A Wall Street Journal editorial expresses in print exactly what I’d been thinking in my head: That the $250 check that the Obama administration says it’s going to mail to every senior citizen is a leetle bribe to oldsters so they’ll shut up already about those cuts in Medicare that are supposed to pay for Obamacare.
The $250 is supposed to make up for the fact that there won’t be a cost-of-living increase in Social Security payments this year–because there’s been no increase in the cost of living due to the recession.
The editorial says:
The real calculation here is political and comes right out of White House strategist David Axelrod. Every poll shows that seniors are among the most opposed to ObamaCare—by more than a 10-point margin in a late-September Gallup survey. Democrats are panicked that the zero COLA will feed senior opposition to health care and stop their attempt to ram it into law in the next few weeks. Mr. Obama’s $250 checks are essentially bribes, a sort of political anesthesia intended to hush up seniors until the legislation is on the books.
Oh, and the editorial points out that it’s also a way to say thank you to AARP for selling its senior-citizen members down the river by implicitly backing the Medicare cuts. AARP has been screaming loudly for the $250 checks, so your granny at Leisure World is supposed to thank AARP, thank Obama, and then die fast.
C’mon seniors–a chintzy $250 in exchange for death panels? Shouldn’t you at least hold out for $2,500?