I push back by saying me and my employers paid into both programs. If the repukes are going to take it away, then at a minimum, cash me out. But's that a good solution because we loose in the long run.

I am being serious. You will be frustrated and nothing will sway them. In fact they will RESIST and argue with you even MORE (even if they may believe you could possibly be correct to a degree). There is some psychological reasoning behind this, but I forget what it is called right now.

Ronald Reagan "saved" Social Security by raising the amount paid, but he also endangered Social Security by signing off on a Congressional bill allowing the Government to borrow the interest on those payments for the general fund to balence the books. Half our current deficit is what Congress owes the Social Security administration from decades of raiding interest to pay for adventures like Panama, Iran Contra, Iraq 1 &2, Afghanistan, etc.
They'll "fix" Social Security again by strangling payments to beneficiaries - because it will raise the deficit to pay off the interest they owe people who paid into the fund for generations.

Hurting people with a legitimate claim on their compounded interest is that the GOP is planning.

Haele

is cut the Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors. Slowly but surely over time. That hurts us patients when it becomes harder and harder to find doctors who will accept Medicare patients.

I understand the PAYGO rules were suspended in the funding extension a week or so ago, but for how long is that suspension for?

On Edit: OOPS, didn't mean to reply to myself. Oh well. Brazen Sock-Puppetry I guess.

I don't remember the specifics, but I remember an article by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the specifics. Anyway, that's a good response to the "they would never do that" argument. Well, they sure as hell tried and failed by only one vote.

And I suspect that at least in the near term, assaults on Medicare will be under-the-radar "death by a thousand cuts" things like this in other bills, not a full frontal assault.

I was told I was nuts. I just said, "Listen to what Paul Ryan has been saying." The response was, "Just wait until you find yourself in a burqua." If I were to be fed that line now, I would have a better response than rolling my eyes. I would just point out all the legislation gutting women's healthcare and other rights. I'm sure the FoxNews bubble in which they exist hasn't pointed those out to them, just as they never air Ryan's comments.