This is gonna get ugly

Look out Washington.  Here they come!

The Democrats and Republicans have been waging a battle of wills....some would say stubbornness....as they fight about budgets and debt ceiling limits and such. The newspapers and cable TV report it, and some of us bloggers write about it, but odds are it has touched very few people any of us might know personally, if any at all.  

That could change in a big way very soon.  It's said that if the government defaults on paying it's bills (as soon as later this month), Social Security recipients, disabled veterans, military retirees, and others might not be getting their monthly checks.  I don't think the politicians realize what they're letting themselves in for when they start playing pinata with a beehive of Gray Hairs.

It's one thing to heap scorn on a welfare recipient who won't work and lives off his gubment handout and food stamps, yet has a new smartphone, a bottle of hooch and a carton of cigarettes, and a body full of expensive tattoos.  "Get off your ass you bums and get a job!"

I dare you to go up to your elderly neighbor wearing his "WWII Veteran" ball cap, or your grandmother, and tell them to "get a job you bum" because they can't pay for their apartment or food or medicine because their meager savings can't cover the shortfall of them not getting their social security checks.  Or the disabled veteran who is missing limbs because he/she did their time protecting you so you could get your MBA and land that great job on Wall Street, get rich, and join the Tea Party (or any party).

The government checks these people get are NOT welfare.  They PRE-PAID for these benefits by working for decades, paying into a supplemental retirement system every payday of their lives.  Same with veterans, whose terms of employment stipulated that if they were injured on the job they would be cared for.  Unilaterally change their terms of employment and not pay them NOW?  REALLY?

I agree there are lots of worthless programs our government can and should cut to save a buck.  But it would take a pretty cold person who shares a special relationship with the devil to hit on the Gray Hairs.

S