I’ve stayed out of the Social Security wars because I am in favor of addressing our long-term structural debt, and I am a realist about how Washington DC views its debt obligations. I acknowledge that the makeup of the commission is tilted against the progressive position on how to fix our fiscal house, but I am willing to wait for their recommendations before working on a full-scale campaign to discredit their work. I haven’t had a word of criticism for those who choose to do advance work, but I have no desire to join them. But Alan Simpson is really a problem. I can put up with him acting like a pompous ass, but he’s now stepping all over the president’s message. Last night, the president said the following to the nation:
Part of that responsibility is making sure that we honor our commitments to those who have served our country with such valor. As long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and we will do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us. This is a sacred trust. That’s why we’ve already made one of the largest increases in funding for veterans in decades. We’re treating the signature wounds of today’s wars — post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury — while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. And we’re funding a Post-9/11 GI Bill that helps our veterans and their families pursue the dream of a college education. Just as the GI Bill helped those who fought World War II — including my grandfather — become the backbone of our middle class, so today’s servicemen and women must have the chance to apply their gifts to expand the American economy. Because part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it.
The next day we’re greeted to an Associated Press story where Simpson blames veterans for gobbling up too much money in health benefits.
“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Can I just say, shut the fuck up?
The issue in context is a bit contentious and relates only to a subset of veterans who were exposed, or may have been exposed, to Agent Orange. But the context is almost irrelevant. You don’t tell a combat veteran that he or she isn’t helping to save the country by failing to renounce some of his or her benefits. If Simpson considers it part of his job to embarrass the president once a week, the president should consider it part of his job to replace Simpson.
Agree with you about wait and see about this commission but his comment on veterans absolutely horrifying. Really shows his character, I mean lack thereof.
If you wait until the commission has issued its recommendations, it’s already too late. Obama has no one but himself to blame. At least we now know who holds the puppet strings. The Koches and Pete Peterson.
Too late for what? It’s likely that the recommendations will involve sacrifices I don’t want to make and a balance of pain I find unfair and misguided. But there is a scale. I will bite the bullet on something less than fair if it actually solves our long-term structural debt. But that’s only to point. At a certain point, I am going to reject the recommendations. The panel is going to want to produce an unanimous report. If Jan Schakowsky signs off on it, then I am going to want to take a serious look.
I respect people who are so positive of an unacceptable recommendation that they’re working full-time to discredit it before it arrives. I’m more open-minded.
I’m also not looking at this as strictly about Social Security. It’s about all of our structural debt, and I consider it a high priority to address it as a matter of generational equity.
When the report comes out, I will make a decision then about whether it is acceptable to do nothing because the recommendations are too tilted.
And how do you think they’ll address it? By cutting the defense budget? LOL!! That the rich are going to sacrifice? LOL!!
I think they will craft something that involves a degree of suffering for every stake holder. That means that Social Security will probably raise the cut-off rate while reducing the benefit in some way. It will call for cuts in some military spending, possibly including some veteran’s benefits. The idea will be to give everyone a haircut without it being perceived that one group is being unfairly singled out. That’s really the only way you could get a unanimous report and it’s the only way a report could have any chance of success with Congress. It won’t be what I want because that’s the whole point. It won’t be what anybody wants. That’s why it is so difficult to do. The question is, not whether they’ll leave Social Security alone, but whether they’ll distribute the pain equitably to the point I can swallow hard and support it. I have my doubts, but I consider the issue sufficiently important that I am not going to pre-judge merely because Kent Conrad and Max Baucus aren’t my favorite Democrats.
Well then you don’t have a unanimous report. So what? You take it as a given that that would be some great and necessary goal. I can’t believe you can calmly say what you just said: As long as Koch, Buffet and the minimum wage guy all share the pain, hunky dory. As long as the bloated near-useless modern military lose a few bucks along with Medicaid patients, fine.
Leadership is about making the right decision, not doing a focus group. You talk as if “equitably” is somehow not a policy/political decision, but some cosmic standard that we just have to conform to. What a load of crap. If Obama envisioned himself running to be Accountant in Chief he should have at least warned us. Obama’s job is to do what liberals want, not what Sarah Palin and Oldfool Simpson want. And yet you keep talking about how important turnout will be in this election. What is it exactly that we’re supposed to be working for? Being nice to has-been assholes?
Structural deficit:
We can’t treat our Structural Deficit like the Israeli-Palestine conflict, a fact of life with no political solution. We have to address it and that means we have to find a political solution. That doesn’t mean any deal they come up with is acceptable, but it means that we can’t make defeating every proposal that dings our interests as off the table.
I’m open-minded. I didn’t say I was optimistic.
‘defeating’ should read ‘treating.’
Politics, at its core, is about how the national wealth is distributed. Whether the deficits, of whatever species, are crucial is not the issue. The only issue is where the money comes from to pay them down. Do you take it from the sick, old, unemployed, minimum-wage, or do you take it from bloated CEOs and the rest of the overpaid tax cheats? That’s the only issue, and it’s the argument that makes political philosophy possible. You don’t just smooth it over by “giving everybody a haircut”. I can’t believe you’re really parroting in all seriousness the point of that old joke: I’m all for equality so we’ll make it illegal for EVERYBODY to sleep under a bridge. And yet that’s essentially the inevitable outcome of your “open mindedness”. You seem to have lose all ability to know when the die has been cast.
Listen to me, Dave.
Our structural deficits are out of control. Most of the problem is in Medicare, not Social Security, but we have to address our structural deficits. We can do it when we have big majorities, or when we don’t. But kicking the can down the road makes the pain worse and the solution more uncertain to be at all palatable. What would I do? Slash Pentagon spending by 40%, close bases all over the world, raise the threshold tax on Social Security, and go over to Medicare for all and cut out private insurance industry.
I can’t get that and I’ll never be able to get it. And I’m not interested in being obstinate about it when I know the problem gets worse the longer it goes unaddressed. Like I said, if the proposal is bad enough, I’m going to oppose it and work against it. I have to wait and see. I am not in absolutist camp. I know that my interests have to take a ding, just like everyone’s elses. We promised money we didn’t have. We all have to suffer the consequences because the people who are most to blame are too powerful to get stuck with the whole bill, or even their fair share. That’s reality.
And my question is why should the poor subsidize the rich’s tax cuts? Reagan cut taxes by effectively raiding the trust fund. This is about as regressive as you can get. The program is regressive as it is–which I’m fine with, for the most part–but what you’re articulating is that we should accept robbing from the poor to give to the rich. That’s absurd.
And yes, medical spending is the root-cause, it is the problem. Medicare won’t be abolished or privatized, so I see Medicare-for-all as a “it’s going to happen whether you like it or not” type deal. Better start getting people behind the program and see how much longer we’ve got. The health care bill stalled and bought us some time.
“Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?”: America’s misguided culture of overwork
What’s the second biggest single-payer system? Probably the Veteran’s Administration.
Have you read my brother’s book?
Best Care Anywhere: Why Va Health Care Is Better Than Yours
No, but I’ve referenced it many times. I didn’t know that was your brother. Cool to know.
I’ll answer you this way.
Why should the Palestinians accept a peace deal that doesn’t give them all of Jerusalem, eliminate all settlements, provide money for repatriation of all refugees and their descendants, and reparations for the wrong done to them?
The answer is because they can’t get that, but they can get something worthwhile while there is something still worth getting.
When you enter into a political impasse as the weaker party, you need to cut a good deal under optimal circumstances. We have big majorities and a Democratic president. It isn’t going to get better anytime soon. So, we let this opportunity pass at our potential peril. And, trust me, the problem is only going to get more painful.
This situation does not call for a waiting game.
If the deal is bad enough, I’ll oppose it, but I’m not going all Likud on the thing before it is presented.
Sometimes you make me crazy, Boo. It’s not about “your” interests. It’s about what is right. If we are so broken as a body politic that deficits become nothing but a club to “equalize the pain”, then it really is time to just throw this system away and start over, and damn the consequences. If bending over for the plutocracy is OK with you, that’s your choice, but maybe you want to rethink this whole thing about being in the “progressive” camp.
Politics is about what is right, but legislating is about best outcomes. You should check out Henry Waxman’s book: The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works.
Sigh.
We spent the money we were supposed to reserve for Social Security. It’s gone, transferred into bonds that have no value unless the government raises the money to redeem them. While I understand and agree with the argument that the U.S. government’s debt isn’t caused by Social Security, it’s structural debt is caused in significant part by the fact that we have all these bonds to honor.
They are going to have to raise the money somehow and they don’t want to do it strictly through higher taxes. That’s why people are discussing the retirement age and cost adjustments. I’m opposed to raising the retirement age or reducing people’s benefits. But I expect that one or the other (or both) will be proposed as part of a package that also raises the amount of income subject to the SS tax. I have to see the balance before I can say that I can support it. But I could support a package the includes some small cuts if it also includes reduced military spending and a more progressive tax scheme. The reason? Because the problem will keep getting worse and therefore I do not believe we’ll be doing the best job of protecting people’s benefits by killing a bill that only hurts them modestly. If they mess with the retirement age, I will have a very hard time supporting the whole package. One year I could stomach. Anything higher than that is going to be too much pain for manual laborers to absorb.
I don’t expect people to talk about what compromises they’re willing to make. That’s not how a negotiation is done. But your initial negotiating position is supposed to be inflexible. That’s the rhetoric. The reality is different.
Wow–a Progressive that recognizes the structural unsustainability of our current entitlements, is concerned about generational equity, and doesn’t reflexively advocate “taxing the rich”. I am surprised and impressed.
What’s wrong with these two simple changes:
I know, I know–these are insane ideas. As much as you may despise the free market, though, isn’t competition the only way to reduce health-care costs? Everyone gets a voucher, so you realize your “universal coverage”. Lower costs and universal coverage. Why won’t this work? Wouldn’t just these two changes solve the entire structural problem? Is Paul Ryan the anti-Christ?
I’m telling you–it will work!
Whoops…vouchers to purchase private insurance in lieu of Medicare and Medicaid
why go through all the effort to subsidize the private insurance industry if it just adds unnecessary costs. Cut out the middleman and pocket the difference.
As for means-testing Social Security, that could save money but we do the same thing a different way, which is that once you make over about $109,000 in a year, you no longer have to pay into it. Your income could always drop, or you could make disastrous financial decisions late in your career, and you still have that insurance against the poor house.
Part of the idea of Social Security is that it covers everyone. That helps us maintain support for it, and it promotes the idea that we’re all responsible together for protecting the dignity of the elderly.
I like it that way, and I don’t want to see the principle undermined.
Regarding the advantage of vouchers, the answer is…competition.
Imagine the billions of dollars spent on Medicare and Medicaid distributed to millions of Americans to spend on insurance as they see fit. Insurance companies compete with each other to earn the business of citizens. Doctors compete with each other to earn the business of insurance companies. The profit-driven middle man forces prices down, and quality up.
In your government-run system, the government controls everything, and no one competes with anyone. Prices go up (only avoided by rationing–see Europe), and quality goes down.
This is a ideal situation that simultaneously satisfies conservatives (who love the free market), and progressives (everyone finally has access to quality health care).
you don’t understand the basics of health care provision.
We have insurance monopolies, or near-monopolies in most of states in this country. Health insurance competition works less well than cable television competition. But say you could somehow kill off all the monopolies somehow, you’re still injecting the cost of insurance-profit into the costs of providing medical care. We want profit for the medical care providers, but it’s better to pay them for how cheaply they can keep people healthy rather than for how many needless tests and procedures they can order up. We have the least inefficient health care system in the industrialized world because not only do we pay for insurance companies we don’t need but we give doctor’s totally skewed incentives that don’t exist in other countries.
Rationing is a red herring. Ask 100 Canadians if they are concerned enough about rationing or quality that they’d trade their health care system for ours. Ask 100 Brits. Ask 100 Swiss or Germans or Taiwanese. They’d never trade because their systems are better in almost every single way.
Jesus. Should read ‘most inefficient.’
How high do you think an insurance company should be forced to pay for a medical treatment?
$100,000,000,000,000?
Do you think that number is reasonable to save someone’s life? If not, then you believe in rationing. Your talking points are really tired, man. You’d think that maybe, just maybe, someone who comes here to articulate opposition could say things outside of a simple talking point or scare tactic. Unfortunately for you, we’re all highly informed, so this shit isn’t going to cut it. Try YouTube comments.
simpson is such a fucking asshole.
the vets coming home from Iraq and afghanistan need their benefits more than ever: many of them come home with injuries that would have killed them in Viet Nam and previous wars, simply because the armor is better.
these are people who will have lifelong medical needs. you can bet that if Simpson had a kid fighting overseas, it’d be a different story.
Shirley Sharrod gets scalped. Alan Simpson gets protection.
Obama is showing his “strength” here. He’s resolute. It’s par for the course.
This whole exercise reminds me of the Baucus-Grassley “negotiations.” This time it’s between “moderates” willing to cut SS because that’s what it takes to be considered “serious” and outright SS haters who are almost certainly negotiating in bad faith. Any consensus outcome, if that even happens, will involve cuts to social services up front and tax increases in the future, when Republicans hope to be in control and renege on them.
Besides, we already know exactly what to do to cut the deficit: raise taxes on the rich, cut military spending, and curb the growth of health care costs. We don’t need a bunch of people in nice suits to tell us that.
Unless this time it sets the public on fire to oppose cutting Social Security–on fire enough to torch some Blue Dog tails.
yes. seems to me it more resembles Obama’s “health care summit” where the Rs foolishly ended up with hours and hours of video footage of showing they had no ideas and couldn’t be bothered to stop whining long enough about how many pages the bill was to develop some ideas. the longer Obama doesn’t fire Simpson the more days in the spotlight the R desire to abolish soc sec. it’s one thing to have crazy teabaggers talking about it (and look how much good it’s doing them). this is different
Except Simpson is just a has-been old loon, not somebody anybody even knew was alive until Obama so brilliantly resurrected him and hung him around his neck like a dead bird. I don’t see how he gets even a nanometer of benefit from the whole episode whether he finally dumps him or not. Think of Obama as McCain and Simpson as Palin. Except not even the craziest teabagger or Rich Lowry is going to cream their jeans over Simpson.
I’ll believe Simpson is concerned about the deficit when he advocates ending pensions for the highest paid temporary workers in the country–presidents and members of Congress.
Van Jones and Sherrod lose their jobs but Vilsack and Simpson keep their gigs. It is really hard to spin that one away. ACORN gets killed off and Fox News is still treated as a news organization, now with a front row seat.
It would be nice to see the Administration fire Simpson, nominate Warren, call out Fox News by NAME for tearing the country apart and propose some strong jobs bills that allows the Dems to hammer GOP as obstructing it and call out their bluffs. It would also highlight the absurdity of filibuster. How many Americans know that the House has passed 300 plus bills but Senate Republicans will not even allow votes to happen on any of them? Hardly any at all.
Sorry, I’m not willing to any compromises on this. The rich raided the fund to upfront the costs of St. Ronnie’s tax cuts, and now it’s their turn to pay up their half of the bargain: raising taxes later (as in, now), or reducing spending elsewhere.
Obama and his commission can go fuck themselves on this issue 🙂
That’s a negotiating position, not a position.
this is why his ass should have been canned in the first place.
He, like half the rest of Obama’s “team” is stepping all over Obama’s message, which is too moribund to survive all the scuffmarks. Nobody forced Obama to reanimate these assholes. He and his apologists have no right to whine about what Obama is solely responsible for.