ourselves. What’s the big deal?”

The big deal is that there is no provision of law that requires all those borrowers to pay that money back into the Social Security and Medicare accounts. So those IOUs just lay there and collect dust. Actually, more and more of them pile up every year as the raid on these two programs continues. But now the annual amounts flowing into the Off-Budget ledgers are getting smaller and smaller as fewer and fewer workers are paying into them, while more and more retirees are drawing down the money owed them. Without those $7 trillion dollars, both programs are showing shorter and shorter projected futures.

And so, what is the Republican answer to this outrageous set of circumstances? Instead of restoring the $7 trillion intended for present and future retirees (that’s you and me and our children and grandchildren), they now want to slash both Social Security and Medicare payouts by $1.5 trillion to pay for the $1.5 trillion shortfall to pay for these cuts given to the wealthy. But that is just the start.

Yes, the Republicans have always been against Medicare and Social Security. And now they are stabbing those programs with a sharp dagger, and all who ever paid a dime into them, or ever will. What a nice group of obedient puppets doing what they are told to do by their ultra-rich benefactors!

Oh, did I mention? In that same recently passed Tax Bill the Republicans eliminated the inheritance tax on $100 trillion of inheritable wealth. Now that money will be passed on within families from generation to generation from here to eternity. It is invested in stocks, bonds, and real estate, so it grows in value doubling every 10 years. Watch it grow:  $100 trillion X 1.072^50 = $3.2 quadrillion in just 50 years.

If you did not quite follow the arithmetic, here it is again. In 50 years personal wealth will be 32 times greater than it is today, with perhaps 95 percent of it safely tucked away in the hands of the offspring of today’s wealthiest holders. (Is this a great country, or what?).

Now, everyone should have answers to these two questions: 1) Do elections have consequences? And 2) Did you choose your parents wisely?