Politics: All liberal Democrat all the time. 10/20/2022 2 of 2

 

How you'll lose with a chained CPI

Elizabeth Warren speaks for the 99%.

Obama's sad choice...

Continuing the discussion of chained CPI

Still wondering what Obama was thinking.

With all of the advisers he has at his beck-and-call, both political and economic, why in hell did he ever decide to propose cuts to our social safety net?

From The Hill...

Dems fear Obama's Social Security cut will haunt them in 2014 races

By Mike Lillis - 04/14/13

A growing number of House Democrats are concerned that President Obama's proposal to cut Social Security benefits will haunt the party at the polls in 2014.

Although Democrats have long-championed the retirement program, they say Obama's plan to reduce payments for future beneficiaries through a chained consumer price index (CPI) has weakened their stance and opened the door for Republicans to vilify the president.

The leader of the campaign arm for House Republicans, Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.), on Wednesday called Obama's plan a "shocking attack on seniors."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Walden's comments foreshadow a line of attack the GOP will use on the campaign trail next year. It's a reason, he added, for Democrats to worry.

Obama - not a progressive hero.

More on President Obama's proposed budget, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare...

From Daily Kos...

Nobody could've predicted this, except everyone:

    Release a budget with cuts to Social Security.
    The base pushes back: Um, we're Democrats. We don't cut Social Security!
    President Barack Obama gets defensive: But it's the Republicans' idea!
    Except that the Republicans didn't include Social Security cuts in their crazy draconian budget. Why?
    Because only a moron would step on that third rail.
    Re-read step #1.
    Republicans begin 2014 campaign, charging that Democrats want to cut Social Security.

If there's any silver lining in this debacle, it's that it'll allow congressional Democrats the opportunity to distance themselves from this bumbling White House.

Unfortunately, they have to distance themselves from the party's leader, never a fun place for a politician to be. See 2006. And 2010.

Robert Reich explains the "chained CPI"

Telling the truth.

Obama does not want to take away your guns - Republicans love this phony talking point because it scares the simple-minded followers in their cult. Paul Ryan, on the other hand, DOES want to take away your Social Security and Medicare. Truth be told.

Social Security is solvent.

Please, liberals and progressives, don't allow the conservative haters to control the conversation on this issue.

Hey. Mitch McConnell

Maybe we should rename him "Mitch McAsshole."

The Simpson Bowles approach to Social Security and Medicare

The lies surrounding our benefits programs

From the Political Carnival

The five biggest lies about "entitlement" (ahem, earned benefits) programs
from The Political Carnival by GottaLaff

My Twitter pal Michael Hiltzik does it again. In his newest L.A. Times column, he dissects the five biggest lies about Social Security and Medicare, pointing out that the truth seems to elude far too many people who have big microphones.

Hiltzik first states a fact that everyone should know, but right wing talking points have obliterated: that the very word "entitlement" is a lie, saying "Social Security and Medicare got that name because workers became 'entitled' to those benefits by paying into the system. In recent years, however, the term has become distorted to signify benefits people are entitled to without earning them."

Glad we got that out of the way, because it drives me nuts.

Now on to the lies. He begins with the January 1 change in the Social Security payroll tax, which lowered the average household income by about $80 a month. Lie No. 1: The payroll tax hike is killing the retail economy:

    Blaming the payroll tax, however, ignores the whole story. First, on Jan. 1 the tax wasn't hiked; it was restored to its 2010 level, after a two-year "holiday"… But the holiday was always a wretched idea, in part because of what everyone knew would happen when the old rate reappeared -people treated it as a pay cut…. The payroll tax break, by contrast, went only to those who pay into Social Security. So it left out 5.7 million state and local workers (mostly teachers).

Then on to the second whopper, Lie No. 2: "Entitlement" benefits for millionaires and billionaires are a costly problem:

    The lie here is the assertion that a significant portion of benefits goes to multimillionaires. In fact, their share of benefits is minuscule. That's because there aren't very many of them, and they don't get more than the maximum old-age benefit… They account for about 14 hundredths of one percent of all Social Security outlays.

Lie No. 3: Social Security and Medicare are $60 trillion in the hole:

    It's a calculation of funding gaps projected out to the limitless future and then converted to present value - meaning what the cost would be if we had to pay it all today.

Lie No. 4: You're paying too much (or too little) for your benefits:

    This is a double-barreled lie, based on the misconception that Social Security and Medicare are retirement funds. They're not; they're insurance programs. What you recover depends on your personal circumstances, but the point is they're there when you need them.

Lie No. 5: Medicare, Social Security - it's all the same:

    It's misleading to lump these two programs together as if they have the same issues amenable to the same solutions.

Reason

To people of reason, Republican political platforms make absolutely no sense.

Social Security is not the problem.

Social Security is not the problem with the nation's debt - and it won't be for another 30 years. But the Republicans want it - they want their hands on it so they can get it into private control where they can make billions off of it.  Don't believe a word they say about wanting to save it for future generations - they want it for themselves in this generation. Woe be unto the American generations who give them control over it.

A Republican on Social Security, etc.

The truth

What amazes me most in political news covered on most 24-hour news networks, with the exception of a few shows on MSNBC, is that discussions don't start with facts and evolve from there. Why is the following not offered up by newscasters before talking to those knowledge-less Republicans?

Sound reasoning

It's elementary, my dear Watson. Republicans see one of the largest pools of money in the American budget and can only DROOL over the thought of getting their hands on it by privatizing it and getting it into the hands of the bankers. Pray, my dear friends, that it never happens.

 

Therein lies the problem

One of the reasons we can't have any compromise in Congress is because the Republicans don't have any ability to reason.

Don't trust the Republicans with the social safety net

FDR - so insightful and so sarcastic. Gotta love what he did for this country.