According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is probably going to have to dip into an emergency fund to meet it’s obligations this year. And it will have to start turning people away next year unless the sequester is turned off or money is shifted into the program. The CBPP also estimates that state and local housing authorities will have to deny about 140,000 families housing assistance next year.
These cuts, which housing agencies have already begun to implement (primarily by failing to reissue vouchers to families on waiting lists when other families leave the program), will fall heavily on vulnerable people. Half of the households in the voucher program include seniors or people with disabilities, while most of the rest are families with children. These households typically have incomes well below the poverty line and cannot afford housing without assistance. Some who will go without assistance face extreme hardship, such as living in homeless shelters.
The cuts come at a time when the number of low-income families in need of housing assistance has been rising substantially, there are long waiting lists for vouchers in almost every community, and homelessness remains a persistent problem.
Since many communities accord priority in issuing vouchers to people who are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness, these cuts in housing vouchers will exacerbate homelessness. They will do so at the same time that sequestration also will force cuts in the federal grants that communities use to assist homeless people. For instance, funding for Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG), which help support emergency shelters and temporary financial and other types of assistance for at-risk people to avert homelessness or enable them to move from shelters into permanent housing, could fall by 34 percent in 2013.[2] As a result, more individuals and families will become homeless, and they will remain homeless longer.
Overall, sequestration will cut more than $2 billion in 2013 from housing assistance and community-development programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While cuts in housing vouchers and homeless assistance will probably have the largest impact on low-income families in the near term, sequestration will also contribute to further losses of public housing, impede the development of affordable housing for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, cause more low-income children to be exposed to lead-based paint in older rental housing, and cut counseling services for families at risk of foreclosure.
Meanwhile, oncologists are turning away Medicare patients who need chemotherapy.
“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”
After an emergency meeting Tuesday, Vacirca’s clinics decided that they would no longer see one-third of their 16,000 Medicare patients.
“A lot of us are in disbelief that this is happening,” he said. “It’s a choice between seeing these patients and staying in business.”
To her credit, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) has introduced a bill that would partially rectify this situation.
Robert Reich offers us a random selection of the effects of sequestration:
A tiny sampling: Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is bracing for a cut of about $51 million in its $685 million of annual federal research grants and contracts. The public schools of Syracuse, N.Y., will lose more than $1 million. The housing authority of Joliet, Ill., will take a hit of nearly $900,000. Northrop Grumman Information Systems just issued layoff notices to 26 employees at its plant in Lawton, Okla. Unemployment benefits are being cut in Pennsylvania and Utah…
…the Salt Lake Community Action Program recently closed a food pantry in Murray, Utah, serving more than 1,000 needy people every month. The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is closing a center that gives alcohol and drug treatment to native Alaskans.
Some 1,700 poor families in and around Sacramento, Calif., are likely to lose housing vouchers that pay part of their rents. More than 180 students are likely to be dropped from a Head Start program run by the Cincinnati-Hamilton County (Ohio) Community Action Agency.
He goes on to point out that many government workers are being furloughed, meaning that they only work four days a week. It’s better than being fired, but it comes with a 20% pay cut.
All of this, and I mean ALL of it, must be kept in mind as part of the context of the president’s Chained CPI offer. Now, the man I respect most on budget issues is Robert Greenstein. He offers a sensible assessment of the pros and cons of Chained CPI and ultimately comes to this conclusion:
So, what should policymakers do? The chained CPI is worth considering — but only if two crucial conditions are met.
First, policymakers must accompany the chained CPI with a strong set of measures both to substantially ease the impact on very old people (through an upward benefit adjustment after people have received Social Security for a specified number of years) and to shield low-income people to the greatest extent possible. These measures to protect very old and low-income people should be regarded as an integral, essential component of the chained CPI proposal. Without these measures, the chained CPI should be a non-starter.To be clear, no set of protections can fully shield the very old or the poor. That leads me to the second condition: even with a package of protections, policymakers should not adopt the chained CPI unless it is part of a larger package that shrinks deficits enough to stabilize the debt over the coming decade and does so in a balanced and fair manner.
I’m deeply concerned about the effects of ten years of sequestration budget cuts on an array of vital programs and investments, as well as about the House-passed budget’s stunning cuts in low-income programs, which would greatly increase poverty and destitution and likely produce levels of suffering that we haven’t seen in decades. Instead, we need a balanced deficit-reduction approach that stabilizes the debt without skewering our most vulnerable fellow citizens or compromising the nation’s future by shorting critical investments — one that replaces sequestration and includes substantial revenue from scaling back wasteful, inefficient, or low-priority tax deductions, exclusions, and other “tax expenditures.”
If including a chained CPI proposal with the necessary protections for very old and low-income people can enable such a balanced plan to become law, we should be open to it.
Progressives who strongly dislike the chained CPI proposal should consider whether there is any chance that congressional Republicans will agree to raise revenues by curbing tax expenditures without some significant entitlement changes. And if (as I believe) there is no real chance, what’s preferable: the chained CPI with protections for the very old and the poor, or measures such as converting Medicare to premium support, raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 and risking having some 65- and 66-year-olds go uninsured, and cutting Medicaid deeply and making ours more of a two-tier health care system based on income?
Having said this, I am concerned that Republican leaders will adopt the cynical approach of labeling the chained CPI an “Obama proposal” that they are willing to accept but only as part of a package that raises little or no revenue and, thus, does not force them to make any sizable compromises of their own.
The President has shown his willingness to make substantial concessions to reach an agreement. Will Republicans do the same?
Greenstein’s analysis is what I am adopting as my own. It may be more popular in progressive circles to adopt a hard-line position on Chained CPI, but I can’t see a less harmful way to entice the Republicans to stop the bleeding being caused by the sequester. If they won’t come to the table on this, then it’s back to the drawing board.
To her credit, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) has introduced a bill that would partially rectify this situation.
And because it doesn’t arbitrarily raise taxes or cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, it’s a completely pointless gesture.
You can tell that both parties are unserious about the sequester because there’s no coalition emerging to simply reverse its most pressing issues. It’s all topline litigation over taxes and spending. It’s essentially equivalent to terrorism. The politicians believe they will prosper politically and gain leverage as the situation worsens. They’re burning the village to save it.
If you ask me, actually responsible leaders would not have agreed to randomly cut four trillion dollars worth of deficits if they couldn’t agree on any of the particulars on taxing and spending, but here we are. I just don’t want to hear any crying from partisans this late into the game. This isn’t the plan going wrong, this is the plan going right.
And whose plan is it?
The people who created the sequester in 2011 to deliberately break the government in order to force it to “do its job.”
Are you seriously contending that 2011-13 hasn’t been a period of members of both parties serially getting themselves in too deep, panicking, and resorting to hostage and terrorist tactics over and over and over again?
I guess I don’t understand your point.
Getting in too deep and panicking doesn’t sound like a plan to me.
Nobody chose to just roll over and die, they chose to do something. What did they do? Why are we here?
Who came up with the sequester? The Senate minority leader. And the White House. Why’d they come up with it? Because the House couldn’t deliver. Why couldn’t the House deliver? Because the majority caucus within the House is a caucus-in-name-only but can’t afford to realign in a way that would empower liberals. How did a caucus-in-name-only become the majority party then? Because a reactionary white populist movement coupled with a dismal economic environment won a protest vote. What were they protesting? The remarkable success of the first two years of Obama’s term. Upon winning the protest vote, what was their prescription? Unwriting the last two years of the Obama government and reversing spending. How were they going to do that? By refusing to engage in the routine appropriation process and the creation of new debt. How did the other side keep the government afloat? By agreeing to cut spending not now but later. But was that good enough? Nope. So how do both sides save face and escape this clusterfuck?
They agreed to cut government by 7-10% right away. Which they (well, 80% of them) knew was fucked up. Under the explicit expectation that each side would attempt to hang the other side/win the game of chicken for it and thus be allowed to conduct its own unilateral policy choices.
Compromise was not ever the name of the game. We can prove this by noticing that there’s no compromise caucus assembled to do anything about it. There was an attempt at one in 2011 that didn’t work, the right wing blew it up. They blew up the previous one too (Simpson-Bowles). There’s a compromise caucus on gun control. There’s a compromise caucus on immigration. Those are working groups that are actually working for a change. There isn’t one on the budget because neither side is interested in compromising on fundamental questions on the size and scale of government. It’s a polarized debate without a center or notable defenders of the status quo. They all agree that “something must be done” and they agree it should be done in very large numbers indeed, but they agree on approximately zero of the particulars.
So what are we left with? Terrorist tactics. “Fail to do x, and the nation will suffer y.” Flawed people believing in the myth of their own awesome power and responsibility, caught up in the fog of war.
This isn’t the plan going wrong, this is the plan going right.
It’s very easy to look back at events and declare that however they turned out must have been the plan all along.
You think the Republicans wanted the defense cuts all along?
No, I think they wanted to break the Obama government’s back, humiliate and chasten his supporters, and auger in a new conservative era. We know they believe their own press.
They aren’t any better off on these goals than when they started. But they also aren’t all that much worse off either, despite the radical nature of their opposition and agenda. Which is very frustrating, but understandable given the sequence of events. There’s a lot of flak in the air and it’s hard flying.
So you’re saying you think the GOP did want the big defense cuts to go into effect, because they were part of a package that (you think) will end up harming Obama politically.
I find it implausible that the Republican leadership – the McConnell/Boehner/Cantor leadership – actually intended to see the big defense cuts go through.
It is much more plausible that they just kicked the can down the road, and did not foresee how the SuperCommittee and sequester would play out.
I thought you meant from the beginning? Not just the sequester?
They figured Obama would never fight back at all. They thought he was a pussy. It’s clear they’ve had no Plan B once he showed resistance. The sequester was the admission that they were bankrupt in the planning department.
The Republicans are more desperate than the White House by far. They’ve shown unusual discipline so far. They broke much faster the last couple times. They just don’t air their psychodrama. The ones who go on tv are usually just the crazies. And John McCain and Lindsey Graham…
Is this exercise about political strategy–finally busting the party of No–or about honest policy choices. These arguments keep flip-flopping. The whole point of the Chained-CPI was to offer entitlement cuts in hopes the Republicans would accept a “balanced approach” that included real increases in revenue (not from the working class and poor) by closing business loopholes and increase top marginal tax rates.
Yes there’s lots of pain with the sequester but the political idea is to hold the Republicans responsible for the pain and quickly so there is pressure for them to back down. However, Democrats are so damned conflict averse (or so damned in the tank for Wall Street) that they have not done that. Which makes me think that as far as both parties in Congress are concerned, pain does not matter at all.
Trading off Chained-CPI with WIC is a false choice. It’s saying which of the olds and poors shall we screw the most.
The appropriate answer for progressives is to say, “Stop the madness now!”
The fact that this is even a serious argument within Democratic circles shows how morally bankrupt the Democratic establishment has become.
This plainly is not what I voted for. And it is way off the rails on the “pragmatism” scale.
The answer is still. “Hell No!”
The position of progressive advocacy groups should be uncompromising, but that’s just the reverse of Grover Norquist’s pledge, in the sense that it is not Grover’s job to make concessions. I could adopt the same logic, which is that I am primarily an advocate for seniors and all my efforts should be focused on preserving every last drop of their earned benefits. But that’s not what I am or what this blog is. I am offering analysis from a progressive point of view, but not strict advocacy.
What I advise a progressive organization to do is not the same as what I would advise the president to do, or a lawmaker.
There are people whose job is to strike the compromise. They must be judged differently from the Board of MoveOn.org.
I don’t think you even know what you’re protesting against here…
You’re just generically angry and confused and betrayed. The fog of war in full effect.
I know very well what I am protesting here. I am a very interested party in this discussion of what will happen to my current and future means of support. Framing Chained-CPI versus WIC is essentially like some thug asking who shall I shoot first — the old folks or the women and children?
This is not an abstract argument. There are real and serious results of continuing to cover for this sort of triangulation.
And it will hurt Democrats badly in 2014 unless the Democratic caucus in Congress gets up on its hind legs and says “Hell. No!”
Democrats with comfortable incomes haven’t a clue what Chained-CPI will mean to folks who live almost exclusively on Social Security.
And it will hurt Democrats badly in 2014 unless the Democratic caucus in Congress gets up on its hind legs and says “Hell. No!”
Why would the Democratic caucus need to stand up and block a package that was written to include a big tax hike? You don’t think the GOP would kill it themselves, just like they’ve done the last several times we went through this drama?
If you’ve been reading Booman’s posts over the last couple of days, this budget isn’t posturing. It’s sole purpose is to make a deal. And Republicans demanded that Obama include a provision like chained CPI in his budget to get them to the table. So the premise that many here have accepted is that one way or another, a deal will be made and Obama’s budget is the starting point.
But my reply was to Tarheel Dem, not BooMan.
Besides, a budget offered completely seriously, that includes a big tax hike, isn’t going to have any better chance of garnering Republican support than a budget with a big tax hike that is offered as posturing.
The key here is your misuse of the words “sole purpose.”
That’s why you are missing that what Joe in Lowell is saying and what I am saying are not mutually exclusive.
In the past, Obama offered a deal that Boehner was prepared to accept, so Obama blew it up with an assist from Eric Cantor.
That was posturing.
Obama’s offer now is more sincere, but no more acceptable to the Norquist pledge people. The difference is that Obama is not negotiating with the House anymore. He’s negotiating with the Senate, and he has to offer them something real that will piss off his base something fierce, or there’s no chance of fixing the sequester. And there ARE Republicans in the Senate who want to make a deal because the sequester is a fucking disaster for the Chamber of Commerce, for defense contractors, for big agriculture, and for countless constituents.
What Joe is saying is that the Republicans will not take the deal. What I am saying is that they might and that it would be irresponsible not to try.
Thanks for clarifying.
Giving all of your arguments the benefit of the doubt, it seems to me that Obama’s most compelling defense presumes that the deal is feasible and will happen. Because the only real defense in my opinion is that the sequester will kill people and throw thousands into poverty. If the deal doesn’t happen, I don’t foresee any benefit for Democratic politicians in offering or supporting this budget. No serious person believes that Obama needs to show more of a willingness to compromise than he already has and all he’ll have done with this budget is shift focus to the rift in the Democratic party and away from the crazy in the Republican party; elevate the Republican position by displaying bipartisan consensus for benefit cuts, and make it more difficult for Democrats to win back the House in 2014. So as much as I don’t want to see benefit cuts, my opinion of Obama will diminish if no budget passes.
I think it is fair to argue that if no deal happens that the president’s image will be somewhat tarnished, at least with the progressive base. Unless there is a vote, however, I do not think Republican challengers of Democratic incumbents will get much mileage out of arguing that the president was willing to cut Social Security benefits.
However, Democrats will be able to argue that the president has bent over backwards and found no reciprocation.
So, I still don’t see this as a problem unless there is a vote on a deal that fails, and a lot of Democrats vote for it and almost no Republicans do. Only in this last scenario are Dems going to be endangering themselves for no reason.
I’d also point out that Social Security has been tweaked before. They screwed with the COLA in 1977. In 1978, the Dems lost seats in the House and Senate, but they still won 277 House seats and 58 Senate seats.
Reagan raised the retirement age in 1983 and won in a landslide in 1984.
I think people are getting a little overexcited with the idea that changing the formula for the COLA is going to upend the universe.
Where’s the big tax hike in this package?
The one on the 1% and their deductions.
Like I said, you don’t seem to know what you’re even protesting against.
Where in the President’s 2014 budget is there a tax hike? I’ve looked at the budget documents and there is nothing explicit about increased taxes apparent to me. Just some hopes for ending unnamed deductions.
The net effect of the Fiscal Cliff deal turned out to be regressive with regard to taxes because the increase in marginal rates generated less revenue than the increase in the payroll tax. The obvious way to reverse that effect would be to undo the cap on the payroll tax.
Here are the tax provisions. Keep in mind that Chained CPI is, in effect, a tax increase ($100 billion over ten years, or $10 billion/year).
I see as many new loopholes for business in that list as closing off revenue. After the Fiscal Cliff experience, this looks like the set-up for a pro-business tax cut bonanza.
The good provisions in this list will not make it through negotiations; they are the same ones that fell by the wayside in January.
But the fact is that what I think about the matter really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. The people no longer matter to this Congress.
You right that it doesn’t matter whether you like the tax-hike proposals.
What matters is that the Republicans won’t like them, and will refuse any deal that includes them.
That the tax hikes are structured as loophole-closing reforms, which Romney ran on in 2012, is only going to make the Republicans’ rejection of the deal look that much worse.
I think anyone who doesn’t recognize the President’s agenda as a brilliant game-theory move, nor recognize that the media has been extraordinarily generous to his cause and his actual lack of ideological compromise so far, is deeply confused, yes.
The idea that Obama’s been biding his time to stick it to the poor and pensioner classes is…about as laughable as it gets.
Choose between Social Security and WIC: Isn’t that the topic of this diary?
Where exactly is the win?
I can’t be too upset with the people who don’t get that Obama is bluffing.
They are being bluffed by someone who is very, very good at this.
The idea that Obama’s been biding his time to stick it to the poor and pensioner classes is…about as laughable as it gets.
Remember when it was the Palinites who loved to explain that Obama’s entire political career was a set-up for his Manchurian-candidate presidency?
WHO IS THE REAL BARACK OBAMA, BAZOOKA JOE? WHO?!?
” If they won’t come to the table on this, then it’s back to the drawing board.”
And Chained CPI will be on that drawing board…..forever. All the trade offs that are received for CPI will slowly be removed over the years, all the promises made to the old and poor will be forgotten. Tax cuts will be restored (except for the middle class), the deficit will be expanded.
But Chained CPI will be written in stone, forever.
.
This.
If the Democrats were to cut a deal that involved a permanent change, they should get some permanent change in return, not something that needs to be supported in every year’s appropriations bills.
You’re right, the GOP is gonna up and cancel preschool one year. Just like they did in bloodred Okla-goddamned-homa.
I realize now that, at root, this pathetic interparty conflict is simply because the President has failed to convince the chronic pessimists that liberalism is winning. At an accelerating rate. And that what little opposition remains is so bankrupt and decrepit that we don’t even need to regard it as anything more than dying throes. Heck, we don’t even have to wait for them to die out, this president has shown he flummox them into fucking up over insignificant and fleeting sums of money.
Your enemy is not all-powerful, it’s not even capable anymore. They’re just sad losers.
How many state legislatures do progressive liberals control? How has that changed since 2008? How instrumental has the Democratic Party been in the past generation in moving forward progressive agendas in economics? Has the power of corporations increased or decreased in the past four years?
If this this is indeed the death throes of the conservative ideology and power, would someone kindly be merciful.
Booman, with all due respect, you are wrong. If chained CPI the Democrats lose any hope of holding the Senate or the House. And they give a big boost to Republican presidential candidates in 2016. Once chained CPI is passed what is to stop Republicans from demanding more concessions and willing DLC Dems from going along with it? I doubt the Republicans will ever agree to significant tax increases and whatever tax increases they do agree to (likely regressive in nature) they will pin the blame on the Democrats.
As a policy issue it is a failure also. Less money will circulate in the economy. More people will suffer, become homeless, burden their children, die earlier than they need to.
It’s bad politics and bad policy and just plain bad. And it won’t cut the deficit either.
I just hope that enough Democrats in the House join with Tea Party Republicans against tax increases to torpedo any “Grand Bargain.” Because it’s a bargain only for the very rich, not for the rest of us.
Actually implementing chained CPI would be the political loser you describe.
I’ve made a number of comments about the President’s budget not actually being the political stinker some others are asserting, but that is based on the example of 2011, when the “on the table” benefit cuts were never implemented.
I respectfully suggest that things are great deal more complicated that you are presenting them.
I think what is going on here is that people are making a lot of assumptions that are either unwarranted or unsubstantiated.
Yes, we can start with the premise that cuts to Social Security are unpopular and that politicians who vote for those cuts will be punished. Voting for cuts creates a political liability, that is true.
However, there will never be a vote in which just Democrats vote for such cuts. There will never be a vote in which SS is even the main focus. For Chained CPI to happen, it will have to be one small part of a much bigger agreement that will have all kinds of effects on both parties and the president.
Most importantly, Chained CPI won’t happen unless the Norquist pledge is abandoned by the Republican leadership and dozens of Republican lawmakers.
It won’t happen unless it is accompanied by at least a near-term end to these constant debt-ceiling fiascos.
And it won’t happen without a budget that restores services to the needy and that addresses many of the president’s key priorities.
Now, there is also the status quo to discuss. In addition to being a total fucking disaster for the poor and the needy, far in excess of Chained CPI, it is also the best argument ever made that government can’t do anything right. It is also a senseless, brutal austerity program. The assumption that we can tolerate this morally because we’ll eventually reap some political reward for it, is a bit callous and sanguine, in my opinion.
There is no assurance that the blame will be properly assigned.
For me, there is a great need to end the sequester, to break the no-tax pledge, to demonstrate that the government can function, and to end this period of constant crisis.
If the status quo wasn’t so horrible, I’d be more willing to ride it out.
And, I simply don’t agree that striking a Grand Bargain will be poison for Democratic candidates. It will create at least as much chaos and political vulnerability on the Republican side, which is why we are having such difficulty getting a deal.
That is true whichever way it goes because the Democrats have done such a great job of muddying up the issues by not being forthright about where they stand. Conradism is killing the Democratic Party through the fuzzing of rhetoric.
The appropriate thing for the Democratic Caucus to say about Chained-CPI is “Hell No!” That is the politically beneficial thing to say and it is the right thing for policy. Social Security should not be a part of the budget talks because the Social Security Trust Fund is a creditor of the US (seniors have be loaning the government money) and what Chained-CPI really represents is a partial default by the government on its obligations to the creditors who have the least political power in the system–ordinary taxpayers.
You want to cut entitlements. Start with the legislative branch budget.
I am inclined to agree with you here. We face fiscal challenges with retiring boomers, and these proposals begin a slippery slope that Dems will no longer hold the high ground on. Robert Greenstein argues that chained cpi and means testing (not pegged to inflation) are the best of a bad lot, but I’m not sure. Apparently groups that support Obamacare are rallying the vested interests to more medical cost controls. That’s where the real money is. Until soaring medical expenses are reined in we’re all on a hellbound train to nowhere.
I have to disagree with the idea that this is a slippery slope. Cuts in retiree benefits are about the least-slipperly slope I can imagine. Look at the damage the $700 billion cut in Medicare Advantage subsidies did to Obama.
These programs are still the third rail. Anyone who touches them gets shocked very badly, and no one who sees that is eager to touch them again for a long time.
Most folks who look at the coming retirement boom say that current proposals are “modest” and that further adjustments will need to be made down the road. Yea, benefit cuts are still the third rail – look how Walden is already fanning the flames. And right there you see how R’s operate – obscure their real objectives. If R’s recapture all the levers, will they actually implement the Ryan plan they all seem to support? That remains to be seen, but with fiscal pressures only marginally addressed, what will they do? Raise taxes?
Since I’m 62 and my hands are essentially slabs of meat that can no longer do what I did to make money, I say sure, my $273 a month in SS payments that swelled to $277 this year is just fine, maybe too generous. At this rate I’ll hit $300 by 2020.
Steve, I’m with you on this. It’s a macro problem and throwing people off the lifeboat isn’t the way to fix things.
This is so stupid. Politicians futz around with social security all the time. Every 10-20 years.
Ronald Reagan and a Democratic congress changed the retirement age, among all sorts of unprogressive stuff in 1983, and nobody villainized them then or now for it.
The third rail is a myth and the president is infinitely better at politics than you.
Also in 1983 they started taxing SS benefits. At first that maybe only effected 5% but now it is in the 40-45% range of all recipients having it taxed. The thresholds for this in the tax code are NOT indexed to inflation. The fact that this significant burden on SS recipients is not on anyone’s radar is disturbing. I believe it hurts social security recipients just as much if not more (in dollar amount) than the whole chained cpi thing does.
You can thank President Clinton for that
Chained CPI would be a permanent change, while stopping the bleeding from the sequester cuts would be a temporary gain, subject to annual appropriations votes.
I don’t trust the Republicans enough to support a deal that would require them to keep up their end in the future.
Fine.
Now tell me how to get cancer patients their chemo, keep 140,000 people from being tossed out into the street, get people back their alcohol counseling, restore the Head Start slots, get government workers unfurloughed, restore our research grants, and prevent the credit agencies from downgrading our ratings.
Tell me how to do it.
I’m all ears.
what happens to all these people if we lose to the GOP in a bloodbath in 2014? I’m with Steven D above, this is bad policy, bad politics, just bad all around. We’re looking at a situation not only in which the GOP is going to run against Dems as “destroyers of Social Security,” which they are now and will continue to do, Boehner’s latest remarks notwithstanding; no, we’re looking at incumbent Dems potentially having to run against their own president in order to survive. And we know how that tends to work out.
Let’s not forget, the sequester was intended to bring both sides to the table in a grand spending bargain. That means “entitlement reform” was expected to pass the Dems even though it would require cuts that we should not ever bend on, whether on principle, on sound policy reasons, or for political considerations. And this is where that’s gotten us.
Right or wrong, President Obama’s going to get nothing but increased pushback on this issue going forward, and if he doesn’t find a way to make the chained-CPI thing go away, or worse, if he gets it passed over the popular opposition that it’s generated, we’re all going to pay for it huge sooner rather than later. And that loss will be visited first on the very people paying for this failed state of negotiations now.
if he doesn’t find a way to make the chained-CPI thing go away
Linking it to a big tax increase, as he’s done every time this idea came up, is how he has made it go away in every previous iteration of this drama. Remember when it looked like Boehner might actually try to sell his caucus on a deal with $1 trillion in tax hikes, so Obama increased his demand to $1.4 trillion?
Doing so is a way of making certain that the proposal will never get past the Republicans, and as we saw after the 2011 debt ceiling talks, there are no lasting political effects.
If that’s what he’s doing, then what’s the point? The President wants a deal, but he throws in something unacceptable because he doesn’t really want a deal, he just wants to look like he wants a deal so that the GOP will look bad for blowing up the deal he really didn’t want in the first place, because he wanted a different deal that he’ll never get either. Over and over again since July 2011. It plays out like some endless game of chicken.
If we could count on winning back the House in 2014 while retaining the Senate and either winning back 60+ seats or effectively reforming the filibuster, it might make at least some political sense, that is if you’re willing to overlook the two years of bloodletting and pain it would require.
But none of that’s going to happen anyway. The only way this really makes sense is if entitlement cuts were always intended to happen in some form or other, and it’s just been a matter of finding the least painful formulation that the GOP will accept in return for raising revenues.
I don’t think President Obama wants to screw over the poor and disadvantaged, it just looks like he never expected to get a good outcome from the beginning, and that’s affected his posture throughout all these negotiations. Josh Marshall had a good piece up on this a couple weeks ago, and makes an interesting point near the end:
My impression is that this desire to achieve a Grand Bargain blurs the perception within the Obama Administration as to what losses are acceptable in making it happen.
But, whatever the end goal has been, I think this episode has already done real political damage to the President and to the party as a whole. There’s still time to mitigate that damage, maybe even erase it, but for the time being it looks potentially pretty bad.
The point, hz, is that there are going to be confrontations with the Republicans over budget and spending matters – their debt ceiling games, the federal budget, the fiscal cliff, and on and on – and Obama is using politics to win those confrontations.
Also, don’t be so pessimistic about 2014. The Democrats were going to lose the Senate in 2012, remember?
I don’t how much clearer I can get that I simply don’t agree with the assumption that the Democrats are going to face a bloodbath over chained CPI.
If there were a vote on just Chained-CPI, it would fail. And people would be pissed at whoever voted for it. But that will never happen.
If there is a budget agreement that includes Chained-CPI, it will be a bipartisan vote that gets a lot of Republican votes and that is officially supported, loudly, by the Republican leadership.
They’ll all get together in the Rose Garden and slap each other on the back and they’ll get wonderful press, and those most vulnerable to electoral defeat will have voted against it.
If, and I do mean if, such an agreement is made, the Republicans will have traded their anti-tax absolutism for a relatively small reduction in Social Security, and they’ll also allow is to trade a brutal austerity program for one that is spaced out and easier to manage.
If no agreement is made and the Budget Control Act of 2011 continues to rip apart our government like a broken timing chain, then we will also suffer as a party. We’ll suffer because people will continue to lose faith in government. We’ll suffer because we’ll prove that we can’t help our own constituents. We’ll suffer because the economy will suffer. Most of all, real people will suffer and die because they can’t get the medical care they need or the loan they need or the daycare they need or the counseling they need or hours at work that they need.
So, please don’t act like this an easy decision. It’s an agonizing decision.
How is it even an agonizing decision?
I’m not one of those embarrassing propagandists who refuse to call the CPI adjustment a benefit cut like The People’s View. If it’s not a cut, why does the White House have a page detailing the protections from the change to the poor, elderly, infirm, etc.? You don’t protect against something benign. There’s more written about who’s exempted from the policy change, than who’s left.
But the middle class will be fine. They can take the baby hit. Social security wasn’t some phenomenal deal to begin with. If the GOP screws up so badly as to pass anything even vaguely resembling the administration budget, they just passed a good dozen progressive policy changes in exchange for…nothing. They get nothing. What is the compromise? Seriously, where is it, administration flacks? It should be easy, if anything existed. Which it doesn’t. I can’t tell you how funny I found Ezra Klein, thinkprogress, etc. failing to come up with ways the budget was “bad for the left.” There aren’t any except for this one social security tweak that’s actually also a fucking tax hike (because with this administration, of course it is). Somehow, nobody’s cottoned on to the implications here. And the media is blaming Republicans for not compromising on the deficit, it’s a beautiful thing.
They get nothing. They get to ding social security, with a gigantic asterisk attached? That’s it, from the people who wanted to privatize it wholesale instead? The right gets nothing! They would have to commit ritual seppuku while Democrats…stub their toe a little bit. And laugh all the way to the bank.
I don’t how much clearer I can get that I simply don’t agree with the assumption that the Democrats are going to face a bloodbath over chained CPI.
“Bloodbath” was probably the wrong term for me to go for there. The truth is, things can’t get much worse in the House as far as the raw number of seats we control goes. We could very well lose the Senate in ‘014, but not nearly enough seats to give a veto-proof majority. So in that sense, we might be looking at President Obama spending his last 2 years being labeled “King Veto” from the right. Although he’d probably be more accommodating than that, but that’s a separate discussion.
In any event, I don’t assume that this will necessarily happen as a result of Chained CPI, but I’m pretty certain that it’s doing damage to the Dems right now in the short term.
If there were a vote on just Chained-CPI, it would fail. And people would be pissed at whoever voted for it. But that will never happen.
If there is a budget agreement that includes Chained-CPI, it will be a bipartisan vote that gets a lot of Republican votes and that is officially supported, loudly, by the Republican leadership.
They’ll all get together in the Rose Garden and slap each other on the back and they’ll get wonderful press, and those most vulnerable to electoral defeat will have voted against it.
I don’t know who you think is watching. Since I don’t live in the US and don’t get the full media impact that comes with that, I can only guess how it must look there to the average semi-informed citizen. But I would bet that most people who only get their news from TV at the end of a long day are seeing this battle almost exclusively in terms of Chained CPI, with a steady beat of debt debt debt deficit debt in the background. I would bet that most of them have absolutely no concept as to the scope of these budget agreements. To them, it’s all Chained CPI, or nearly enough so.
We can’t even agree on what the budget agreements mean here, and we’re really paying attention (granted, on a sliding scale of time, talent, and experience). Compared to the bulk of voters in the political center, I’d venture to say that the average participant here is damned near a Rhodes Scholar when it comes to current events.
You get the point. The media will eat up a Grand Bargain because that’s the sort of political behavior they reward, but people watching at home will have already absorbed the idea that it involved cuts to Social Security, and the GOP are going to be right there to continue driving that perception right up until November 2014, and probably for the next several decades to boot.
If, and I do mean if, such an agreement is made, the Republicans will have traded their anti-tax absolutism for a relatively small reduction in Social Security, and they’ll also allow is to trade a brutal austerity program for one that is spaced out and easier to manage.
And nobody will know about it except for a handful of political junkies and insiders–and the Republicans, who’ll proceed to run a massive coordinated spin campaign on it like they always do–and they’ll get away with it to an agonizing degree.
At this point, though, like you say we need to do something to avoid the forced austerity measures if it’s still possible. I agree, it would be irresponsible not to try.
So, please don’t act like this an easy decision. It’s an agonizing decision.
I don’t think it’s easy. If anything I guess what I’m really guilty of here is a measure of impotent hand-wringing, because my real problem is that we’re at this crisis point at all, and with how we got here. I think the President always wanted his Grand Bargain first and foremost, and it was always intended to rein in entitlement benefits to some degree. I think that was never necessary, and set us up for a poor negotiation stance from the outset, and now here we are.
Sez I from my armchair. Please don’t feel obligated to explain to me that it’s not as easy as it looks; I understand that very well. Or pretty well.
For Big Pharma it will be an interesting question whether they will raise holy hell with the Rep who don’t ‘fix’ the chemo/medicare quandry and/or whether they bite a big bullet and subsidize costs for the most expensive (money making) chemos to the oncologists. Most of the most costly chemos will no longer be money makers without Medicare.
And then there’s research. Without Defense funding, NIH will no longer be able to run all the trials so that the drug producers can get their drugs approved. The research is their lifeline.
So, when the sequester starts to close doors on the biggest takers of all, big business, it’s going to be strange bedfellows for the Head Start families.
Win back the House.
So, wait and hope, based on a long shot?
Even if I found that morally acceptable (and I don’t), I’d want to know what the president should be pretending to do in the meantime?
Surrendering the tax issue would do it, but that’s a political non-starter for a White House that has staked so much reputation on it.
Ironically the way to escape the deficit politics trap would be for the government to go back to running an even larger deficit for a while, while the administration takes all the heat (they can’t run anymore, so there’s even some logic to it).
I’m still going with your explanations in previous discussions — the whole point is to make a deal — but I’ve got some questions:
Would it not have been good for the President’s revenue-generating items in his budget to include generating revenue specifically for Social Security? E.g. raising the income cap for SS contributions and/or guaranteeing the payback of SS trust funds that have been used for other purposes?
Why does Greenstein allude to 10 years of sequestration budget cuts?
If President Obama does with the victims of the sequester what he did with the victims of Newtown — e.g. bring the Medicare chemotherapy patients to Capitol Hill — could he not pressure the Republicans to make a deal that requires less of a betrayal by Democrats?
I’m for raising the cap. However, it’s hard to do. Aside from the Republicans’ simple refusal to even consider such a move, it would break Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than a quarter million dollars a year. Even the Chained CPI proposal breaks that pledge, but to a far lesser degree and in a disguised manner.
Raising the cap is the fairest way to deal with the shortfall in revenues for Social Security, but that doesn’t make it feasible. The president could propose it as a kind of strong initial negotiating position or to move the debate, but he’d pay a price for it without receiving much benefit. It would also divide his own caucus.
Finally, the cap itself is a good idea. Social Security is an insurance program and people won’t support it if it is priced wrong.
Social Security is not a replacement for a marginal income tax rate. You wouldn’t pay $40,000 year for old age insurance, so there needs to be a cut off at some point.
In any case, I believe that Obama agreed to include Chained CPI in his budget during his initial dinner with the 12 Republicans senators as a good faith demonstration that he’s actually serious about a Grand Bargain and isn’t just intent on bashing the Republicans over the head.
It’s there to show that he’s willing to piss off his base. It’s a first move that the GOP senators wanted to see before they would agree to piss of their base and discuss revenues.
If they conned the president into making this move, we will know shortly.
Yep, if Obama raised the cap, it would be a betrayal of Congressional staffers, White House staffers, and others in that shaky financial situation between the cap and $200,000. Mmmm, do I smell how this policy is being made.
If Social Security Retirement were ever short of funds, raising the cap would be one possible consideration for a solution. As that won’t happen until 2033 or 2047 (depending on which actuaries are more correct — and the later date is more rational), why is anyone advocating for raising it now?
I’m only partly surprised the rich don’t want it raised. It’ll leave a giant pool of money for them to raid.
Except the new giant pool of money to raid would come out of their pockets. And they oppose in principle any tax increase on themselves.
So we really are stuck until the 99% figure out that they outnumber the 1% and move quickly and politically to work their will.
Which means that I probably better start saving cardboard for when I get foreclosed on and evicted. Hint: Unlike earlier seniors, there are a lot of Baby Boomers who are still paying mortgages and the parents’ share of the children’s student loans.
If you raise the cap now, likely you can lower the rate.
Is that on the table? (Other than among some obscure lefties.) Are you proposing a revenue neutral change in raising the cap and lowering the rate?
Conceptually, it has pluses and minuses. On the plus side it would make the funding of Social Security less regressive. However, the minus is that it shifts the program from a paid for earned benefit to a less paid for benefit which is more easily demonized by the regressives as welfare and we know what happens to welfare programs in this country. All in at the same rate is a feature of the program that has made it so broadly acceptable for so long. Yes, it does favor the real middle class over the working class and working poor, but alternatives would end up disfavoring those two groups even more.
OK, but what about guaranteeing Social Security revenue for Social Security? How could the party of fiscal responsibility argue with that? And that would go a long way to deflecting criticism of how Obama wants to slash it. Besides, raising the cap without a restriction like that would be meaningless.
You know what happened to AdultBasic in PA — the fund created by money from the tobacco lawsuit settlement established to offer healthcare to residents who made too much to be eligible for Medicaid. Under Rendell, it was raided by the general budget until premiums had to be raised and then the whole program was abolished under Corbett. If progressives underestimate Obama’s support of Social Security, he can easily prove it by protecting it against the fate of AdultBasic.
I would expect the same people who were willing during 2009-10 to face the prospect of needless suffering, and even deaths, among the un- and underinsured, in order to get the public option included, and who were militating to kill the bill otherwise, to do the same sort of thing now.
Consistency — and they don’t recognize any higher virtue — demands it.
When the House Repubs see the numbers thrown out by CBPP, they aren’t horrified, they are delighted. These are the demonic wasteful gub’mint programs for the undeserving poor which they have hated all their lives, which they have brazenly used the debt to defund, and now they are seeing these programs receive large cuts and kill the poor they hate. Total victory.
They were supposed to hate the “defense” cuts more. They don’t. Especially when the prez did not attempt to maximize the pain of the cuts by simply ending long running weapons programs or closing bloated bases across Republand. But it likely wouldn’t have mattered, today’s Repubs hate social spending more than they love military spending.
What we have now is endemic paralysis and chaos in the national government, which was the goal of the “conservative” movement. They cannot be fully defeated as a result of their election system rigging, and hence among the limited options to rectify the budget (that they intentionally destroyed), none can be achieved. Neither party can defeat the other (although a Repub takeover of Congress now appears more likely than a Dem one), and there is no real compromise possible. Repubs simply will not raise the revenue needed to restore solvency. They will not.
Repubs refuse to fund infrastucture or do anything to aid aggregate demand, so long term deficits will continue, which they can demogogue incessantly. And cuts made during the 8 years of Cheney have already so lamed the regulatory state that even more cuts basically mean shutdown–again, what Repubs want.
In the face of this, it’s hard to believe that chained CPI will somehow restore sanity to DC or can possibly be the basis of some compromise resolution. It’s hardly a solution to permanently destroy the lives of many SS recipients in order to save other unfortunate people dependent on other programs. Many lives are going to be destroyed as a result of the Great Battle to return to the Robber Baron past that the “conservative” movement and its (white) adherents have forced upon the country. This is a war the “conservative” movement willed on the country, costs be damned.
The people who rely on these programs are unquestionably the casualties of this mindless war of reaction. “Conservatives” are always happy to demand sacrifices as long as someone else pays the price.
What would happen if Obama submitted a truly progressive budget clearly saying that the cause of the continued slow economy is caused by austerity? Imagine uncapping the SS tax limit, proposing another 5% on people making over a million. Restoring some of the safety net that’s being whittled away.
What would happen? The Republicans would refuse to vote for it. But all of those things would be on the table. Instead of arguing how much to cut SS we should be talking about raising taxes on the wealthy.
Or, he could just say that the sequester is here to stay and “fuck you, America,” which would amount to the same thing.
But the Republicans would own the sequester.
So, would the president.
More importantly, so would all the people getting royally screwed by it.
So a Democratic President is unable to get away from Republican plans to dismantle the government?
Then why vote? Seriously, if the choice is between the Republicans and Democrats who look like Republicans why vote? That’s exactly what happened in 2010.
You lived through the Bush years, so why are you asking me stupid questions?
The realization that Bob in Portland is expressing is an important one. I’ve never encouraged anyone not to vote for a Democrat, but here we have a situation where the vast majority of the public wants policy A, voted into office a nominee who gave mixed messages about policy A over the nominee who supported policy B, and gave more seats to the party who supports policy A. To end up with policy B (which can’t happen without the support of both existing parties) demonstrates that our government isn’t responsive to the electorate. Let’s at least acknowledge that in this case, democracy is a sham.
Ooooohhh, lookeeee. Mark Warner has formed a bipartisan gang in the Senate. Seems to me that every time Senate Democrats form a gang, it’s the people who get mugged.
If only anything else being operated by the federal government were running as smoothly and cost effectively and 100% solvent for at least the next twenty years (actuarially it’s closer to thirty-five years) WITHOUT a single program change. But those would be real problems that are difficult. Much easier to bamboozle the country into believing that starving “granny” is a solution to a non-existent problem.
Social Security has been cut enough already
it’s all about placating the hostage takers as opposed to making them pay the political price for complete ownership of this economic pain-inducing fiasco as part of a grand plan to look like the only adult in the room – which is itself intended to give them complete ownership of all that, but sadly doesn’t accomplish that due to the willingness to inflict some pain on the innocent of a kind that has nothing to do with the deficit or that will have any impact on it.
It all reads like a self-skewering to me.
What I don’t understand is, all these justifications for BHO’s long proposing the SS cuts by the apologists, have been based on some “bluffing” premise that is inextricably intertwined with the “adult in the room” goal that assumes they’ll never go for it, making him the “adult in the room”. I’d ask first of all, why even bother with the charade given the likely response from the “one term pres” crowd, given the futility of it as even you seem to assume, the potential political price to be paid down ballot, and the damage to his legacy his “willingness” to cut it is likely gonna irreversibly result in at this point? None of us know or have known with absolute certainty what the final result to be, we’ve long had ONLY his “willingness” to cut it to criticize or condemn, and that remains intact regardless of the outcome now. It’s ALWAYS been assumed they likely wouldn’t “come to the table”, much as it’s always been assumed that BHO would be willing to make the cut if they did. To say otherwise is tantamount to calling the “messiah” a liar, no?
Cutting SS ONLY makes sense in pursuit of his “Grand Bargain”, and for which he’ll gladly do it http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/dont-cut-social-security/274868/ Sorry, most aren’t gonna care about any figurative bowl of water he can wash his hands like Pontius Pilate in, that all these rationales represent. It’s that willingness that has damned him on this issue from the start, and few care about the reasons for his willingness, and indeed, they don’t matter to what I’d contend is a likely majority that know and understand them. But by all means, do feel free to ridicule those people for simply not being able to grasp the complexities of it all.
Sure, you can maybe make the case (but I’ve yet to see that done in a comparative and detailed way http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/12/1201274/-Chained-CPI-would-cut-benefits-to-millions-of-chil
dren)that his proposed 1.8T cuts will be less harmful in some and perhaps important ways — the only justification for the desperation — than what the 1.2T in cuts the sequester will offer, but that’s just part of it. What about the absence of other deficit-reducers, etc http://www.alternet.org/10-facts-obama-doesnt-want-you-know-about-his-social-security-slashing-budge
t-plan?page=0%2C0 or the context of all of this – deficit-reduction through austerity the efficacy and advisability of which is in question? http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/12/1201205/-Abbreviated-pundit-roundup-Reaction-to-the-preside
nt-s-budget-isn-t-pretty
And how exactly does this concern of your hero
“Having said this, I am concerned that Republican leaders will adopt the cynical approach of labeling the chained CPI an “Obama proposal” that they are willing to accept but only as part of a package that raises little or no revenue and, thus, does not force them to make any sizable compromises of their own.”
dovetail with your recent mockery of those who’ve expressed the identical concern based on presumably, the ramifications of it? What exactly is his concern there, other than that the dems wll own it, despite the republican reluctant agreement to it, going into the 2014 elections?
If that’s the case, and his analysis is as flawed on that matter as you’ve suggested it is for all others to have such concerns, does that make any of the rest of his analysis suspect in your mind? It seems like it should given that much of the rest of his stuff is contigent upon that “concern” being misplaced or in error.
Perhaps maybe you can take the time outta your busy life to explain how he wasn’t expressing a “concern” about what BHO “owning” it could mean in 2014? I don’t see how it can otherwise be deconstructed/interpreted.
you like to mix others’ arguments with my own.
From the very beginning, even when was first candidate for the nomination, he has always shown a willingness to work in some way to deal with Social Security’s insolvency. It would be pretty amazing if he just suggested that it wouldn’t really be a problem during his presidency so he had no plan for dealing with it. Social Security began paying out more than it takes in during his first term and is now profiting entirely on interest payments. By 2023, it will be flat-out losing money, which means the general fund can’t borrow from it, which means (guess what?) we have to borrow from somewhere else, which means either more debt or higher taxes, which means (because never more taxes) higher debt or slashed programs.
So, really, you’re treating this as a 100% political matter because you think (hope?) that doing nothing, letting the sequester fester, and making the misery index soar above any level approximating what the president is suggesting here, will redound overwhelmingly in the Democrats’ favor and lead to VICTORY!!
All this talk about Social Security doesn’t affect the budget is a simplistic and misleading distortion that relies on people being too stupid to understand that raiding the SS fund is part of the budget process and serves as a subsidy to keep services high or taxes low.
If the government is taking in less than it pays out, it’s a problem, whether it’s Social Security or anything else. Yes, we can run a permanent deficit without a problem. Our system basically depends on it. But it should be within limits. I haven’t heard any serious economist whether it by Krugman or anyone else suggest that we don’t have to get our long-term deficits under control.
So, start there.
Then deal with the reality that are different ways to deal with Social Security’s insolvency and relying 100% on raising the cap isn’t happening. Then tell me why you’re are so willing to watch people go without chemotherapy or lose 20% of their income or their job or their day care or their substance abuse counseling or their school lunch or their housing just so you pursue a long shot gamble that it will hand us control of the House of Representatives?
I’m not willing to make that bet.
“you like to mix others’ arguments with my own.”
I’m not mixing anything. You made the case that you two were in agreement, and included the content that prompted my parting question. So, your evasion here leaves that question basically unaddressed and unanswered. Given that his concern appears to be that whatever exoneration value his analysis has could be outweighed by the potential for damage for the dems in 2014 http://thehill.com/homenews/house/293703-dems-fear-obamas-social-security-cut-will-haunt-them-in-201
4, it seems to me at the least given your prior mockery of those who harbor such concerns, it should apply equally to him (and it is silly imo, since he seems to be making a “least harm” case in terms of sacrificial lambs, knowing that it is at best a token effort they won’t accept, hence his 2014 concerns) which could raise reasonable concerns about the quality of his analysis (given how silly/stupid/in the grips of irrational fear all we 2014 concern trolls are) or in the alternative, logging him as one that thinks you’re all wet with your pretty much summary dismissal of those 2014 concerns. I don’t see how any of that makes a strong justification case for the inclusion of chained-cpi in BHO’s budget, and you’ve apparently, merely adopted the now standard and accepted apologist pov on this matter, minus the concerns about 2014, which is that political conditions neccesitated that move, while simultaneously conceding that he sent in an ant to move the elephant which is intent upon holding the line on tax increases. It was an already tried exercise in futility that was formalized by its inclusion in his budget proposals, that has served only as a counterproductive catalyst for self-defeating “change”. Most see this as the sow’s ear, but you keep shooting for the silk purse if you want.
I made and have been making the same case as is made here http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/14/1201347/-Political-nihilism which is basically diametrically opposed to the one he made and that you’ve adotped — minus the concerns about 2014 — which is basically yeah, screw what they want because they aren’t gonna be satisfied unless and until they get at least 95% of what they want, and this SS thing is nothing more than the taking of a risk knowing there is NO reward. And gee, if they get 95% of what they want, does that lead now and into the future to less or more human misery in this country than the sequester do you think? WHat would we be looking at, something like the ryan plan versus the sequester?
“From the very beginning, even when was first candidate for the nomination, he has always shown a willingness to work in some way to deal with Social Security’s insolvency. It would be pretty amazing if he just suggested that it wouldn’t really be a problem during his presidency so he had no plan for dealing with it. Social Security began paying out more than it takes in during his first term and is now profiting entirely on interest payments. By 2023, it will be flat-out losing money, which means the general fund can’t borrow from it, which means (guess what?) we have to borrow from somewhere else, which means either more debt or higher taxes, which means (because never more taxes) higher debt or slashed programs.”
Try telling me something I don’t know, other than I thought the red magic year was 2033, not 2023. http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2013/04/president-obama-breaks-his-promise-on.html I’ve been fully aware of the spots and their locations on this leopard for a very long time now. He’s no doubt known since things fell apart that the time was ripe to act upon his longstanding desires to do what he’s now doing. WHat’s amusing here is that you appear to be saying there are no other politically viable alternatives to “fixing” SS other than the one he’s proposed, which would appear to undermine your justifications rather than bolster them, since that indicates an awareness that the other side doesn’t really want solutions, but rather destruction of the programs, and as much so as they want to hold the line on taxes. So why even offer it again as an inadequate inducement for movement on taxes? Both raisng the tax and ending the cap have over twice the support from the population and provide far more bang for the buck. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/18/change-social-security_n_2708000.html WHy lose political capital on a proven loser in so many ways, rather than gain some with political winners? SO by all means, tell us how pursuing the chained cpi is the smarter or more effective solution, even solely as a political matter, considering of course, the midterms you deny have been adversely effected…lol
“So, really, you’re treating this as a 100% political matter because you think (hope?) that doing nothing, letting the sequester fester, and making the misery index soar above any level approximating what the president is suggesting here, will redound overwhelmingly in the Democrats’ favor and lead to VICTORY!!”
Well, that’s a pretty laughable interpretation. I’m saying that he’s basically branded himself (and perhaps burned other dems by association) as a SS-cutter in pursuit of rep as a Grand and reasonable negotiator nobody gives a rat’s ass about, and that has already in the past adversely effected his popularity ratings. What’s that defintion of insanity again? Furthermore, it’s unclear as yet, at least to me anyway, that the misery index will be any less due to the 1.8T in cuts he’s proposed, as opposed to that the sequester will result in. WHen someone does a comprehensive comparison fo the two, if they haven’t already, link us to it. The “dem victory” doesn’t come from any of that, it comes from not being associated with such a widely unpopular means of shoring up SS, and letting the repubs own all of the misery the sequester will cause if they refuse to take the deal. And of course, there’s also the wisdom of the austerity his plan represents a pursuit of at this time as well to be questioned period.
“All this talk about Social Security doesn’t affect the budget is a simplistic and misleading distortion that relies on people being too stupid to understand that raiding the SS fund is part of the budget process and serves as a subsidy to keep services high or taxes low.”
Then by all means, give us detailed explanation how it negatively impacts the budget. You’re distorting or misunderstanding the point. It seems to me that you’re merely making the same case — that the budget negatively effects it — and providing another solution to protracting its lifespan. Is that you Mr. Gore, and do you have that lockbox with you?
“If the government is taking in less than it pays out, it’s a problem, whether it’s Social Security or anything else. Yes, we can run a permanent deficit without a problem. Our system basically depends on it. But it should be within limits. I haven’t heard any serious economist whether it by Krugman or anyone else suggest that we don’t have to get our long-term deficits under control.
So, start there.”
I think Mr. Krugman and others don’t think this is the time to be pursuing austerity, and their thoughts on eventually getting the deficits under control in no way conflicts with much less negates their thoughts on the best solutions for the “now”. They are not mutually exclusive concepts.
“Then deal with the reality that are different ways to deal with Social Security’s insolvency and relying 100% on raising the cap isn’t happening. Then tell me why you’re are so willing to watch people go without chemotherapy or lose 20% of their income or their job or their day care or their substance abuse counseling or their school lunch or their housing just so you pursue a long shot gamble that it will hand us control of the House of Representatives?
“I’m not willing to make that bet.”
Coming from someone who appears to be a firm believer that chained-cpi is a non-starter, (and even if it’s accepted, it hardly fills the gap, leaving the necessity of other measures anyway) talk about the prospects for success of exploration of the alternatives, is pretty amusing stuff. I’m not taking any long shots, I’m looking at the long game. I don’t understand why it’s a no go on raising the caps or even increasing the tax, if repub opposition is the only obstacle. AFter all, since their god the Norguist has as I recall, declared the chained-cpi to be a betrayal of the tax increase pledge, if they can buck him on that surely they can the other. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=grover%20norquist%20chained%20cpi&source=web&
cd=5&cad=rja&ved=0CEsQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2013%2F04%2F10%2F
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As far as I am concerned all this BS is a false choice, or at least something that ignores others — like the progressive cuacus budget for example. The only solution to the repub intransigience and the lessening of the misery index as opposed to increasing it as both (sequester v BHO’s budget) plans will inevitably result in, is enhancing the slim prospects of retaking the house in 2014, and those dems actually being dems. BHO’s effort clearly dimmed those prospects in the minds of many, whether you think it’s all irrational garbage or not, whereas they clearly could have been enhanced had the repubs retained complete ownership the sequester and the only less damaging alternative– assuming that is the case. Do you think insuring that the repubs retain the house, given their pursuit of misery, is the wise choice here? It does seem so.
And it’s almost like you’re assuming that the hostage negotiations will be over, the conflict ended, and that the repubs will never ever pull this blueprint out or employ the same tactics again. The simple fact of the matter is, the only reason why deficits didn’t use to matter and won’t again should they ever get the reigns of power again, is because that’s the method whereby they’ve long sought to achieve the goal of ending the “New Deal”.
Sadly this effort on BHO’s part has made it appear to be more a “bipartisan” affair than ever before. I spend “X” amount of time daily appealing to others not to give up, while guys like you post about how it was an unavoidable and necessary betrayal of a campaign promise due to things they’re too stupid to understand, and now it appears at least to those that might understand your arguments, in some measure because they lack empathy for those who’ll be crushed by the repub generated sequester.
I could care less about whether or not you can’t understand that they’d glady follow a Churchill here, but are likely to abandon the Chamberlain in droves, because all they see in your stuff is the prospect at best of maybe, maybe less pain today or tomorrow, but the all too likely continuation, protraction, and increasing of it, that only this kinda enabling allows.
I don’t think you get around the web much, or have an understanding or appreciation of how profoundly or the extent to which the loss of faith in the dem party has been lost over this, which explains your confidence in the innocuousness of it in regards to the midterms.
“Sometimes things have to get worse…” would be a proper characterization of my rationale/preference for BHO never having submitted the chained cpi in his budget, assuming that alone would have made it unacceptable to the repubs. As it is however, given they’ll never accept it anyway, it’s nothing more than a willing betrayal to most that never had any postive value of the kind it was intended to as an inducement for the hostage takers, and solely to show he was the only serious adult in the room.
Them thinking/believing that already is why they voted for him. He’s not validating their belief by betraying this particular promise.
No.
But there’s no chance they’ll agree to raise revenues by any other way too. The most efficient thing to do is to break the Republican party. We had a chance in 2008 but Obama and other Dems pissed it away when they kicked Dean to the curb. We were doing good after the election because Republicans were humiliated–until Obama tossed them a Chained CPI lifeline.
The only way to actually fix things is to continue to hammer away at the Republican party. Any quarter will simply make them less willing to come to the table. Utter humiliation is the only effective tactics.