Is it "Moral" to blanketly cut all entitlement programs?

You are missing several things.

1) Morality is NOT government's business. I have a moral obligation to help my fellow man, but government does not. Government is about preventing anarchy. We should not confuse charity and government just because politicians attempted to make charity a public good.

2) The charitable programs are PART of why the unemployment rate is what it is. Our Govt spending and deficits (at all levels not just federal) creates a drag on growth and crowds out private businesses. For every job govt spending creates, economic studies consistently show that more than one private sector job is destroyed. One study I read about recently enough to remember the exact number showed 2.2 private sector jobs destroyed for each public sector one created. And this study wasn't just about the direct jobs, it was also the indirect jobs created by demand stimulation from the projects.

This deficit spending, and the combined 100 TRILLION dollar unfunded liability of Medicare and SSI (by 2080 IIRC), creates an expectation fo slower growth and higher taxes in the future. These programs are going to explode in cost by 2020 and keep rising. So instead of expanding, companies are hoarding cash for the economic winter like crazed squirrels. This helps those companies survive, but does little to help unemployment.

3) Dependence. The fact is that entitlements are needed as badly as they are BECAUSE they exist. Govt programs are basically free money pumps, and everytime a new pump is created, people gather around and learn how to exploit it. Contrary to modern myth, there was not a hoard of people just dying and starving before welfare. Charity and private unemployment insurance and associations like lodges all addressed the need. When welfare was created though the insurance and lodger were crowded out and charity shrank. Now, if welfare went away it would be a big mess.

SSI and Medicare have a bit stronger of a mission statement. SSI was founded to help depression era seniors who had lost their life savings in the collapse, but it was founded as a retirement program of last resort. 65 was chosen because that was the average age of mortality. Instead, no SSI funds most people with free retirements and because it exists, many don't both saving on their own...which is too bad because if they die early, SSI doesn't transfer to their kids, and SSI had a bad rate of return unless you live WAY WAY longer than the actuarial tables expect. What would be so bad about returning SSI to a retirement program of last resort by indexing the retirement age to the age of mortality? We'd be restoring FDR's vision.

Medicare has a strong mission because medical costs have risen so rapidly in recent decades. However, again, there is cause and effect. Medicare helped CREATE those prices. It encourages fraud, unnecessary spending by states, feds, consumers and doctors because of it's matching funds arrangement.

Keep in mind though, we aren't asking to ELIMINATE any of these programs. We're asking for reform to achieve cost certainty in the future to head off the 100 TRILLION dollar unfunded mandate, and to restore the program to a size where they only help the truly needy, not the clever who find ways to exploit it. Why is that so wrong?

I do not receive a Social Security Entitlement check, I get a Benefits Payment that is due as I and my parents and nephews and others have paid into that thing since it was enacted as Law. If I made over $250k a year, I would expect to pay %38.7 in Income Tax. If I bought a motor yacht for 1.3 million I would expect to pay a VAT tax, that is a luxury tax. No human can make any more gold than already exists on this planet, if that is what your economy is based on then it is finite. Amtrak is an Entitlement that no one can actually justify. I like riding trains, but I cannot justify a State Sponsored Rail Road, that is kind of silly. Our Infrastructure needs repairing, cannot get goods to market with out a road or navigable channel. When the people that built the roads and defended the nation get old and can no longer work, do we shoot them, nice job and all that. No, we do not, that is not how we do things. We are a Civil Nation, a Union of States, let us join together and remember this.

Most entitlements have independent taxation and trust funds. What the GOP does is they take only the IRS taxes paid and whine the middle class pay too little, then they take all the expenses and whine there is too much paid for entitlements. But what they leave out is the middle class and poor working class pay a very high 20% medicare/medicaid/social security tax. For a family making 5k a month take home, about 1k is actually paid from the check to the govt. That money is added together with other entitlement money and is more than the govt spends on those entitlement programs. Meaning if right now the govt stopped social security tax and payments, and stopped medicare tax and payments, we would actually have a bigger deficit and more debt. Further the amount spent on all other entitlement programs like unemployment, schip, etc, is less than 10% of the deficit. So even if we closed all those programs we'd still be in the hole 1.4 trillion a year. On top of this the GOP wants to make another huge tax cut decreasing revenues and increasing the deficit by another 1 trillion per year for a total of 2.5 trillion. If a miracle happend and every single entitlment and liberal program ended tomorrow we'd owe 2.4 trillion extra each year onto our debt.

What your missing is we can't afford these programs. Some of them maybe very good programs, but we don't have the money to pay for them. Is it moral to pass all this debt on to our grandchildren? Future generations will have no hope of living as well as we do. I think it would be selfish and immoral to pass on all that debt.

Blanketly

Nothing moral or immoral about it. You work you eat you don't work stop having kids till you can support them.

The churches ARE doing a lot. On the other hand our founding fathers warned us about the federal government getting involved in social programs. Their predictions of the undesirable results were and still are precisely correct.

How morally bankrupt is it forcing me to pay for some one's crack and some Democrat's additional pay check.

Fact 95% of welfare goes to corruption, and 75% of the remaining money goes to fraudulent use. In fact if we are to keep entitlements, we will soon have to get rid of everything else just to keep up with entitlements.

Yes. The real question is, "is it moral for the government to give things to people to the point that they no longer have an incentive to take care of themselves?"..

Constantly amazed at the number of unemployed who find work within 2 weeks of their benefits expiring...not cut...expire. Unemployment was never designed to be indefinite welfare