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On the day that the chair of the NRCC came out with a statement calling Obama’s budget a “shocking attack on seniors” (no one could have predicted that), here’s Rachel Maddow making every good argument against chained CPI, and David Axelrod doing his best, which ain’t good, to refute her arguments. Note how fucked Axelrod’s messaging is when he blurs together Social Security and Medicare around 3:40 and then around 7:40 when he says we have to talk about Social Security and Medicare together.
The fix for Social Security is a tweak. Medicare is the big problem. So why in the hell is Axelrod lumping them together?
RosiesDad
Because that is what every professional talking head does. They chronically and habitually simplify and conflate talking points about issues, operating under the assumption that their target audience are uninformed and naive intellectual 9 year olds.
This is nothing new; every conversation about every political issue is handled this way. Gun control, taxes, immigration, the debt and deficit, entitlement programs, etc.
Schlemizel
So why in the hell is Axelrod lumping them together?
Assholerod is a piece of shit, he has to be a Republican mole.
SATSQ
The Other Bob
As I recall, SS payments will be reduced down to something like 70% sometime in the 2030s because the surplus will be gone and SS will be solely funded by payroll taxes.
Essentially this “fix” would inflict the 2030ish cut sooner and over more people.
Let’s be clear, this can only be about the deficit if someone decides that the SS Trust fund is not going to be paid back for all the money that has been borrowed from it to pay for the debt. Essentially we could default on the debt owed the trust fund. Just watch the R’s do it.
JoyfulA
Social Security actually doesn’t even need a tweak.
Medicare wouldn’t be a problem either, if the health care system as a whole wasn’t a monstrous mess.
c u n d gulag
I suspect that once you enter the DC Village, you’re mandated to drink the Kool-aid that’s served there.
Otherwise, you can’t explain why Obama and his staff are surprised by the negative reaction of anyone to the left of Cup O’ Schmoe Scarborough and his morning zoo crew.
The Other Bob
@JoyfulA:
Either:
A) We need to reduce benefits (such as means testing, cuts, etc.) or
B) Increase payroll taxes or
C) Accept that evenually payments will drop when the surplus goes away.
Something needs a tweak, but the choices are pretty straight forward. It’s almost like the President has chosen to accept that the payroll tax can never be increased or other sources of revenue cannot be obtained. i.e. negotiating with yourself.
mai naem
Why can’ t you have some kind of donut hole on the payroll taxes where you take it up to say 112K then stop then start again at,say, $300 or $400K and, why but why can we not tax the hedge funders out of their sweet cap gains rates into regular income taxes? Also too, the bigger problem is jobs. People ain’t got jobs. No jobs –> decreased revenue–>increased social services–>more people taking early ss–>increased deficits. Big stimulant would save you money in that way if nothing else.
Schlemizel
@The Other Bob:
Numbers please. The SS trust fund currently has more than $2trillion dollars in surplus. Perhaps you can explain why benefits need to be be cut or taxes need to be increased before the end of that money is in sight?
A whole lot of stuff will happen before we get to that point (if we ever do) that will affect the outcome. What is the point of cutting benefits or raising taxes before we know at least some of them?
PurpleGirl
Why does Axelrod mix the two programs?
To conflate the issues and confuse them. Social Security would be a straightforward tweak. Medicare is dependent on fixing the whole health care mess. But he conflates them so that it seems they must be fixed together and then both programs can be destroyed.
Betty Cracker
I don’t blame Axelrod — he’s just spinning the administration position as best he can, which is his job. Good for Maddow for calling him out on it.
The problem is that President Obama really and truly believes in the possibility of a bipartisan Grand Bargain — believes it in the way Linus believed in the Great Pumpkin and some people believe in the existence of sasquatch and the chupacabra.
It is an article of faith. This won’t surprise anyone who read “The Audacity of Hope.” It doesn’t mean Obama is a bad president — I think he’s a damn good president, and his faith in the viability of the system of government in which he has to operate is part of the reason why he’s a good president. But it is irrational to a certain extent.
butler
@Schlemizel:
Except “The Other Bob” never advocated that in either post. He plainly stated the fact that, at some point, the trust funds will run out and some kind of adjustment in payments or taxes will be made or forced upon us automatically.
NonyNony
@Betty Cracker:
It is completely irrational. It’s an article of faith that fails basic empirical testing. It’s a belief that government actually works on the “Schoolhouse Rock” model (or to be more charitable, High School Government Class model) that someone who has actually been in government for most of his adult life should have outgrown.
I can completely understand why people think that Obama has “sinister” motives behind all of this because the alternative is to look at a man who is clearly very intelligent and realize that he believes that “I’m Just A Bill” was an actual description of how government works rather than a simplified ideal that government strives to be, dumbed down for Saturday Morning Cartoon watchers.
But I actually think he really is an idealist, so I’ll just continue to be dumbfounded that for all of his intelligence he can’t get around this article of faith that has apparently embedded itself so deeply into his brain that he can’t get it out.
JPL
@mai naem: You’re not thinking like a Republican. Get off my lawn btw.
Suffern ACE
Hmmmm. The problem can be solved by just a tweak. But then chained CPI is just a tweak, too. But maybe it’s a tweak to fix a different problem than mistermix’s tweak. I wish everyone would just put their problems and related tweaks on the table to make sure we’re talking about the same problems and different tweaks. Are we sure everyone’s working on the same problem?
Maude
@JoyfulA:
Part of the problem is that unemployment is high. Obamacare will start kicking in next year and that should help with medical care delivery.
Obama will be able to say, hey, I tried to cut entitlements, but the Republicans didn’t want to go along with it.
Tester
Hey, is this thing on?
Litlebritdifrnt
I agree with others above, until we fix the health care system it is all going to be for naught. There was a story on my local tv news this morning that Nursing home care has gone up 25% recently. The average cost for a year in a nursing home is now $84,000.00.
c u n d gulag
@Maude:
I know it’s highly unlikely, but what if, for once, the Republicans said, “YES!”?
liberal
OT: dumbf*ck comment of the day (well, it’s from a few years ago):
Mino
I don’t want to see any hippy-punching. Hippys bitch, but they vote Dem. For low-info dems, this is a disaster in 2014. For us, down the road, A Democratic president has just given the green-light to the infidels. Do Dems only remember to BE fucking Dems when they are out of power?
And, under Israel, they are already recruiting neo-libs to run. Obama’s pet system is set to primary a progressive Dem. WTF?
boss bitch
Also on that day, Club For Growth pummeled the NRCC chair demanding that he take it back. Did you miss it? All the pundits I follow on twitter called it a semi-crisis.
Also, DUH! No matter what Obama does on the safety net, GOP will say he’s making a cut. So this idea that ALL of you saw it coming and Obama didn’t is just flat out arrogant.
liberal
@The Other Bob:
This is exactly the game.
They don’t have to explicitly default/renege. They just have to never allow the Trust Fund to be drawn down.
This is one reason that, as far as politics goes (if not policy), it might be a better idea to postpone any tweaks until after most of the fund is gone. (Again, not for policy reasons, but for “preventing theft” reasons.)
liberal
@boss bitch:
Yes, Obama can never fail, unlike us mortals.
liberal
@mai naem:
Wait…someone here who actually understands that screwing the upper middle class isn’t necessarily the right thing to do?
liberal
@Mino:
Could you be more specific?
Shalimar
Because his goal isn’t actually to fix Social Security?
ArchTeryx
@c u n d gulag: Then we all are screwed quite royally – sacrificed as one on the altar of “bipartisanship”.
Mark S.
Occasionally, Obama seems to think his base is David Brooks.
boss bitch
@Betty Cracker:
He doesn’t work for the WH anymore.
OR…OR…wait for it. He could be calling their bluff. GOP is on tape saying they want chained CPI and SS fixes. So here ya go. What do they do? Run hide. Obama can then proceed to call them phoneys. The left, if they were politically smart (smirk) would do the same until election day 2014. Let’s retire the stale arguments from 2008 that Obama is charlie brown.. blah blah. He’s in his second term so he deserves better than simple minded analysis.
Maude
@c u n d gulag:
The Repubs have been whining about SocialSecuityMedicare for a long time. It’s a mantra. Obama is taking that argument away from them. He has done this before and it works. The Repubs don’t go along with Obama. It’s not in their DNA.
The Repubs aren’t going to let themselves get stuck with cutting SS and Medicare.
Remember when the Repubs were saying that Obama cut Medicare by $750b?
This hasn’t played out and people get hysterical.
Shalimar
@liberal: Your definition of screwing is a couple percent? You must be a joy for waiters and waitresses.
Shalimar
@boss bitch:
He could. But does anyone think he really will?
liberal
@PurpleGirl:
This is precisely the point (unlike RosiesDad at #1). This is a standard right-wing propaganda point—conflate SS and Medicare, when SS’s problem is much smaller, and Medicare’s problem is really the problem of the entire health care sector (private and public both).
Corner Stone
@boss bitch:
So, to be clear, your advice is for House D’s running for re-election to make the argument that they wanted to cut SS but the R’s wouldn’t agree to it?
liberal
@Shalimar:
Assuming increases reflect the way the program is now, any nominal increase has to be multiplied by two, because (again, presumably) the employer’s contribution will increase by the same amount, and while the employer remits the contribution, the actual burden falls on the employee.
And yes, it’s “screwing.” There’s no policy reason why money should be taken from a working stiff just because he’s upper middle class, and not impose the same tax on the truly rich. If you want to remove the payroll tax cap entirely, and furthermore impose it on capital gains (again, with no cap), that would be another matter.
As for your comment about stinginess, go f*ck yourself.
Betty Cracker
@boss bitch: Axelrod isn’t on the WH payroll anymore, but do you honestly think he’s not out there spinning for the administration? Sure he is.
I could point out that I didn’t call Obama “Charlie Brown” and in fact said I think he’s a damn good president, but in your case, I think a simple “fuck you” would suffice.
Omnes Omnibus
@liberal: No, he, like anyone, could easily be wrong on a given issue, but, given that SS is a political buzz saw, it is rather unlikely that he and his team were unaware that there would be shouting. To me, this leaves two possibilities; either Obama really thinks that this is the right thing to do right now, or it is political move to gain Villager approval while allowing the Congressional Dems to stand up for SS in solidarity with the public. Whichever of these possibilities is true, the response of the public should be to shout the proposal down, vigorously.
Sasha
Obama should hammer the GOP for demanding those cuts to begin with and for threatening the economy unless the Dems offered them.
NonyNony
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, see, this is why I err on the side of “Obama’s an idealist who really believes in bipartianship”.
Because otherwise the only explanation for this chained-CPI crap is that he’s an idiot. If he is trying some 11-D chess here to make Republicans look like assholes, then the way to go about it is to get THEM to be the ones proposing the horrible ideas so that they own them, rather than the reverse.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Litlebritdifrnt: And the number of places that will take “difficult” dementia patients is minuscule. So much so that someone I know refused to file a complaint against the home his father is in despite being told by the agency with oversight that he could have it shut down immediately. So instead he namedropped the person he had talked to at the agency. You never saw people go from asshole to obsequious quite so fast….
I can only imagine how frustrating that must be for the agency personnel, to know this crap is going on and be unable to do anything.
Punchy
You wanna talk about self-inflicted pain? Ya know, both sides do it.
Seriously, this is a much bigger prob on the right than whatever tickle fights the left is engaged in. Doesn’t the 2012 RNC platform have no mention of citzy status, instead something about self-deportation?
raven
Azela’s are blooming.
the Conster
@boss bitch:
I think this is the thinking too – put chained CPI out on the table, and flush out the Republicans who support “cutting SS”. If they don’t come forward then he’s called their bluff and now everyone knows they’re all full of shit and the cutting entitlements bullshit is over. There is already another GOP circular firing squad in action over the RNCC guy Walden’s statement accusing the WH of cutting the budget on the backs of seniors, and the GOP pols telling him to basically shut up and take it back, which he didn’t and doubled down on again today. The pukes don’t know what to do with this and are in disarray.
Mino
@Maude: I remember when Republicans cleaned our clock with that in 2010.
PeakVT
The only way I see Obama’s strategy working here is if the media suddenly decides to stop repeating Republican lies.
The chances of that are zero.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone:
I would tell them to run against Obama on this.
Schlemizel
@butler:
and that still has no evidence introduced. SS is more than fine as far as the eye can see.
Bill Murray
@The Other Bob:
Not necessarily. This is based on the middle scenario for future growth which assumes that productivity growth will be less than it has ever been and uses a very conservative assumption about immigration. Further because of how things work now, the future 78% of promised benefits will be more in real benefits than seniors get today.
So basically, if the economy ever gets going for working people SS is fine even for the long term. There is no reason to panic about it at the current time
RP
I just don’t understand why everyone cares so much about this. What are the chances of this becoming law? 5%? 1%? It’s all political theater.
I also think the claim that Obama really *wants* a grand bargain is just mind reading. If it’s so obvious to us that the GOP can’t be reasoned with, shouldn’t it also be pretty obvious to POTUS?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
Or he actually expects the House D’s to come along with him. Or his calculation is more of a legacy question and the House D’s didn’t enter into it very far.
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus: god I hope you are right about that second one. its still a dangerous game of chicken if that is whats being played
maya
This settles it. I will never vote for Barrack Insane Obama again.
raven
@RP: What else are we going to whine about?
Schlemizel
@Omnes Omnibus:
since many of the gutless SOBs already are even without this issue that would seem to be part of the plan
Citizen_X
@Maude:
Oh, yes. It was absolute bullshit. And, by spouting that line to seniors, the Repubs took the House back. For which we have been paying dearly ever since.
Eric U.
the only problem with SS is the Bush tanked the economy so bad that SS is no longer subsidizing tax cuts for the rich to the extent they feel appropriate
raven
@Corner Stone: Don’t you think this legacy shit is just so much bullshit?
Rhoda
This is not an election year. NEXT YEAR, that’s the budget that’s going to be hit over the head of the Republicans. This year is all about positioning.
POTUS needs to get it crystal clear to the POLITICO set that he was willing to deal; he put it in his budget. This freakout is HELPFUL to the President. He is now a serious person. Meanwhile, Reid is delivering votes on gun control and immigration in the senate. IF that goes through: the senate will have passed a budget, passed gun control legislation, and passed immigration reform and John Boehner will be in a world of fucked up hurt trying to get the crazies in his house to deal with actual fucking legislation.
This is a two year play.
We’re still in Act I. The goal of this year is simple. Get rid of the sequester if possible and jam the House on gun control and immigration (which is DEFINITELY going to blow up in the house).
So no, I don’t agree with you that this is a wound. It’s fucked up messaging; but then again this budget isn’t for you and I. It’s for the village and they’re ecstatic thinking as you are; they’re ignoring how he’s jamming the Republicans. That’ll be more evident towards the end of the year.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I would give a lot for this to just be a reaction to a number of things Washtington, DC does. But then again, a number of people, like one entire party, would have to be willing to listen.
Corner Stone
@raven: Actually I don’t. I for one can’t imagine the kind of mindset it takes to actually want to run for president, be president, get re-elected.
I think, IMO, it warps the brain of an already huge ego driven individual into a kind of hyper ego state.
I firmly and truly believe ALL of them are driven insane by the question of their place in history and legacy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: In any case, The course of action for people should be to make a big stink about this, to call their Congress people and tell them not to touch SS, etc.
RP
@raven: Touche.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
When the other side sees you as an enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, you aren’t going to successfully reconcile with them until you obliterate them.
I appreciate Obama’s idealism and don’t fault him for trying to compromise with the GOP in 2009, because our government was meant to function via compromises between different views.
But by now he has to realize the Republicans really don’t care what Democrats think, if they get a majority and they only want to enact their agenda at all costs.
This is a “fight to death” for the future of this country and why Obama doesn’t get it is beyond me.
raven
@Corner Stone: Fair enough.
The Other Bob
@Schlemizel:
To say the end of the surplus “isn’t in sight” is not true. Actuaries have put that time into view. The only question is whether we make SMALL changes now such as raising the cap on payroll taxes, benefit cuts or other changes to ease the impact on beneficiaries in 2035. If we wait, the fixes will be more dramatic, or beneficiaries will see HUGE drops in benefits.
If you scroll down to the “Key Dates” chart at the link below, it shows that the Trust Fund surplus will be extinguished in 2035.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
@butler:
Thank you!
I am not advocating either, but there is an issue that needs fixing. (That has NOTHING to do with the deficit.)
Corner Stone
@RP: Not putting your best case forward in the effort to retake the House for the D party is kind of a big deal.
The fact that this is either a)the wrong policy or b)politics disguised as policy that was never intended to go anywhere does not help the House D’s or D candidates in any way.
Mino
@liberal: “The Paul Kane… DCCC press release in Sunday’s Washington Post, Democrats push problem solvers in House races reflects a meme Steve Israel started massaging in 2011. It might have never crossed Kane’s mind but it’s how the corporate wing of the Democratic House caucus, the Blue Dogs and New Dems– keep in mind that Israel is an “ex”-Blue Dog and his sidekick Crowley is an “ex”-New Dem– have managed to grab power in the House. In 2012 the DCCC put virtually all their recruitment energy and, later, their money behind Blue Dogs and New Dems. The freshman class is significantly further right than the caucus as a whole. In fact most of the freshmen– 27 of them– have ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores even lower than the conservative Israel’s 72.22………..When Kane interviewed one of the DCCC candidates they steered him to, he found the exact same thing I find when I talk with them– and I talk to all of them– namely that they don’t know anything about anything. These days, when I talk to a candidate I can always tell they were recruited by the DCCC because they have no idea what Chained CPI is and little idea about any of the biggest political issues of the day– and even less interest in discussing anything substantive outside of memorized generalities…”
RP
@Corner Stone: I don’t buy the premise that this will hurt the Dems efforts to retake the House. The idea that the GOP will be able to use this against the Dems is pretty far fetched IMO, and to the extent they do, it could easily create problems for the GOP candidates in the primaries if a relatively moderate republican and a far right nut get into a debate about cutting SS. Not to mention the fact that a dem house candidate can always run against the proposal.
lawguy
@Betty Cracker: If he really believes in this system then why is he constantly negotiating as though he has to give everything the average person wants away and give in to the other side?
Of course, he may just be way over his head as the average politician was in the 1850s. But I’ll go with the simpler answer, he is simply and completely corrupt.
Schlemizel
@The Other Bob:
you are still assuming nothing changes between now and 2035. That employment will not get better or wages will remain stagnant and that old people will live longer (despite ample evidence that this is not going to happen in the numbers optimists suggest) or any of a whole bunch of shit that may happen to good or ill.
And the “small” change suggested in chained CPI is in fact a very large change over time, one that would put cat food out of reach for many seniors by 2035. If for no other reason than it totally ignores that health care is a major expense and is raising faster than inflation.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
It’s more like Lucy and the football.
Obama keeps sticking it out there(the grand bargain) and the party of death keeps moving it.
Bipartisanship may not be dead but it is seemingly terminal right now. Is it worth bringing it back? Not at the cost the prez is paying for it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Do I understand correctly that Obama’s goal in putting chained CPI on the table is to be able to call the Republicans phonies? Will being called phonies cause the Republicans to commit seppuku? Will they shamefacedly un-gerrymander all those gerrymandered congressional districts? Republicans are renowned for their tender feelings so either outcome is certainly possible.
The only thing that can’t possibly happen is that they take chained CPI and add on every bit of their wish list. They then negotiate down to chained CPI and a few other items while maintaining that Obama already got his tax increase on the rich. What a grand bargain.
Schlemizel
@RP:
Yes – it is completely far-fetched to imagine the GOP running ads:
Congressman (or candidate) X supports President Obama who WILL cut YOUR social Security and leave you destitute!
Yeah, no way they would do that or that it would work
jshooper
I consider myself an Obama supporter and I NEVER thought Axelrod was a good spokesman…He always seems sweaty,nervous and like a typical political hack….That being said I don’t know what to make of this latest move by Pres.Obama…I don’t know who he thinks he’s appealing to…The firebaggers are FAP FAP FAPPING to the Obama hates old people tune that they’ve been singing for 5 years now…And the Republicans / Media aren’t gunna give him any credit for being “reasonable” and reaching out to them…Seems like a lose/ lose all the way around
EconWatcher
@RP:
I’ve learned not to jump the gun in judging whether Obama has made a political mistake, because he often turns out to be playing a different and better angle than I thought. But this one sure looks like a mistake.
At least part of the reason Republicans cleaned up in the 2010 in congressional races was by portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare as Obama tried to “steal” from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. Ludicrous, yes, but they pulled it off.
Ryan didn’t do nearly as well with this incredible chutzpah in the 2012 elections, but presidential elections get more scrutiny, and the electorate is younger than in midterms. I don’t see why their 2010 tactics will necessarily fail in 2014.
On the other hand, to the people who are screaming bad faith: Grow the hell up. I mean, really.
liberal
@gene108:
That’s f*cking nuts. Anyone who didn’t realize as long ago as 1994 at the latest that the GOP was a cancer on the body politic, and was a “revolutionary power” that doesn’t play by the rules (as Krugman put it so clearly), needs to get their head examined.
As a practical matter, yes, there will be a need for compromise, but as far as ideals are concerned, the GOP needs to be destroyed, before they destroy our nation.
Paul W.
@Shalimar:
Yes, he’s been calling the GOP out since day one. Remember the House retreat where he confronted the Republicans over the upcoming ACA and he told them that they needed to tone down the rhetoric since it would take away their ability to negotiate? Well, here we are!
Also, the sequestration is way more painful than a Chained CPI would be (in part because the REST OF THE BUDGET) balances out that change to make sure that protections for those most in need of SS still get help somewhere. There is way more going on here than Obama “capitulating” for no good reason.
Also, the the horseshit about the GOP being able to say “gotcha on record!” is different from what they’ve already been doing… how? They have cried wolf about literally everything the President has done, why would anyone believe them now who doesn’t already?
liberal
@RP:
It’s certainly not a given that it will hurt the Democrats. If I had to bet, I’d say “probably not”.
But that’s not how do should do this kind of analysis. Whenever you consider costs, you have to look at risks. There’s still a risk, and it’s not negligible (even if the “likeliest” outcome is no effect).
And finally, there’s no upside whatsoever. This gesture will appeal to absolutely no one, except for a few elite “centrists” who don’t comprise the electorate and will never be fully on board anyway.
Barney
Notice how Axelrod completely dismisses Elizabeth Warren as not even worth talking about. Maddow asks him if it hurts the president to have Warren, an apparent close ally, saying his use of chained CPI is awful; his reply is to state there are just 2 alternatives – what the Republicans propose, and what Obama opposes. He won’t even talk about anything anyone to the left of the president says. Warren seems to have become a non-person.
Corner Stone
@RP: I’m going to disagree with you on this as I find this stance to be proven wrong historically. And hoping (or planning) it works out better in the future is, IMO, naive.
liberal
@Mino:
OK, I’m on board with that. But who are they going to primary?
Mino
If our overlords manage to turn SS into a version of SSI, which all this gauzy “we’ll protect the poorest” sounds like, then yes, they do hate old people.
Fwiffo
Replace the payroll tax with a carbon tax and ramp it up over time to cover the shortfall. Simple.
Suffern ACE
@Schlemizel:
Wouldn’t it make sense to talk about Medicare / Medicaid? Do those programs have no relevance at all?
liberal
@Corner Stone:
IMHO the biggest damage isn’t electoral tactics but “brand”.
What the hell does the Democratic Party stand for, apart from what it stands against?
Mino
@liberal: I saw the article a week ago, but google is buried with all this cpi shit. I think the guy’s first name was Matt, but draw a blank with the last. Sorry.
liberal
@Fwiffo:
Carbon taxes are great, blah blah blah, but they could also be pretty regressive, though the devil’s in the details. Furthermore, if we implement carbon taxes without somehow imposing the tax on imports we’ll destroy what manufacturing we have left.
jon
By putting forth a possible cut, Obama has made Social Security something Republicans are now defending. No method to his madness? He’s using the GOP campaign nonsense about being against anything Obama is for to make them defend Social Security and Medicare at the same time. Now, to be Not-Obama, Republicans have to propose their more radical (and less popular) suggestions in 2014 or fight for the status quo (very popular, but also what their Democratic opponent is saying and is probably already saying.) Obama is taking one for the team, in his immensely frustrating way.
Blame the electorate for voting in a Republican majority that wants to do something about the debt/deficits, not the President who has to run a country. The President is a troll, for proposing something that isn’t going to happen. But he’s also a troll for frustrating conservatives, enraging the Betrayalist wing among progressives, and… making a point that no one has bothered to ask him about.
And if Axelrod is a moron, President Romney isn’t about to get his MENSA membership.
liberal
@Schlemizel:
IMHO the chances that wages get a lot better isn’t all that likely. The only big unknown here is immigration, which for obvious reasons can have a big (positive) impact.
gene108
@liberal:
sChip still got passed, with a Republican Congress and Democratic President.
Sarbanes-Oxley got passed with a Republican President and Congress, along with some attempt at campaign finance reform.
Republicans were still willing to get laws passed and allow government to function, prior to 2009.
Hell, Clinton got judges confirmed by barely Democratic majority or barely Republican majority Congress.
What Republicans have done from the 110th Congress onwards has been unprecedented in modern times.
The real issue is how to convince the half of the country that supports them that they are only hurting themselves by backing Republicans.
As long as voters continue to back the current crop of GOP’ers and/or only fault them for not being more obstructionist, there’s not a lot the President or Democrats can do to pressure the Republicans to cooperate.
Only repeated electoral losses will force a change and 2010 stemmed that day of reckoning for quite some time.
FlipYrWhig
@Bill Murray:
As far as I know, even under the dreaded chained CPI future benefits will be more in real terms than what anyone gets today.
liberal
@jon:
Doesn’t explain why he was in such a big rush to avoid the fiscal cliff, and got far less out of the Republicans than he should have.
jon
@liberal: Avoiding the fiscal cliff is a responsible position, getting anything out of avoiding it is gravy compared to the potential problems.
Can I have all the Monday-Morning Quarterbacks on my fantasy football team?
ricky
@The Other Bob:
Thanks for the link. Any commenter here who does not follow it and read the report deserves to have the following statement, which will apply here to mistermix, apply to them as well:
Anyone who says the fix for Social Security is a tweak is himself a twit.
From the CBO report linked by The Other Bob:
People really! Calculate what is the actual reduction in the scheduled automatic increase in Social Security benmefits represented by a change from the current CPI to Chained CPI.
Then compare it to a 25% reduction in actual benefits, not benefit increases.
Is Obama losing touch with the left? To the extent the left engages in uninformed lunacy on this issue, perhaps it is good if he does.
All you jaw flapping “just raise the tax ceiling” fools need to read the most recent CBO comparison of the options for “tweaking” the Social Security System.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/21547
EconWatcher
@liberal:
What does the Democratic Party stand for? For better or worse, the Democratic Party is the centrist, technocratic, post-ideological, adult party. A boring party that offers targeted and often inadequate solutions, but sometimes actually does discuss the real problems the country faces.
It’s not the champion of the poor or the vanguard of the working class. On a good day, it tries to offer some tepid help to the vanishing middle class.
This is what we’ve got, and will have for the foreseeable future. But it could be worse. Much worse.
Mino
@jon: Have you ever seen Republicans being caught out saying one thing on Monday and the opposite on Friday? They will have no problem destroying SS to save it.
Fwiffo
Also replace federal gas tax and other energy taxes, and roll them into the carbon tax. That and the elimination of the regressive payroll tax will offset some of the regressivity of the carbon tax. If it’s still regressive on net, build in a rebate that shrinks by some formula of your AGI.
FlipYrWhig
@Schlemizel:
Does the cost of living adjustment formula currently in place have health care as a component?
elmo
I maxed out on SS contributions last year, for the first time in my life. At first I didn’t understand what had happened – I was afraid the payroll folks had neglected to deduct my health insurance premiums or something.
When I finally understood, I enjoyed a nice little windfall for a while. BIG DEAL. Take that away and I wouldn’t even have missed it. I didn’t budget for it. It’s not that much money, UNLESS you’re actually in the much higher bracket that can afford it.
Eliminate the cap. I benefited from it last year, and I say it should go.
liberal
@gene108:
All pretty minor, and you miss the Clinton impeachment.
The question is: should it have been obvious to anyone by 1994 that the GOP was incorrigibly radicalized? IMHO, yes. By 2009, when Obama took office, we’re wandering into “are you f*cking kidding me?” territory.
Patricia Kayden
So the Repubs are already using the chained CPI to attack President Obama, huh? Quelle Surprise.
You would think that President Obama and his allies would have been smart enough not to fall into that trap. Oh well.
liberal
@EconWatcher:
Completely agree. My beef isn’t with you, but with others who rant “firebagger!” if it’s pointed out that the party isn’t liberal, but mainly centrist. (Yes, I understand the first past the post problem as well as anyone, and it’s not like I’m going to ever vote third party.)
liberal
@elmo:
That’s fine, but what’s the argument for not also imposing it on capital gains?
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: of all the things to worry about when it comes to the future of the country, the publicly funded benefits of the “upper-middle class” are not at the top of my list.
FlipYrWhig
@elmo: I agree that the cap is bullshit. But it’s there to anticipate and prevent the argument that Social Security is redistribution rather than something more pay-as-you-go. Personally, I’d rather have it be blatantly redistributive, such that rich people’s money funds poor people’s comfort, but that’s not the way it’s set up, and politically “senior welfare” would be much less popular than a system from which everyone from poor to rich benefits to some degree.
Mino
@ricky: The problems for SS began when it took two people to provide the income for a family at existing wages. Probably three things are needed to tweak the program. Increase minimum wage, raise the limit somewhat, and make all sources of income subject to SS tax. Obamacare just made all sources of income subject to Medicare taxes, didn’t he?
liberal
@ricky:
That misses the point. In a political vacuum, in terms of pure policy, criticisms of proposals to do this tweak or that tweak would have merit.
But we don’t live in a political vacuum. The goal of the Right is to never, ever pay down the Trust Fund from general funds, because the former represents assets accrued from a terribly regressive tax, and the latter from a mildly progressive tax.
If we do the tweaks now, we’re just giving them that much more room to never pay off the trust fund.
Yes, we should do it before 2030, but not until the Right has less power. And if they don’t start losing power, we’re screwed anyway.
gene108
@liberal:
sChip and SOX aren’t minor pieces of legislation.
Despite the impeachment, the Republicans were still willing to allow government to function.
Also, too how exactly do you plan on obliterating support for the Republican Party?
There are plenty of places where the right kind of Democrat has a chance of getting elected, but not a flaming liberal Ted Kennedy/Paul Wellstone clone. Do you give up on those seats? Do you think you can maintain majorities without those seats?
The calculation to jump leftward isn’t simple.
It’s easier to first defeat Republicans continuously and have them capitulate, even if it means having conservative Democrats in their place.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig:
Fine. What argument are you going to make for taking tax dollars from the upper middle class and not from the truly rich?
Contributions to the Democratic Party doesn’t grow on trees. Where do you think it comes from?
lol
@Barney:
It’s almost as if he was being baited into getting into argument with the left and he sidestepped it in favor of keeping the spotlight on Republicans.
Cacti
If only the POTUS was as smart at politics as every emo prog. He has much to learn from their string of rousing victories from President Howard Dean, to Senator Ned Lamont, to Congresswoman Darcy Burner.
Cassidy
The whole Balloon Juice commentariat from the Obots to our purity trolls is the emotional equivalent of a moldy sponge. I point this out because I don’t think any of us are really at a point where we can discuss and disect anyone else’s mental status or emotional well being or what someone really feels and thinks. We are the poster children for psychosis.
Señor Sluggo
So, who has signed the petition?
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/tell-gop-and-nation-no-cuts-social-security-benefits-no-chained-cpi-no-superlative-cpi-will-be/zKtxRL3K
liberal
@gene108:
SOX is minor in practice, since it’s not really being used as a tool of enforcement.
As for how to play the seats, the rule should obviously be “try to get someone elected who is as far left as is practicable.” Yes, I understand that means people who aren’t all that liberal in the South, blah blah blah, but as far as I can tell the people who run the Party (including Obama) aren’t interested in this—they’d much rather have someone who’s centrist than further left, even if the latter is possible.
Dr. Squid
Sigh.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/04/social-security-administration-says.html
Maddow’s wrong and she knows it. But the truth doesn’t get ratings or money in your pocket, so expect her to do that again and again.
All that’s left now is, “we can’t do this because Republicans AIEEEEE!!!! {breathe into paper bag}”
lol
@Schlemizel:
Does this take into account that Chained CPI would only apply to seniors making more than 400% of the poverty level?.
El Caganer
No surprises here – the administration has been pretty clear about what was going to be in this budget. I’m not sure it makes much difference what the President proposes (which is why I would have preferred him embracing Trotsky’s Transitional Program), since he could take Paul Ryan’s budget, slap his own name on it, and watch the Republicans unanimously vote against it.
liberal
@jon:
That’s just utterly wrong. The damage on the margin from the “cliff” was tiny. The real damage would have been from letting it go on for many many months. A few weeks or just a couple of months wouldn’t have mattered much.
The simple fact is that Obama squandered his leverage.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: I’d be happy to take more dollars from the truly rich. But I’m not crying big salty tears over the many woes of the “upper middle class.” Oh, no, first the fees for Bryce’s lacrosse camp went up, and now this! What further indignities must we suffer?
Todd
@Cacti:
I wonder if the left that Obama is losing touch with is the same professional left that didn’t operate as a counterweight at those 2010 town halls that were dominated by teabaggers, that saw to it that blue dogs from blue dog districts got beaten, that told folks to sit out and stay home, that offered nothing but scorn when they failed to received Skittle-crapping pink unicorns, that worships Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader…
Clearly, the hippies haven’t been curb-stomped like in GTA:San Andreas nearly enough.
ricky
@liberal:
No. I didn’t miss the point. In fact, while I was being generic in using the terms lunacy to describe commentary, I could have levelled it directly at most of the comments you have made this entire thread.
The “Trust Fund” exists only in the muddled heads of numerological fantacists. To the extent that annual tax revenues are less than expenditures for SS, which is currently the case, we are using General Revenues to fund the mythical Trust Fund. We are doing that right now.
The issue, which you seem unable to grasp, is not “paying off the trust fund” or which source of revenue to use while doing so. It is exhausting the trust fund. By 2033.
Mino
@Cacti: Just too tempting a target, right. I’ll wait to see what you’re saying in 2014.
If progressives could get legislation passed that actually WAS progressive, instead of Republican-lite, almost-worse-than-nothing solutions, we might give voters a reason to vote besides fear.
Dr. Squid
@lol: Don’t confuse the poor dears with facts. They keep their lower lips from sticking farther out.
FlipYrWhig
@lol: is that true? I haven’t seen that figure anywhere before…
ricky
@liberal:
No. I didn’t miss the point. In fact, while I was being generic in using the term lunacy to describe commentary, I could have levelled it directly at many of the comments you have made in this thread.
The “Trust Fund” exists only in the muddled heads of numerological fantacists. To the extent that annual tax revenues are less than expenditures for SS, which is currently the case, we are using General Revenues or additional borrowing to fund the mythical Trust Fund. We are doing that right now.
The issue, which you seem unable to grasp, is not “paying off the trust fund” or which source of revenue to use while doing so. It is exhausting the trust fund. By 2033.
Cacti
@Todd:
I also can’t help but notice that most of the attacks on the the President’s intelligence and political acumen from the left come overwhelmingly from white people. And the solution is almost always to replace him with a white liberal savior. You’d almost think there was a racial element to their condescension for the past 5-years.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: if progressives could pass legislation through a Republican Congress, absolutely. But that’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
I haven’t either, and you’d think that such a feature would be more widely discussed since it changes the dynamic considerably.
Right now it looks like they’re going after grandma who’s pretty close to eating cat food as it is.
Dr. Squid
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve seen it in a few places. That is, if you can pull, say $50k out of your savings annually, you get $45 less in you SSA check annually than you would have with old CPI, never mind the complete lack of COLA adjustments the last few years.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemizel:
The entire point of Obamacare is that it’s supposed to rein in healthcare costs starting in 2014 (assuming Republicans don’t completely neuter it by that point, that is). So, at least in theory, the extra COI that seniors are currently getting because healthcare costs are rising so fast should be unnecessary.
It also would be nice if at least a few of the people shrieking about chained-CPI for Social Security would mention the fact that it also affects tax brackets and will bring in extra tax revenue. That’s what makes it chained — it’s not just Social Security, it works in concert with several different increases.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: come on, I’m sorry, that’s just got nothing to do with it. The left always rails against Democratic presidents for not being liberal enough. They’ll do it to the first gay president too, but it won’t make them homophobic when they do.
Cacti
@Mino:
Don’t you worry. True progressives like reformed right wing bastard Ed Schultz will be along to rally the troops…
By telling them not to vote.
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: Well, since progressive solutions never make the paper, how the hell would voters know, unless they went looking? How much press did the Progressive budget get?
Mino
@Cacti: @Cacti: You do know that Schultz had one of the highest audience numbers on MSNBC, right? He talked about LABOR, a missing topic in today’s Dem party.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
No one seems to be mentioning the increased tax revenue that goes along with chained-CPI, so I’m guessing the catfood squad would rather run around with their hair on fire than actually look at the nitty-gritty of the proposal.
However, I, too, would like to see a link.
Cacti
@Mino:
And he really showed the breadth of his political clout the way he spearheaded the movement that turned Scott Walker out of…
Wait, nevermind.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
Emo progs are protest people. Above all they want something to shriek about. Actual progress on any issue is a secondary concern.
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: “Nothing to do with it” is too absolute. We have a few unreconstructed Dem racists regularly posting here. You’re right in the main, though — part of the left does it to all Democratic presidents, regardless of race and, in the future, of gender or sexual orientation.
FlipYrWhig
@Villago Delenda Est: well, I know there are provisions set up to spare the impact of a less generous adjustment on the poorest and the oldest, so I think the “cat food” thing is vastly overstated. I think the real criticism on policy is that it ratchets down the increase in benefits for middle class and upper class retirees. It’s not going to make anyone poor. While I derided it as a concern, at least “liberal” was framing the debate more accurately: it gives middle class people benefits that increase more slowly over time, which creates a gap between what was scheduled and what they’ll actually see. That might be bad politics, but as far as policy goes, I don’t know. Do we have any reason to believe that we’re at present doing a good job of measuring things like “the cost of living” or “poverty”?
Todd
@Cacti:
Forum Transmitted Disease
This was a mistake, and not a small one.
The lazy unwashed Independents and most Republicans aren’t going to squee with delight when they hear that Obama’s on board with cutting Medicare and Social Security to reduce the deficit – they think the deficit will go away by cutting welfare to blacks and Mexicans, and that Obama’s keeping his homeboys in T-bones at the expense of Grandma. Never mind that welfare hasn’t existed for twenty years, that’s what they believe and that’s what they want.
Paul Ryan must be laughing his ass off.
lojasmo
@boss bitch:
But…but…Isn’t that what the professional left does?
Dr. Squid
@Mnemosyne: Doesn’t have the 400% number, but it does mention the benefit enhancement so no one gets any cat food.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@NonyNony:
Sounds about right to me. I think the idea of trying to find people on the other side who will negotiate in good faith, and assuming that if this is to ever have a chance of working you have to come to the table already prepared to compromise, and to signal this to the other side in order to get them to come to the table, is so deeply ingrained in him that it is the first principle from which everything else issues.
I don’t know if this is something that comes from his community organizer days, in which situation you are constantly trying to bring the powerful to the table to negotiate with the powerless, or if it comes from being raised in a multicultural/multiracial family, or is perhaps even part of growing up in Hawaii where people have to find a way to get along with each other because you’re all living on a fairly small piece of real estate, there isn’t some open frontier where you can go to just get away from folks you simply cannot stand to be around.
You could also argue that it stems from a more sophisticated view of US history, understanding that we are a deeply divided polity always on the brink of something like civil war if we don’t put active effort into trying to paper over our differences to keep the country together. Honestly, I think many people in the US would be happier if we were to split the country into smaller pieces and let each part pursue the form of political economy most to its liking. It’s pretty clear that members of the red tribe and blue tribe will never agree on even some of the most basic issues and trying to split the difference between them leads to both bad policy and is driving folks insane.
Mino
@Mnemosyne: Do you guys really think that allowing SS to be turned into a poverty program will strengthen it? And Obama’s back door revenue increases just emphasize his deficit obsession.
Defined retirement benefits are vanishing. 401Ks are a cruel joke for a lot of folks. SS may be all that is left for any hope of not working til you drop.
ricky
@lol:
I don’t think it takes that into account. But it shouldn’t take it into account because Chained CPI would apply to seniors who make less than 400% of the poverty level.
There are, however, efforts to ameliorate the impact of Chained CPI on the very poor. They are probably not enough, but they are part of the proposal and often overlooked by the shrieking hordes of misinformed on this proposal.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/factsheet/chained-cpi-protections
Dr. Squid
@ricky:
FTFY.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
But that’s a hard thing politically, all by itself.
Here’s what they’ll do. “Obama cut middle class SS benefits to give your money to poor people.” We already know this. It’s exactly what they said about Medicare in 2010. “Obama cut your Medicare to give the money to poor people”. I’m not even really exaggerating. That’s basically what the direct mail said.
dww44
@Betty Cracker: Thanks, Betty, for your very rational explanation of why Obama can be so perplexing to those of us who voted for him. I swear the optics of his always wanting to enlist the support of those who think he’s weak and an empty suit is almost as off putting as some of his policy moves, like this one.
Mnemosyne
@Mino:
How does this budget do that? Be specific, using quotes from it.
So now tax increases are anti-liberal?
Look, we’re stuck with a big deficit because the previous guys decided to simultaneously cut taxes and blow a wad on a stupid war in the Middle East. We can’t pretend that everything is hunky-dory and ignore it. If we’re not going to cut the budget, and we’re not going to increase taxes, what’s your plan for paying off the Iraq and Afghanistan debt?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: agreed, and that’s why I also believe that there’s political damage being done — but I also actually believe in giving things to poor people. Restructuring SS to make it more redistributive is something I could certainly get behind. I know I keep saying it, but SS as currently designed isn’t particularly _progressive_ insofar as people who earned less over their lifetimes get fewer benefits. I know _why_ it’s that way: the politics of it. But certainly something could be bad politics and also more progressive.
Mino
@Cacti: Well, I guess to get your approval, they should have thanked Governor Walker nicely.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, since I have to head off to work, I have a philosophical statement: since there is a known problem with Social Security that needs a tweak, I would far, far prefer to get a fix in place now with a Democrat in charge than to wait for President Rand Paul to come up with his idea of a “fix.”
I am not willing to wait around hoping that liberal Superman shows up before 2035 and saves us all. If s/he does show up, we can do a second fix, but I’d rather do a fix now using the tools we have than let the Republicans do their own “fix” and have to start from -5 rather than the +1 this fix gets us to.
Mino
@Mnemosyne: Duh, put people back to work.
If SS benefits are means tested, it makes it a povery program. Just like SSI. And we all know how Dems love to reform welfare programs.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: I think turning SS into more of a “poverty program,” in that people with lower lifetime earnings would receive more than people with higher one, would make it a better program for combating poverty among retirees. It would also make it a much less popular program because more people would feel like they were financing someone else’s retirement rather than their own. But purely on policy grounds, bracketing the politics, IMHO it would be a more effective way to address the actual problem of people having too little income to get by when retired. Since people are jealous and mean-spirited assholes, a shift to a “poverty program” would wreck it, and that’s why it’d be a bad idea to try.
Mike E
@raven: O mah gah, they’re blowin’ up the place. If somebody called me yellow, I would have to agree :-)
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: Thus SSI exists. But you have to have no assets, practically, to qualify.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep, pretty much. This is why we can’t have nice things.
different-church-lady
Fixed that progressively for you.
hitchhiker
@Rhoda:
I’m late to this thread, but you nailed it right there. Thanks.
different-church-lady
@RosiesDad:
This is cable news we’re talking about — it’s a safe assumption.
sherparick
That the President has made this proposal is not surprise. First, something like it has been on the table since the summer of 2011. Second, the President, having drunk the Hamilton Group Kool-aid and perhaps being the one sincere Deficit Hawk in Washington has always had significant “entitlement ” (Social Security and Medicare “Reform” (a/k/a benefit cuts on on his agenda. See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/01/obama-calls-for-2/ t) That something like this “reform” is what the President wants as an outcome is also evidenced by his “Deficit” commission, which he picked Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to chair. Predictably, that commission came out for big tax cuts for rich people and raising the age for social security.
By the way, I think the President with this proposal has effectively ended the domestic portion of his administration. This is the final (self-inflicted) blow to some events that are currently baked in the cake (the Sequestration and Fiscal Cliff tax increase Austerity are going to depress economic growth and probably increase unemployment over the summer to where it creeps back near 8%), and I expect support for the President and his policies will fall between 40% to 45%. Democrats are already running away from him, as they should. Reid and Pelosi should make it clear that there is no support in their caucuses for the “Republican Idea” of Chained CPI if they want to prevent another 2010. abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/01/obama-calls-for-2/
El Cid
Axelrod starts getting unnerved when the casually-dropped conventional establishmentsplaining phrasework starts getting pushback from Maddow.
Most politics types are used to be able to drop a few well-worn phrases — usually hackneyed crap referencing themes of maturity and toughness and whatever — and move on.
They’re less sure what to do when that doesn’t seem to work.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: “in that people with lower lifetime earnings would receive more than people with higher one, ”
Well, poorer people do receive back proportionally more than wealthier ones, relative to what was put in. PLus SS income is taxed again at higher levels.
Higgs Boson's Mate
It isn’t a self-inflicted axe wound. It’s self-inflicted arrow to the knee.
catclub
@sherparick: “Predictably, that commission came out for big tax cuts for rich people and raising the age for social security. ”
Nope. The commission agreed on no recommendations. Bowles and Simpson, independent of the commission, made those recommendations.
Hill Dweller
@Rhoda:
This.
dww44
@jshooper: I agree:
I wouldn’t go so far as to label him a hack. I simply view him as ineffective in front of a camera. Maybe off-camera he’s got talents and skills that aren’t evident at all in front of it. In my mind, he’s never succinct and clear. Maybe not a great comparison, but Jared Bernstein, formers spokesperson for VP Biden and now frequent commenter on the political shows, has those abilities that Axelrod lacks.
BruceFromOhio
Because Obama should be impeached and FREEDOM. Do I have to draw it on a bev nap for you? Gaia-dammit, try to keep up.
Poopyman
@Omnes Omnibus: That seems to me the most likely strategy here. Obama has no worries about being re-elected and can play the bad cop. Now it’s up to Congressional Dem candidates to get loud on the issue. Judging from history, their first instinct will be to try to hide until this whole thing blows over – which it won’t, or shouldn’t. Seems like now’s the time for the constituency to give them a little backbone in the form of phone calls or especially cash with a note making clear that you don’t want SS touched and that making a stand for SS will bring more votes and $$.
Or at least a boy can dream.
rda909
@Rhoda: How dare you make sense like that?!!? As if the President has ever done anything like that before, huh? Instead, it will be much more helpful to repeat the same things we’ve whined about him for the last 4 years, word for word, and pay no attention to how much we’ve been wrong in doing so! And certainly do not talk about a single positive thing that’s been accomplished whatsoever! /snark
(Notice the silence to your comment – says a lot)
Bruce S
@boss bitch:
While I share the view that Obama is putting this out there knowing that the GOP is unlikely to pick up on it, the notion that “the left” – i.e. nearly the entire Democratic base, which is against the idea of SS cuts, along with a majority of GOPers, independents and even Tea Partiers – should pick up the Obama Fan Club songbook and join “Boss Bitch” in attacking the GOP for not joining the President when he proposes the worst solution to a Social Security “problem” that doesn’t exist in the context of our current real economic problems, is just butt stupid.
In fact, those folks who have forsaken liberal political activism for a self-generated Obama Echo Chamber – if they had a grain of political sense, which none of them do – should get that the President is actually better positioned in any White House/Beltway strategem involving NOT getting what you say you are offering, if the Dem base is opposing Obama. It’s certainly a toxic proposition for congressional Dems – in reddish districts or not – to drink this SS cuts Kool-Aid in the context of 2014, as we’ve seen from the Congressional GOP campaign committee’s response – which was EXACTLY what “we all” have been predicting.
If the President sees fit to play to the Politico crowd because somehow it serves what he sees as administration interests in this (non)negotiation – let him go ahead and do it. He’s an adult and doesn’t need our fan-mail to proceed on that course. But even if one sees some smarts in Obama’s deep strategizing, which I happen not to because it’s bad policy AND bad politics for 2014, it’s idiotic to claim that the “left” isn’t actually helping Obama claim some Beltway Politicoesque, Morning Joe Idiots Table “High Ground” and “meeting them more than halfway” by protesting these cuts. If the left simply rubberstamped this move by Obama, his “more than halfway” disappears.
I don’t think Obama’s an idiot, but a lot of very smart people do things in the context of Beltway Village Politics that are not very smart. Obama predicted this – that he’d get subjected to Beltway pressures and narrow perspective as all Presidents do – and that his liberal base would need to hold his feet to the fire. This shouldn’t be any kind of surprise or sense of betrayal. He’s the goddam President of the United States – not our movement leader. When has there ever been a President who didn’t play compromised politics that was fucked up – it comes with the territory. But it’s folly to simply defer to such moves as “leadership” – when it’s just positioning. In these moments, leadership has to come from us. Or just sit back and call out the “(smirk) left” for addressing people in the real non-Politico world who actually give a shit about this policy and not assuming that one guy is going to save our asses with his “smarts.”
jon
@liberal: What leverage? You mean the ability to blame Republicans for the damage? The GOP loves most of the sequester. Their base would have parties over the cliff as soon as Rush explained that the lucky ducks are suffering more.
Morzer
@Maude:
The point is not that they are going to get stuck doing it, the point is that Obama has now gotten himself stuck PROPOSING it – and thus allowing the GOP to pose as the defenders of the social net.
Whether it actually happens isn’t the point at all. What counts is Obama handing them a weapon with which to pummel the Democrats from now until 2014, while getting the square root of Eric Cantor’s compassion* in return.
n.b. square root(Cantor compassion) == 1 Politico Integrity Unit
Mnemosyne
@Mino:
Show me in the budget where SS benefits are means tested. Links and quotes. I want to make sure you’ve actually read it and aren’t just parroting back half-true scare quotes again.
ricky
@dww44:
Both you and jshooper point out the weakness of Axelrod as a White House spokesman. I don’t disagree.
But I will note that now he is coming on The Rachel Maddow Show not as a White House spokesman, but as a paid bloviator for MSNBC.
Therefore, ii is not in his job description to call bullshit on the real bullshit on this program, which mistermix and others missed in their critique of Axelrod.
The real bullshit was Maddow’s nonsensical suggestion that Obama, to gain political advantage, is proposing to starve old people in order to appear to pick a fight with the left. That kind of fantasizing and unsupported hyperbole belongs on the Alex Jones Show.
Mike E
I’m so glad we’re having a GOS/FireBag thread to purge our collective freak-out. Whew. I feel better now. You fuckerz!
Bruce S
ricky:
You’ve certainly mastered the Peterson-Simpson talking points.
Here’s some Liberal Lunacy for you:
When folks earning three, four, five and more times as much as I do pay the same rate of taxes to fund Social Security as I do on a modest income, you, Pete Peterson, Alan Simpson, the Morning Joe Roundtable and, yes, The White House can get back to me about any benefit cuts. Until then, go fuck yourselves…
gogol's wife
@Mike E:
This really has become a tiresome feature of this blog.
The Other Bob
@Bill Murray:
Take that up with the actuaries – of which I am not one.
Bruce S
@ricky:
“belongs on the Alex Jones show”
Yeah, that’s a great non-hyperbolic response to Rachel Maddow’s use of “starve old people” hyperbole in talking about SS benefits cuts. (Because no old people living solely on Social Security are struggling to make ends meet already.) You’ve elevated the discussion, while she’s just trash-talking.
Mino
@Mnemosyne: I can’t. At this point there are no hard terms out there on that–just hazy words from spokespersons that the most indigent will be protected. As it stands now, in hard words, there are no protections for them in the chained-CPI proposal.
Hill Dweller
@Morzer: There will be another Obama budget in 2014, which won’t have C-CPI in it.
As long as Dems come out strongly against Obama’s budget, which they’ve done so far, it isn’t going to hurt them in 2014.
Also too, the wingnuts are on record voting for Ryan’s budget again this year, which is far more devastating than anything Obama proposed.
There is no way the Obama administration sprung this on congressional Dems. Everything is coordinated.
eemom
@Morzer:
Precisely this.
All the standard emoprog/Obot noise is JUST noise on this topic. This is shit policy and shit politics, plain and simple.
I mean my Obot cred is as good as anyone’s around here. I don’t understand what it takes for people to admit that maybe the Prez actually did fuck up this time.
It is a standard anti-firebagger retort to say “suuuure, I disagree with Obama on LOTS of things”…..but there are some here who never actually walk that particular walk.
Mnemosyne
@Mino:
Okay, now I’m embarrassed for you. The entire reason we’re having this discussion is that the White House released their budget yesterday. With all of those specifics you’re whining about not having. Did you even try the White House website?
jamick6000
@jon:
It’s funny the knots some people will twist themselves into to avoid the obvious truth — the damn hippies were right from the beginning. Obama wants to cut Social Security. Obama wants to cut Medicare.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m trying to be reasonable but I hate it. It feels think-tankey and out of touch to me. People have just been thru the worst economic crisis of many of their lifetimes. Stop changing things they rely on. They’re scared. Stop scaring them.
I’m also really, really surprised at how divisive it is, substantively. Maddow is focusing on The Left Versus Whomever, but that’s not the important part.
Look at how many cracks it could create, among regular people.
We talked about “the poor” versus middle class social security recipients, but why pit preschoolers against grandma?
Social security versus manufacturing? What is that? Jobs versus grandma?
Hill Dweller
@jamick6000: Obama has already reformed Medicare. Do you think that was a bad decision?
I’ll go on record again saying SS will not be touched as long as Obama is President.
ricky
@Bruce S:
My “talking points” were taken from Congressional Budget Office Reports. If you have a problem with them put some substance behind your four letter dismissal.
Sorry if you find my comparison of Maddow’s ‘the President is proposing to starve old people to appear to pick a fight with a polical faction’ is worthy of the crap Alex Jones puts out with his black helicopter conspiracy nonsense. But since her substantive claim (starving old people) is nonsense, and her attribution of political motivation is neither provable nor disprovable, I find the comparison apt.
I could have suggested Maddow’s starve the old was equal to claims that Obama’s healthcare plan was designed to kill the old, but those making that latter assertion were elected officials, not talk show hosts on my cable TV. I wanted to compare Maddow to someone in her peer group. Alex Jones, like Maddow, appears on my TV screen, not in an elective office.
Bruce S
@jamick6000:
I don’t think Obama “wants” to do any of this. I think he’s playing the political hand he’s dealt as he best sees it. I totally disagree with what he’s doing, but I don’t see Obama simply as some tool of Pete Peterson. He sees himself, IMHO, having to come up with some set of budget proposals, and he’s making a calculated, compromised play – either to expose the GOP as “not serious” or to effect a compromise he thinks he’s got a long shot at actually passing. (Of course, it won’t.) Either way, it’s a bad deal IMHO, because the GOP is first and foremost going to opportunistically hand these cuts around the neck of any Dems who back Obama’s budget as a campaign issue. But Obama is operating out of some broad goal other than simply cutting benefits. Of course, what he’s actually proposing, at least as regards SS, is another story and totally wrong as policy. He’s expressed himself that he doesn’t think this is the best policy.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I actually don’t have a huge problem with the C-CPI fix, but that may be because I’ll be in that first group that gets an automatic 25 percent cut in benefits, which is something I would prefer to avoid.
I think there are other problems in the budget that are much bigger than the C-CPI. From what you were saying in the other thread, it sounds like the education part is a frickin’ disaster.
Tim Skratos
I remember recently one of Margaret Thatcher’s advisors was saying that her greatest accomplishment was Tony Blair’s “New Labor.”
I’m sure smart Republicans today are thinking along the same lines — Ronald Reagan’s greatest accomplishment (from the Heritage Foundation healthcare law to the militaristic foreign policy to the attempted sell out of the Democratic party’s core achievement) is Barak Obama.
Heliopause
Medicare is not a problem at all. You know this and were probably just a little careless with your wording, but it’s important to word this correctly. The Big Problem is the cost of health care.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
SS is different than health care. As you know, I supported the Medicare savings going to Obamacare, although I think Democrats avoided it completely because they know it’s a political loser. IMO, there was no way to win that. It’s how we always do poor people programs. Tack them on to middle class programs. There’s a reason for that.
I’m willing to be persuaded on the facts, but you’re not going to get to the facts. It’s an impossible argument to make to an individual recipient. They are going to see this as “he took SS (some amount) to invest in other programs”. I’m not saying that. The official defense is “social insurance is squeezing out investment in other things.” How would you react to that? By setting it up this way, they’re telling them, “I’m taking it from HERE and putting it over THERE.” Was that even necessary?
Bruce S
@ricky:
Don’t clown and act like your affirmation that the best way to deal with the long-term SS shortfall by benefit cuts is determined by the hard numbers of the CBO. I don’t need the fucking CBO to tell me that unless and until tax rates that I pay to fund SS also apply to folks making many times more than I do, anyone who comes to tell me that we need to cut SS benefits to keep it solvent deserves contempt.
I’ve read a lot of analysis of the Social Security funding from various sources and not a single data set has changed my fundamental position on the tax question – which is a matter of equity as much as math. Before we’ve even put tax equity on the table as an option, we’re discussing whether we need to adjust benefits. So yes, fuck that.
And anyone who pushes the “SS Trust Fund Doesn’t Exist!” line is talking straight from Pete Peterson, et. al.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
AFAICT, the official defense is “the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money in 2035 and we need to do something so everyone doesn’t get an automatic 25 percent cut.” That’s the defense of C-CPI and SS, anyway. I’m not sure what the defenses are of any other social program cuts.
Mino
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I did. Can you tell me on what page these are delineated? All I saw in the CPI section was…”The President has made clear that any such change in approach should protect the most vulnerable. For that reason, the Budget includes protections for the very elderly and others who rely on SS for long periods of time, and only applies the changes to non-means tested benefit programs…” The Chained CPI Protections section was more specific.
I read this to mean that if you were on an already-means- tested program(ie. very, very poor), it would not apply. But those programs are not SS basic.
For SS basic, no one is protected until the years-on-the-program adjustments kick in. But if CPI pushes one into poverty, the only fallback IS a means tested program.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
But that’s what you’re saying when you say “in return ‘we” get revenue”. By including SS and then the investment portion in a budget he’s set it up as a trade. It even reads like a trade. He can’t ask people to separate the two things when he himself is conflating them.
Keith G
@eemom: Leave your family and run away with me.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
And that actually is what the Virginia Senator said. Boldly. He said the long term social programs were squeezing out investments they’d like to make for longer term economic growth (education, infrastructure).
How are people supposed to take that?
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I guess so. By applying C-CPI across the board instead of only to Social Security (which is what the Republican proposal was), that means that tax brackets rise in concert with Social Security, so more tax revenue results. So the trade-off is that the Republicans can apply C-CPI to Social Security, but it also means raising taxes by having the brackets move more quickly. It’s basically saying, “Here are the social cuts you demanded, but we get $90 million more in taxes in return.” Not revenue that’s freed up from the cuts, but new revenue.
ETA: AFAICT, the trade off is “you can cut benefits, but you have to also raise taxes on other, richer people.” I’m not sure that’s a bad trade, but you can try to talk me out of it.
Joel
The chained CPI stuff is such a transparent blunder that I almost wonder if something else is up. Maybe they’re just trying to get liberals mad and motivated? I have no fucking idea.
minutemaid
Yawn,
“Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI Chained CPI
and dronezzzz….and single payer…blah blah blah yada yada.”
The idiotic left continues to prove it’s idiotic.
Mino
@Joel: It is a backdoor tax increase, as the Republicans have noticed.
Keith G
If I remember this correctly, when asked Axelrod mentioned that after the chained C P I became law there will be other ways to support senior citizens. I think it is very dangerous to cut Social Security benefits then allow other programs to fill the gap.
This is because as we know from experience Social Security law is very difficult to change. BUT those other programs that will be relied upon to help the elderly will be tied to the yearly budgeting process….or fucking worse yet they will be part of some federal-state cooperative program which states will be free to cut at their will. This is playing with fire just after we doused the elderly poor with jet fuel.
So when people up thread say “Don’t worry the elderly poor will be taken care of” I say “Not so fast”.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think it works. Why do they care that he’s collecting more revenue? That might work for Democratic members of Congress, who want more revenue to do other things, but why would that be at all persuasive to a recipient?
He tells them in the budget it isn’t going to them.
I’m baffled why he would set it up this way.
Honestly, he’s got immigration and guns to work on. Why set out this whole ambitious new theory right now? For me personally, the fact that a big chunk of change is going to the odious Arne Duncan doesn’t help matters. God knows where that will end up.
Bruce S
@minutemaid:
Justin Bieber deserves a Fan Club.
Obama doesn’t need one. He’s an adult in the real world and deserves to be treated as such. You’re the idiot here.
Morzer
@Hill Dweller:
If this is the result of coordination between the best and brightest that the Dems have to offer, it’s going to be a very, very long four more years.
And no, offering another budget without chained CPI ain’t going to make it better. The GOP isn’t going to scrupulously acknowledge that Obama’s latest budget doesn’t propose butchering granny. They’ll just run endless clips of Obama the Ax-Murderer hacking away at hardworking white seniors from this year’s folly.
ricky
@Bruce S: It is hard for me to clown when seeking affirmation that the best long term solution to SS is benefits cuts when I have made no assertion whatsoever about what the best long term solution to SS is.
What I have suggested is that the irrational, among whom I include people who charge off with a “fuck” adjective or verb with unnecessary frequency to refute people, don’t give a fig about what hard numbers from credible sources show.
The “fucking” CBO reports show exactly what different tax increase options and all manner of benefit cuts do to address the ever more rapidly coming day when selling the promissory notes from the US government (the Trust Fund) no longer will fund the promissory benefits from the same US government.
I have no doubt you believe a tax increase is necessary. You have said so loud and fucking clear. Fucking repeatedly.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
To put it in perspective, I don’t think it’s the death knell for Democrats, even in terms of the midterms. As fas as I could tell, national Democrats (Congress) had nothing unified or narrative-wise they were running on anyway, and I don’t think it will have a big effect on state races, because Obama’s a two-termer so the focus shifts away from him and back to “Democrats”.
At this point I’m baffled, personally :) I’m confident he likes it. I just have no idea why he likes it.
gene108
@Mino:
You do realize there are already anti-poverty provisions in Social Security and Medicare, so poor seniors aren’t living off only their Social Security income?
This isn’t revolutionary to tweak the program to give greater help to the needy.
Bob In Portland
@minutemaid: Maybe if you were in your sixties.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: this isn’t waiting for a new law, these are provisions in the current budget proposal. Yes, if you did only chained CPI and then stopped, that would be terrible. No one wants to do that, and no one has proposed doing that, especially not Team Obama, which has said so directly repeatedly.
Bruce S
@Morzer:
Despite the claim above that Rachel Maddow’s “granny-starving” rhetoric was some craziness on par with the Alex Jones show, it actually was just previewing what the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee will be telling voters in 2014. Who’s crazy in this picture – folks bending over backwards to defend this (which I agree looks more like a Beltway political ploy than something that can move the GOP to compromise), or the Dem base which is “freaking out”? I don’t understand “political strategies” that hand your opponents talking points against proposals that polls show the public doesn’t like – across the political spectrum. How many voters will Morning Joe, David Brooks and the Politico boys – the disingenuous right-leaning morons that this seems aimed toward – mobilize for Democrats in 2014?
FlipYrWhig
@Bob In Portland: I don’t want anyone to suffer; that’s important. Spending billions of dollars giving already well-off people supplemental retirement benefits is, I submit, a bullshit political priority. Like I said, I know WHY it’s that way–it’s essentially bribery to keep them from moaning about their hard-earned money going to Those People. Fine, that’s politics. But it’s a screwy thing to make the palladium of progressive politics. Just to make it extra absurd, think of it as welfare for the 1%, or the 10%. It’s not ONLY that, but some of how the program works is indeed that. I’m glad it’s popular in a way that more nakedly redistributive programs aren’t. It’s just that I find it somewhat regrettable that it is.
gene108
@Kay:
I honestly think it’s a matter of how the “troops” handle messaging for the pols.
Liberals focus on what they don’t like – chaining SS benefits to the CPI (though how the CPI is calculated can always be changed) – and ignoring what they should like, which is increased taxes on the rich.
If there was a conservative shit-sandwich to sell, they’d make a point out of how the bread is good for you, never mind the diseases you’d get from the feces in the middle.
Anyone who questions the nutritional value of feces would be shouted down, because they hate bread and bread is as American as Apple Pie, hell you can’t have Apple Pie without a the pie crust (i.e. bread in another form), so why do you hate America?
There has to be some balance from the “professional left” between maintaining your goals and realizing the reality of the fact the Democrats are the only Party that’ll give you the time of day and you need to make sure Democrats get elected.
The “professional left” has to be willing to carry some of the messaging for the Democrats way more than they currently are.
Mino
@gene108: Do you know how close to living under a bridge you need to be to qualify for some of those programs, depending on what state you live in. That is the antithisis of what the SS program was designed to do…let seniors live in dignity. I don’t need to bring up grannie in the back room, do I?
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: you say “defend this,” but the big question is what “this” means. By analogy, making all of so-called Obamacare into the individual mandate would make it look sucktastic indeed. But it wasn’t the Individual Mandate Bill, it was a comprehensive health care reform package. The thing to figure out is how this one part, chained CPI, ties into a whole set of other elements, which the WH has said should be treated holistically. If you still hate it, fine. I don’t crunch the numbers and I find it all vaguely confusing and technical. But at a minimum we should be praising or criticizing the whole approach to SS “reform,” not simply chained CPI. Republicans will; they’re dim and like to demagogue issues. We don’t have to play that game among ourselves, I hope.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: but that’s why I’d say the right way to fix SS would be to raise those minimums and allow for people at the bottom to avoid destitution before qualifying. T fund that, maybe, I don’t know, slow the rate of growth for benefits for people who need them less. I wonder how you could do that. Perhaps an arcane formula? :P
Bruce S
@ricky:
So you start off with some vindictive attacks on “left lunatics” who are opposing this benefit cut, but you aren’t supporting the benefit cut? Also indicated by your straw man regarding “fuck” – which isn’t, frankly, any more offensive than your crap comments regarding “left lunacy” or comparing Rachel Maddow to Alex Jones. Sorry that you are such a tender soul that you find it necessary to express fake offense at the expression of my position that has absolutely zero to do with projected variables and everything to do with priorities and fundamentals of social equity. It was intended to offend folks who prioritize cuts over tax equity, because they deserve to be offended. In your case, however, it sounds weak – like you’re just trying to claim some undeserved High Ground on the basis of my using a well-chosen vulgar locution because you don’t have the balls to make your case overtly. You’ve attacked folks pretty viciously who are against this proposal, but you won’t admit to being FOR it. That’s truly lame.
You’ve now distinguished yourself as totally disingenuous.
Kay
@gene108:
First, I’m just speaking for myself. I never bought the idea that Obama was setting out to “punch hippies.” I think that’s weirdly personal and I don’t buy the whole theory. If he’s really spending his Presidency retaliating against a group of people then he’s crazy and shouldn’t be President.
I get that there’s no message control among Democrats. I just want you to consider something, though. If someone, the professional Left, Republicans, Obama, whoever, are occupying the space where “Democrats” should be, is it possible that’s because “Democrats” left it vacant?
I think part of this was inevitable. There are genuine differences among Democrats as far as policy. If “Democrats” don’t want Obama or the Pro Left to define “Democrats” then they had better fill that space. Because someone is going to fill it. Is it empty?
Obama is a second termer. He will recede. I think what you’re seeing is a battle for what gets out in front of him, going forward. I think that was inevitable.
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: A lot of them are state administered on their indivual quidelines. And you know what is happening in so many states.
Suffern ACE
@gene108: What are the antipoverty provisions in Medicare and Social Security already in place that are paid for by the payroll tax that funds those programs? SSI is not paid out of social security taxes collected, but out of general revenues. Food Stamps, Meals on Wheels and whatnot are paid for out of general revenues as well. It is still better to have access to those programs than not, and they certainly have higher monthly payments than the AFDC program, but they still are different from OASDI that is paid for from the payroll tax.
gene108
@gene108:
Just elaborate.
Bush, Jr.’s handling of 9/11/01 and Katrina sucked.
The right-wing media jumped to his defense by talking about the security lapses of the Clinton Admin and Hannity pops up on his T.V. show sniping at Mayor Nagin for not using school buses to evacuate people.
I just can’t see Maddow, Hayes, et. al. going to bat for any Democrat in this manner, even if the Democrat has mostly met what the underlying goals are of the liberal agenda, such as moving towards universal healthcare.
Bruce S
@gene108:
Why carry “messaging for the Democrats” that is bad for the electoral terrain? That doesn’t make any sense. In this case, at least, the “professional left” – which frankly is a rightwing meme as far as I’m concerned and shouldn’t be bandied around among liberals who value social activism – is doing the Dems a favor in terms of helping electoral chances. In fact, I think Obama himself is saavy enough to know that the folks expressing outrage and opposition on this are doing him and the Party a big favor. If not, his years as a community organizer were totally wasted.
Kay
@gene108:
You’ve said this yourself, and I think there’s truth in it about the lack of a coherent majority position among Democrats on economic issues going forward, Things like trade and “jobs”.
“Democrats” can rally round SS if they want to. They’ve done it before and it was successful politically. But my growing sense is they don’t have a majority economic position or set of issues going forward. At some point they have to get one. It doesn’t have to be Obama’s but it has to BE.
Bruce S
@Kay:
The Dems don’t have a majority economic position because it’s such a broad coalition that is actually fairly cognizant in it’s various wings of what their interests are. The GOP tends more to being a coalition with varying economic interests that get subsumed by “cultural” resentments and crank social issues into what, at least until fairly recently, appeared to be unified around tax cuts, government-hate and contempt for “others.” I don’t think that Democrats are as easy to fool, and I also think that the Democrats are a much bigger-tent coalition, which has some costs as much as the obvious benefits.
gene108
@Kay:
I don’t view at as much a matter of defining what Democrats believe in, but making it safe for Democrats to believe in it.
When a Republican can run ads to their benefit showing his Democratic challenger doing anything cooperatively with Nancy Pelosi, it’s going to be hard for Democrats to all-in on the Left’s agenda.
I’m not sure what the best way to get there is. I don’t think a loud vocal minority constantly belittling Democrats is the most effective method.
If more investment is the way to go for the economy, than that needs to be the focus of every liberal, who has a media microphone and they need to stay focused the same way the right is focused on privatizing Social Security.
Mino
If the Democrats don’t find a “reason to be” for jobs and wages, it’s not gonna matter how big the tent. People are patient, but there is a limit. And a lot of Republican liars who have discovered it’s not a good idea to show the voters your ankles. Next time they will do better.
Kay
@Bruce S:
I don’t think that’s a good enough answer. I think they’ve put off addressing a comprehensive set of principles or ideas that has majority Dem support and they’ve been able to put that off.
They can’t really complain if The President steps out in front of them, as Clinton did and now Obama is, until they have a longer term plan of their own. I’m kind of okay with hashing it out, as long as we’re actually doing that. We’re not yet, but I think we will :)
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
@Bruce S:
I think there are also still a LOT of unrepentant DLC/Third Way Democrats in positions of power in the Democratic Party who think that throttling back Social Security benefits is a fine idea. Kay said before that she thought that this budget was aimed at getting conservative Democrats in the Senate on board, and I think she’s right.
People always seem to think that Obama is aiming these things at Republicans, but 9 times out of 10 he’s really aiming to get conservative Democrats on his side who would normally balk at more government spending. Max Baucus is still a Senator.
Bruce S
@FlipYrWhig:
“this” – chainedCPI, which shouldn’t be the first-out-of-the-gate strategy for Social Security reform. I will grant that Obama adds some bells and whistles to his proposal to cut back benefit increases, but for practical purposes they aren’t part of the discussion. I happen to think that they don’t make this a much better policy or political strategy, but the main reason they aren’t central to the discussion is because they are a sidebar and policy doesn’t get discussed in depth. It’s why more people know about the individual mandate than most of the rest of Obamacare. It’s tough to do policy nuance.
Which is why I try to simplify my position on SS to “When Mitt Romney, et. al. are paying the same SS tax rates as I do on their income, get back to me about potential benefits cuts.” That’s pretty easy to understand, and frankly I’m unwavering on it. It’s basic equity. Also I think a better message on SS than anything I’ve seen come out of the White House.
I’d rather take whatever flak the GOP can conjure around that position than the current reality that Obama is the first Democratic President ever to propose cutting SS benefits.
Bruce S
@Kay:
There’s truth in that, although I’m not sure I WANT a “unified” Democratic message that represents some Golden Mean within the party. The corporate elements are too strong among the “professional moderates.” Which is why I am thankful there’s this thing called “the professional left” – i.e. Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress, et. al. – who are pushing a more populist economic message. “Democrat” doesn’t mean a hell of a lot – a lot less than “Republican” certainly in today’s world as a guide to where one lands on issues, excepting a handful. I’m perfectly comfortable with fights among Democrats, as long as they’re done with the grace that, say, a Keith Ellison brings to his progressive advocacy. And also, thank God for Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t worry about the “Democratic” label so much as good policy. Frankly, “the professional left” is a lot more representative in today’s reality of where majorities among the electorate stand on economic issues than the Smart Guys angling “Third Way”, etc. The worst thing about the Obama administration, frankly, has been having Tim Geithner, a pure product of the Rubin corporatist wing, having so much influence in the wake of the economic crisis. This hurt the country and it’s hurt Democrats.
Also, I’m not sure where this discussion happens…until the GOP went nuts, our parties have been fairly complex coalitions, not policy advocacy-centered.
liberal
@Suffern ACE:
If we read his/her claim charitably, there is some redistributive provisions in SS, insofar as the payout is somewhat progressive. Ie, SS is mainly retirement security, with a little bit of welfare blended in.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Except that Carney specifically said today that they only put the Chained CPI in the budget because the Republicans wanted it.
ricky
@Bruce S:
I started off with a vindictive attack on nobody other than mistermix, who said:
“The fix for Social Security is a tweak” which prompoted me to use alliteration to label him a twit.
I went on to suggest based on the size of the problem SS faces as identified in the CBO report referenced, that the size of the cut represented by benefit increase reductions in the Chained CBI proposal paled in comparison to what the size of actual real benefit reductions will be when the accounting technique known as “The Social Security Trust Fund” shows up empty on the ledger books where that “fund” exists.
Then I said:
I did go on to say that the “just raise the tax ceiling” advocates are “jaw flapping…fools.” I do so because the CBO numbers show that, just like the labeling of the SS fiscal problem as something needing a “tweak”, the suggestion is inadequate.
If you want to defend uninformed commentary and label it as something other than lunacy, I am sure you will do as good a job as you have defending your vocabulary. But don’t put fucking words in my mouth or suggest I have articulated a position when I have not.
liberal
@ricky:
I see. SS assets are imaginary; government debt held by the rich isn’t.
Thanks for proudly showing us all that you’re a right-wing hack.
Kay
@Bruce S:
Honestly, Bruce, I think that’s too easy for liberals too. You’re defining yourself in opposition to the Democratic President. Which is exactly what we did with Clinton.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, if the administration tries to pin an unpopular decision on the Republicans, that means that Max Baucus and other conservative Democrats like Tim Kaine who have supported it in the past must hate it! Good one.
liberal
@ricky:
Yawn.
Since the Trust Fund is imaginary, can I have back all the imaginary dollars I paid into it in the past few decades?
liberal
@Kay:
Why is Obama’s position privileged?
NR
@Mnemosyne: We weren’t talking about whether or not some Dems like or hate the Chained CPI. We were talking about who it was aimed at, and it was aimed at Republicans. Carney just admitted it.
Hill Dweller
In other news, Boehner admits he disagrees with Rep. Walden, and Club for Growth has added Walden to their “Primary my Congressman” website.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig:
So you are saying that in the budget for the next year, there are provisions that protect those who would certainly be harmed?
Okay.
What about the subsequent budgets after that?
Also, what is the nature of those provisions?
Cutting SS benefits is a big deal. Will we be leaving those elders in a position to need help from “provisions” that can be under-funded or cut if there happens to be a 2015 sequester or government funding crisis.What is the process and how is it guaranteed?
Just seems like Obama wants us to buy ocean front property in Arizona.
He needs to lay this shit out. Fuck bargaining with the GOP. He needs to sell us. I am not supporting a pig in a poke or it’s salesman.
jl
I don’t have time to read through all 200 plus comments. But interesting that Carney is saying (as I understand it) that the administration considered Chained CPI idea bad on policy grounds, but was put in a s (presumably good faith demo) deal sweetener, so it was purely political.
And I see in news this morning, GOP is already arguing with itself on what line to take on the offer.
So, on political grounds, I guess we will have to see how this act of eleventy D political Kabuki plays out.
But I am glad that the administration agrees with competent economists and policy analysts and many commenters here that the chained CPI fix is bad policy.
What Axelrod was trying to do in that interview, I have no idea. Maybe eleventy D chess is hard to coordinate with all the staff, I dunno.
Kay
@ liberal
It’s not. He has one. Investments in education, infrastructure and manufacturing and SS cuts.
I asked here the other day “who was the last ‘real’ Democratic. President?”
No one answered, but if the answer is “FDR” then “Democrats” however you define the term, do not have an economic platform.
Mino
@NR: lol. It was one of those firearm accidents, then.
Bruce S
@Kay:
Kay – I’m not “defining myself in opposition to the Democratic President.” I don’t understand that at all. Believe me, as a veteran of the civil rights and anti-war movements, I know what “defining oneself in opposition to the Democratic President” and what pushing a Democratic President to do the right thing both look like.
Clinton was no picnic for liberal Dems, and frankly he often defined himself in opposition to us, with more than a measure of cynicism IMHO (see “Morris, Dick.)
Liberal activists have always stood outside of the White House box – frankly, one of the things that cemented my support for Obama was hearing him tell a group of us back in 2007 when his candidacy was still running mostly on “hope” that it was incumbent on social movements to push him and hold his feet to the fire, because everyone who ascends to the Oval Office is subject to the political pressures and calculations of Washington.
I’ll dammned well oppose a Democratic President on policy issue – we’d be fools not to when we believe they are wrong (and they all have been and have need that push.) I don’t define myself in relation to the President, either in support or opposition. President’s are a fact of political life and not a single one – includng FDR – have come through with appropriate policy without some push from below. Our biggest problem is that the “push from below” has been coming mostly from crazies. The notion that Obama should be at the center of our politics and policy as grassroots Dems is not useful IMHO. Which is why OFA has been and will continue to be such a non-starter for effective activism, other than the extremely well-organized role it’s played as an electoral vehicle – it’s Obama-centric, therefore completely outside of any effective model historically for activism on issues.
ricky
@liberal:
For your futher cerebral muddlement:
I am sure there were lots of “Trust Funds” for the of Enron
employees and the education of their children filled with Enron bonds as well as stock.
Promises are promises. Past performance and practice add credibility to those promises. You can eat the cat food on your plate. You can be worth a lot in “cat food futures” and even have Purina bonds and still starve to death.
Bruce S
@ricky:
My jaw-flapping foolery still stands, despite all those words, as a more cogent commentary on the issue at hand than all of what you’ve written – when there’s SS tax equity among vastly disparate income groups, get back to me about benefit cuts.
You don’t know the difference between Jaw-Flapping, an area where you yourself have shown some gargantuan efforts, and making a clear point which most people can understand and, if polling is correct, agree with as a matter of fairness. Unfortunately the White House has put a proposal on table that is both bad politics and bad policy.
Don’t tell someone who knows that the wealthy aren’t paying the same SS tax rates as the rest of us, while their mouthpieces are extolling the virtues of benefit cuts that they need to read a CBO report to understand how the world works. And especially don’t go there while making the crank claim that Treasury notes backing the Trust Fund are made out of air. The folks who are buying those things up at effectively sub-zero interest rates appear to have a different view.
Kay
@Bruce S:
This has been going on for years. I listen to Robert Reich and I’m thinking “where the fuck was this guy when it came time to present an alternative to Clinton’s 3rd way?”
Obama is moving in broad strokes. I think the counter has to bigger and more cohesive. That’s all I’m saying. It isn’t responsive enough to just repeat “FDR” over and over. It isn’t responsive enough to voters, not politicians.
jl
Edit: this is a reply to ricky’s comments above
Your arguments seems pretty confused to me. The operation of the trust fund over the short and medium term is a separate issue from the long run 20 to 25 percent funding shortfall in Social Security as a pay as you go system.
And I do not not see how a smaller reduction in benefits now due to implementation of a chained CPI has anything to do with fixing the long run imbalance.
And the ‘tweaks’ required to fix social security address precisely that long run 20 to 25 percent shortfall in pay as you go funding.
You seem to be confusing the fact that the trust fund contains fungible dollars that can be used for something else right now, with issue of whether they are tax revenues that were intended (or publicly stated to be intended) for use in paying social security benefits. In the short run, any liquid asset that can be used to pay money benefits is fungible, and changes in benefits can change the availability of using those funds for something else.
In the long run, the real goods and services that retired will consume are not fungible. The short run funding mechanism and long run problems (which are fixable with tweaks) are two completely different issues.
You will have to explain your thinking more clearly.
liberal
@ricky:
Yawn. You can’t have it both ways.
If we’re only going to think of things from the point of view of a unified budget, we should get rid of the SS payroll tax immediately, since it’s a regressive tax.
So? That applies to absolutely any paper asset. It even applies to physical assets; the future is always uncertain.
If there was absolutely no way to fund SS, then there’d be a dilemma. But there’s plenty of assets that the rich have garnered, through no productive contribution of their own. There’s no reason why that wealth can’t be tapped, in the form of tax revenues going into the general fund.
Bruce S
@Kay:
Well, Robert Reich was in the administration arguing for better policies, but he got pushed aside. Now he’s outside and he’s able to be much more vocal than as cabinet member.
And I’m not at all saying “FDR” – quite the opposite. When folks yammer about Obama not being like “FDR”, I’m fond of pointing out how fucked up so many of FDR’s policies were: his running on balancing the budget – to the right of Hoover if anything; the fact, embedded in the politics of his era, that he didn’t really ever stand up to the racist wing of the party until pushed by A.Phillip Randolph’s threats to March On Washington to integrate defense industries; that Social Security left out most minority workers in it’s “FDR” iteration early on; that he engaged in a disastrous “austerity” program after re-election that bumped up unemployment. Also there was that unfortunate thing with Japanese-Americans, which it would have been totally indecent to support so as not to “define oneself in opposition to a Democratic President.”
“FDR” was one of those Democratic President’s who needed activists outside of his own circles to be even as good as he actually was. I’m not denigrating FDR – he was of his time and Presidents aren’t Gods. “He” moved the country forward – but very much in the context of far more radical social movements that helped create the political space for the better of his policies. Same goes for the good “Domestic LBJ” who embraced Civil Rights after a pretty spotty legislative history – Obama should be so lucky. In the wake of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, “the base” was essentially passive.
different-church-lady
@Mike E:
I see what you did there. But nonetheless, I’ve come to feel I get more reliable, more in depth points of view here than the GOS gives me nowadays.
Kay
@Bruce S:
I get impatient with it. Maybe an example would help. In this county, there are 3 different, specific positions on “trade”.
It’s huge here, manufacturing, people know more about it than nationally, but all of those views are IN the Democratic Party.
It’s gotten so muddled that Republicans here insist Republicans are for “fair trade”.
So you have to tell me. What is the “real” Democratic position on trade?
I go with the labor position, but really it’s no more valily Democratic than the
Others.
Gian
what a strange day for the title to this post. our local news here in So Cal is all over the story of some guy who went into a home depot and started sawing his own arms off. life saved by some moocher on society but off duty firefighter who stole twine and rags from home depot to make tourniquets
Bruce S
@Kay:
How could there possibly be a single “Democratic” position on trade when you’ve got “global elite” types in the Democratic Party side-by-side with the AFL-CIO. One real positive I’ve seen in recent years is that the “smart guys” like Paul Krugman – who was nothing if not glib about the benefits of globalization in the 90s – have come around, shocked by reality, to recognize that “globalization” is a very mixed bag and certainly not the unalloyed good that the Clintonistas were selling not that long ago. I just think a lot of what irks you is embedded in a Demoratic Party that, in effect, includes Bernie Sanders despite his pretensions, along with Spawn of Robert Rubin, who frankly I detest although my solution to that problem isn’t that I wish Democrats circled our wagons more tightly and we were more pure, come hell or high water. I’m pissed at a lot of what goes down, but I’m not immune to electoral realities in what is a very dysfunctional political system, tilted mostly in the wrong direction.
My tendency is to support efforts to engage more people at the grassroots level to expand the number of regular voters and seeking better candidates to work their way up. I’m for working in the party around elections, but also for supporting the dreaded “professional left” around key issues – one of which right now is confronting deficit hysteria and garbage about “cutting entitlements.”
Kay
@Bruce S:
Thanks for the real response.
It gets so…diverse it’s all but gone. We have a candy maker here who yells about trade protections (sugar). He’s a Democrat.
He employs Teamsters who are protectionists, except on sugar. They’re Democrats too.
Anyway, hopefully Obama is striding off on his own and he doesn’t have a congressional majority.
NR
@Mino: Right, I forgot. Neither Obama nor his surrogates ever mean what they say, except when we want them to.
Joe Bauers
Iz I really banned?
Bill Arnold
@liberal:
With interest. (Inflation adjusted).
EthylEster
@c u n d gulag: This must be what Obama is thinking.
EthylEster
@Shalimar: If this is the eleven dimension chess thing again, then I think he will call them phoneys.
I don’t think anybody here really knows what id going on but there sure are a lot of folks who pretend to. And that’s annoying as hell.
Matt McIrvin
@Bruce S:
And in some cases from outright trolls with incoherent positions, like libertarians adopting left-wing attacks on Obama on behalf of right-wing politicians.
I’ve been seeing a lot of that over the past few days, which I think is the clearest sign that Obama just plain fell for a trick. The thing he offered as a compromise with the right is now being used by the right to attack him from the left. But when Maddow or Elizabeth Warren criticize him for it, it actually makes sense.