A recent article in the Financial Times complained that neither the Republicans nor President Bill Clinton are "yet willing to take on the sacrosanct 'entitlement' programmes - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." This has been a constant theme among the big-business press, as capitalist politicians in the United States bicker over how far to go in cutting programs that working people correctly view as social rights.

But while Clinton and the bipartisan gang on Capitol Hill sharpen their knives over proposals to slash medical care for the elderly, disabled, and poorer sections of the working class, there is not a peep about the interest payments to the wealthy bondholders of the national debt. In fact, it is so rarely mentioned one would not even know it's part of the capitalist government's national budget.

Capitalists are determined to protect the value of their massive bondholdings and the huge interest payments they collect on this debt, about $1 trillion for 1994-97. Their cut of government spending greatly exceeds combined projected outlays for agriculture, the environment, housing, transportation, education, and job training.

The Financial Times also groans that payments for entitlement programs are "three times as much as is devoted to" the war budget. Working people, whose labor creates all wealth, have no stake in even one penny being spent for the imperialist war machine.

The social programs the boss class seeks to roll back today are a product of the struggles of workers and the unions in the 1930s and the labor upsurge in the United States and other capitalist countries following World War II. Subsequent fights, such as the movement for Black rights and women's equality, increased the social wage for the working class as well.

Working people have come to consider Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid, to be social rights, not gifts, so the employers face big obstacles in trying to take away these "sacrosanct" entitlements. That's why the Democrats and the Republicans are "so nervous about Medicare."

But the wealthy class is determined to press ahead. The recent debate on cutting Medicare introduced by Republican Party politicians - a warmed-over version of earlier Clinton proposals - is another indication of this fact.

The labor movement must add its voice to those protesting proposed cuts in Medicare. Resistance by working people to the bipartisan offensive on our rights will be decisive in determining how far the rulers can go.  
 
 
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