My column titled "What Handouts to Cut?" created a number of angry responses, and for the first time in my life, I had some, not much, sympathy for political cowardice. Most letters were from senior citizens angered by my suggestion that they were receiving handouts and those handouts be cut.
Federal tax receipts for 2009 totaled $2.1 trillion. The largest items in the federal budget were Social Security ($710 billion), national defense ($689 billion), Medicare ($456 billion) and Medicaid ($327 billion). The primary recipients of federal spending are seniors. Some of the letters argued that it's unfair to characterize what seniors are getting as handouts because they worked all their lives and paid into Social Security and Medicare.