As we reported last month, CNBC has become the unofficial channel of the top one percent. Over the month of November, it mentioned the “Simpson-Bowles” plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits three times as often as it did poverty. Even Fox News talked about poverty more.

CNBC hostAi??Tyler Mathisen demonstrated this callousness to the concerns of ordinary Americans again today. In an interview with Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder (KS), Mathisen suggested that we shouldn’t be “so afraid” of cutting Medicare benefits because, after all, Big Business has been cutting workers’ health care benefits for Ai??years:

MATHISEN: How specifically would you address the spending in Medicare? I — it seems to me that Americans are very accustomed to seeing their health care benefits cut. Just ask anyone who works for a major corporation over the past twenty years, and you would see that the portion of your medical care that you pay for has risen as the portion that your medical care that the company pays for has declined. Why are we so afraid of that?

Watch it (the relevant section starts at 2:51):

Yoder went on to reply that House Republicans already passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare plan –which effectively privatizes the program.

It almost going without being said that Mathisen’s logic is widely off the mark. Corporations exist to serve their bottom line and make money. The government exists to serve the needs of those who elect it. Just because corporations are shafting workers, that doesn’t mean the government should short-change seniors.