I do not like US Senate majority speaker Mitch McConnell. Specifically, I do not like that he wants to cut ‘entitlements,’ because the deficit soared to 779 billion dollars. Here’s why I do not like that.

When Republicans talk about ‘entitlements,’ what they’re really doing is using tricky GOP doublespeak to talk about our problematic social safety net.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all these ‘entitlements’ support our aging population and help ease the burden on rising healthcare costs, because our country is beginning to have a lot of elderly folks. Our birthrates are declining, because our institutions are dumpster fires and nobody feels stable enough to have children. 

Now, tricky GOP doublespeak would have you believing that the only way to rectify the deficit is to throw the disadvantaged to the wolves. In fact, tricky GOP doublespeak would go all the way and end all ‘entitlements’, because there are too many old people and the deficit is quite large.   

The latter is true. 779 billion is a big number. But is it because of old people? After a cunning and harrowing investigation, I discovered it was not. 

I Googled some stuff, and found out that the reason the deficit is huge is because the USA likes to declare war on abstract concepts. We have declared war on drugs, as well as terror. I assume we failed, as there are still drugs, and terror. The wars were successful in shipping boatloads of cash to Kellogg Brown and Root though–Dick Cheney’s lil’ side venture.  And though the media won’t report on this, the CIA is also waging a secret war on the color black, for its connection to BLM.

Okay, so the War on Terror added two billion to the deficit. But where’d the rest of that funny money come from? Was it entitlements? Maybe Mitch McConnell, who I’m not allowed to call a turtle man, was right?

Oh, actually no, back up. According to every result on Google, it’s because we doubled our yearly defense spending. The current president’s going to raise the number a little bit more, and we’re going to be spending about 900 billion a year in 2019. Most of this 900 billion is necessary. We need a lot for our new F-35 Plus fighter, which is like the F-35 but its blue and double the price. We also need several million dollars for Rick and Morty stickers for our servicemen and women to attach to their weapons. Haha, get it? It’s Missile Rick! Our government is responsible for the deaths of Yemini children. 

Moving on, what else might be adding to the deficit? I bet this is where entitlements come in. Oh wait, no. Apparently there was a tax cut in 2011 that added two trillion. And another tax cut by last year that will add 1.5 trillion over the next ten years. 

Now. do we really care about the deficit when the tax cut could give us theoretical money now?

I guess it turns out that when corporations don’t have to pay taxes, instead of reinvesting that into the economy, they just give upper management bonuses. But who cares about that, right? Us working class folks will still have a lil’ walking around money! Oh. We won’t? Long-term damages?   

Oh. Damn. The GOP pulled another sneaky on us.

What’s really crappy is most of the people drawing from their ‘entitlements’ are veterans and civil servants. McConnell thinks we should cut them, because 2018 GOP candidates are still somehow convincing people they’re fiscal conservatives, and not warmongering rich assholes. Kick all the elderly off! More war! More tax-cuts for corporations! You get the idea. 

This is why I do not like US Senate majority speaker Mitch McConnell. I am not allowed to call him a turtle man. I will say that he belongs back in the swamp he crawled out of.   

Colin Roberts is a senior professional writing major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or clroberts4@eiu.edu.