Another broken promise but this time, it is epic. Cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts
As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.
(Emphasis added.)
They already offered up Medicare and Medicaid.
Administration Offers Health Care Cuts as Part of Budget Negotiations
Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.
Now, before anyone uses one of the usual apologist excuses about how this has not happened yet, how the Washington Post journalist is not trustworthy, etc., there have been many signals that this has been coming for months, years even, and certainly in the past week or so the best progressive writers have been sounding the warning and even the moderates are speaking out.
This is no time for apologism. This is time for action and for standing together as a people against the wealthiest and most powerful who intend to make the people pay for their epic mistakes and their limitless greed and their endless wars.
This is also not the time to give up. President Obama and these destructive fools in Congress do not own this party or this country. Elected Democrats don't own it. Elected Republicans don't own it. We are the party and we collectively are the country. They represent us. They are our voice. This is not the time to be quiet, this is the time to roar.
Political Suicide
From the Washington Post article. Is this really a Democrat speaking?
“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”
This could not be more wrong-headed. Whoever is saying this and making these deals have lost their way and I don't mean lost their way a little bit, I mean completely lost their way.
Terrance Heath over at Campaign for America's Future (an organization that has been vigilant on this) says that the "chained CPI" is a trojan horse and his colleague Richard Eskow really lays it out.
The Debt Deal Trojan Horse, And The Elephant In The Room
Don't look now, but someone rolled a Trojan Horse right into the middle of the debt deal negotiations. Funny thing is, Democrats don't seem to recognize it as such. Maybe nobody's ever told them the story of the Trojan Horse.
[ ... ]
[ Richard Eskow ]
What's wrong with this idea?
1) It's an underhanded way to cut Social Security benefits (its true intent).
2) It's unnecessary.
3) It's unfair to women, the poor, minorities, and the very elderly.
4) It reflects a un-American political culture of pessimism and lost faith in the future.
Any politician who signs onto a "chained CPI" approach to Social Security will feel the wrath of the voters - and deserves to.
(Emphasis added.)
Eskow is right. They will feel the wrath and they will hear the roar and American citizens of all political stripes will throw the bums out in 2012 all across the nation. And who will be blamed for this? The Democrats. Even though our capitulating party tries to pretend that the Republicans are mighty and powerful, Americans are well aware of who has the real power at a national level. They know who is in the White House and they know who controls the Senate. They know who is running this country. The Democrats. And that is who they will throw out of office.
In the process, they will destroy the party too. They think there is no juice left in that third rail? They had better think again. And here is a really important point, one that I cannot emphasize enough. It is bigger than the third rail. This country has been on a slow boil since the banks crashed the global economy in 2008 and even longer as income inequality has become more disgustingly large and they are looking for someone to blame. Millions who don't have jobs and can't get proper health care are looking for someone to blame and rightfully so. And this, the cutting of the social safety net when people need it the most, cutting the programs people have paid into for decades, this will be their reason to lash out. They will lash out and their target will be the sell out Democrats who railed against the heartless and dangerous Republicans and who then showed themselves to be the vehicle for those same heartless and dangerous policies, the Democrats who convinced them to set aside their cynicism and desperation and to believe again and to hope, and who, once they had the power they wanted, sold them out.
A Bonanza for the Republicans
At the same time Republicans are making this into a bonanza for themselves. In the end, they may even create cover for themselves and we will end up with a situation where more Democrats vote for this debacle than Republicans. In any case, every Republican candidate who did not vote for this, whether they were in office or not, and almost certainly the presidential candidate will not have been in Congress for this vote, will slaughter Democrats in campaign commercials from sea to shining sea.
Digby:
This is the most amazing "negotiation" I've ever seen. The Democrats just keep giving the Republicans everything they could possibly want and the Republicans just keep telling them to take a hike. It may be kabuki, but it's become a total farce. And the truly hilarious thing about it is that the Republicans are going to destroy the Democrats in 2012 for being the ones to propose cuts to programs that people rely on and then holding the Republicans hostage with further demands for taxes. (You think they won't? Or that a number of people aren't confused enough to believe them?)
At this point, no matter what happens the deal is a disaster.
House Democrats saw this coming but they were shut out. Back in April, TPMDC reported that John Boehner had suggested to Obama that they lock arms and jump together and it really looks like that is what the President has decided to do.
From The Hill, via David Dayen:
One Democrat who was there said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) bluntly asked Obama whether he was willing to fight for Democratic priorities amid GOP calls for trillions of dollars in spending cuts.
In asking the question, Waxman said he’d asked several Republicans about their White House meeting the day before and had been concerned by their response.
“To a person, they said the president’s going to cave,” Waxman told Obama, according to his colleague’s account.
“If you’re not going to cave, eliminating that misunderstanding is very, very important to the negotiations,” the lawmaker said, retelling Waxman’s message. “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.”
Obama, however, “didn’t answer the question,” the Democrat added. “Obama got in a huff, and he said, ‘I’m the president of the United States, my words carry weight’ — which is not the answer,” the lawmaker said. “That’s not what anyone challenges. It’s whether he is doing this negotiation in the right way.”
Economic Nonsense and Right-Wing Rhetoric
It doesn't even make sense from an economic standpoint. It is the same failed right-wing policy that has been destroying this country for three decades.
Krugman:
The Obama-Keynes Mystery
those defending Obama on the grounds that he’s saying what he has to politically, I have two answers. First, words matter — as people who rallied around Obama in the first place because of his eloquence should know. Yes, he has to make compromises on policy grounds — but that doesn’t mean he has to adopt the right’s rhetoric and arguments. The effect of his intellectual capitulation is that we now have only one side in the national argument.
Second, since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying.
The payroll tax holiday for employers is still on the table too. Without enough overall increased demand, the payroll tax cut, for employers only, will not create near enough jobs or prop up the economy like other superior stimulus measures would via more UE or food stamps. It is also a danger to Social Security on top of the chained CPI and everything else being sold as a public good when it is a cut. We should never risk Social Security for an inadequate proposal like this kind the payroll tax cut holiday.
As Nancy Altman says, Democrats have never allowed the payroll tax rate to be cut, even temporarily, in the history of the program, because payroll taxes feed the Social Security trust fund and create the political base of support for the program.
Among the options for cutting taxes are a number of proposals that should appeal to Democrats, said Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring. They include a White House proposal to temporarily reduce payroll taxes for employers, an idea aimed at propping up the sputtering economy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Obama Did Not Have to Do This
Dean Baker firmly believes that Obama did not have to do this. There was no way that Wall Street would have let the Republicans block the debt ceiling increase. This was not necessary. With all of the critical, pressing problems in this country, they decide they have to "fix" the most successful social program in the history of this country decades before it even runs into any problems? This makes no sense.
Why are they doing this? That is a question for the ages. I used to think they were just fools. I have since changed my mind.
The Endgame on the Debt Ceiling
When everyone remembers that this is what the endgame looks like, they will realize that there is no need to put essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block to get Republican support for raising the debt ceiling. The gun is pointed most directly at Wall Street's head, and this incredibly powerful lobby is not going to let Congress pull the trigger.
This means that at the end of the day, President Obama holds the cards. He could say that he wants a clean debt ceiling bill and no deals on cutting back the country's key social insurance programs. Of course, that may not be President Obama's agenda.
Action. Let Them Hear Us Roar.
This is a disaster in a number of different ways. We all know this. It is an economic disasater. It is a disaster for the people. And it is a political disaster for the left.
This is a breach of the Social Security and Medicare social contract. And it is political suicide and in my opinion will destroy the Democratic party. Worse than that it will be devastating to many in lower and middle classes, especially when you add in the expected Medicaid cuts. The least among us will pay the price for the bank casinos and $4 trillion dollars of war.
This will be spun and framed and some face saving concession will probably be dragged out at the eleventh hour but the spin will fail and people are not stupid. We can see exactly what is going on.
What are we going to do about this? We can and should make the phone calls but that is not enough. Where are the activist groups from the left that we have been supporting all these years? We need to be in the streets, in front of the White House and in front of the Capitol and in front of our representative's local offices. We need to pull out all the stops. We need the people to whom we gave our money, our time and energy, our personal information, over and over again for years, to be organizing protests NOW.
Hopefully today we will see some strong activism come together and these organizations will come through and there will be activities. I will be participating in every one that I can that seems worthwhile. I know that I personally am going to make the calls to my Congressman, my two Senators and to the White House and to Pelosi and Reid, but I am also going to be looking for organized action, in person, on the street action. And I am making plans to go to Washington even if it is just the two of us and perhaps my kids.
It's time.
For now, phone calls, and let's see what other actions develop today and in the coming days. There is not much time. The last deadline I heard for the debt ceiling legislation was 7/22/11, just two weeks away.
Phone calls now and while you are making the calls get ready. Get ready to go to your local Congressional office. Get ready to go to DC if you can. Get ready to get out on the streets.
White House Comments: 202-456-1111
White House Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-0100(202)225-4965 California (415)556-4862.
Harry Reid: 202-224-3542
Van Hollen: 202-225-5341
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121
Toll free Capitol Switchboard: 1-866-338-1015, 1-866-220-0044
Update (h/t to kck in comments):
White House Fax: WH FAX # 202-456-2461
You can also use this link for help in contacting Congress: