The new White House budget proposal is getting a lot of attention because it explicitly connects the Obama administration to an agenda that includes cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. As the New York Times (4/5/13) put it, Obama “will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.” Apparently the most important risk is to the one to him, and not to millions of people whose benefits will be cut.
On NPR‘s Morning Edition (4/8/13), Cokie Roberts and David Greene laughed a bit over what “chained CPI” is all about. Roberts explained that this “tracks more accurately, apparently, actual buying habits”—which, according to a recent paper (12/13/12) from the Center for Economic & Policy Research, is not correct. (“The Chained CPI is not a more accurate measure of inflation for retirees, as is often claimed by proponents of switching indexes.”)
To Roberts, Obama has been shoring up liberal support on other issues—immigration, guns, marriage equality. But these budget moves have a different purpose:
This is a move towards the middle, to getting those independent voters who he lost in the last election…by emphasizing deficits, which is something they say they care about.
But who exactly wants to cut Social Security and Medicare? Not many people, according to this recent Washington Post poll: Just 17 percent supported cutting Medicare benefits, and 21 percent said the same for Social Security. These are policy ideas that never poll very well. But for elite media the “middle” is where brave politicians go in order to slash benefits for everyone else.
Look at how Washington Post reporter Dan Balz (4/7/13) phrased it:
The president’s latest tactical move came Friday, with reports—first in the New York Times—that Obama will offer Congress a fiscal blueprint that includes cuts in future spending on Medicare and Social Security. It is a budget designed to satisfy neither congressional Republicans nor his party’s left flank.
The implication is that both “extremes” will be unhappy, and maybe that means the “middle” is happy? But that’s a middle that exists only in the corporate media’s mind.
Jim Naureckas
It’s worth noting that Obama’s supposedly liberal initiatives on guns, immigration and marriage equality are all actually solidly centrist, with polls generally showing majority support for the position he’s staking out:
http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm
http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm
http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm
Doug Latimer
About the only line “liberal” Democrats won’t cross these days is a repeal of the 13th Amendment.
But give it time …
Dave Swager
I think when these types refer to the “middle” they’re referring to voters “in the middle”, i.e. they may vote Republican in one election and Democrat the next. They’re the “middle of the road” voters who provide the slim margins of victory depending on how they’re swayed each election cycle.
Ivan Gur-Arie
I voted for the President twice, mostly because the opposition was so bad not that he is so good. In looking back on his presidency, I can say that my disappointment abounds. That he is throwing the people, many of whom are dependent on Social Security and Medicare, under the train indicates to me that he cares only for the idea of being a community organizer and getting all sides together. That is OK provided you have another side who is willing to listen to reason. This reinforces my idea of him as a man who is first and foremost a politician with a glib tongue and that is where he stops.
Ivan Gur-Arie
With friends like Obama, who needs enemies.
ashley rainbow squirt
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Nelson hoffman
The next step in progressive taxation is the full implementation of means testing.allthat is required is to develop the rate of benefit decrease with increasing income. The authorities who have suggested this means suggest $250-350k as the floor with $500k as the zero benefits cutoff.
As a more extensive step, net worth at retirement: net worth – same type sliding scale : full benefits if net worth is $2 millions or more and home net worth.
Cutoff at 4 million plus HE.
Comments welcome.
Nelson hoffman
Retired manufacturing executive
Student of trade inequities
TimN
A cut is a cut, and lying about it or obfuscating it with euphemisms warms the hearts of actors like Cokie Roberts and Dan Balz. Thank you, God, that our President’s attempts to get his “grand bargain” by driving a massive nail into the coffin that contains the greatest and most popular social programs are continuously foiled by the lunatics in the House. Except that one day, maybe they will give the President what he wants. They already know that if they wait him out, he’ll cave. It’s funny, no? The man wins the White House twice, and he can’t wait to screw his base. At the very least, he definitely doesn’t mind scaring the shit of them.
Choicelady320
It would be much better if someone other than Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC actually explained that CCPI is NOT A CUT to Social Security. It changes the calculation of cost of living INCREASES and might, depending on inflation, reduce a COLA payment by $3-3.50 per month. That would hardly be the first time and not the worst – the base was cut by past Congressional action under Carter, Reagan, Clinton. In 2010 and 2011 SSI recipients got NOT COLA at all for those two years. Last time we came up on a possible shortfall in SSI they cut the overall existing amount AND raised our contributions. Yes it would be better if we could raise the cap – and where, please, are the necessary 278 votes to do that with this Congress? Truth matters. Outrage and distortions don’t help.
TeeJae
Yes, Choicelady, it IS a cut. Seems you have more homework to do (you can watch the video or read the transcript below it):
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10054
Michael Shaw
We all know where major media exists and it ain’t in the middle! Cokie Roberts is the daughter of a general, a wealthy brat who for years now has given slack to the extreme right. In her own right she’s a millionaire, obviously in no need of Social Security or Medicare. She probably does however, enjoy all those tax breaks she’s getting, along with the go ahead to offshore millions to avoid paying taxes altogether. If not, at the very least she has a lucrative paying job she wishes to hold onto.
Michael Shaw
As for Obama, I keep reading about his falling into the GOP trap concerning the so called sequester and now the definite cuts to Social Security and Medicare. that he is neither a master chess player or poker player, etc. What will it take for people to realize the only trap Obama has fallen into is the money trap, the kind that pays in, not sucks out. The only thing masterful that he’s done is lie to the millions of Americans who gave him a second chance because he sworn up and down he would not touch Social Security and Medicare. By now we ought to all realize he was never on our side and he never intended to do anything other than what his so called GOP adversaries wanted. He is a shill just as are the majority of politicians in the two major-one big party!
Bruce
Heretical Question for All Democratic parties: On FDR Social
Security (SS) and LBJ Medicare and SS Medicaid – Are y’all
BiPetersonSheep or DEM?
Michael Shaw
ie Bruce….Obama is a biPeterson sheep, right along with most of the rest of the democratic party, including Reid and Pelosi and even several so called progressives like Sam Farr, my own rep who is siding with the president and the GOP. As a lifelong democrat, I am leaving the democratic party and becoming an independent. I will only vote independently or not at all since the two party system is completely corrupt and owned by Wall Streets Petersons and Alan Simpsons.
ajamu chaminuka
Well, i voted for this man the first time because i saw it as an historical moment and i thought that he would change at least some things. But although i only have a high school degree, i was “smart” enough to understand after four years that this man was a fraud and a trickster and therefore did not vote for him the second time. Any political system that gives people the choice of Obama or Romney is a failed system.
Robobenito
When you see “middle” read “right ring”, because today’s middle is yesterday’s right. The democrats are a center right party, their left is the middle, there is no “left” about them. Corporate neoliberalism is a right wing corporate ideology despite the “liberal” part in the word. They have their votes locked in because of the crazy republicans. The Dems simply keep pushing the Zmerican political spectrum further and further to the right, so much so that we only have an open public debate from the center (as supposed left) to the far right. Like it or not we ARE a right wing country. What are you going to do, vote Republican?
Tee
We bail out the banks with trillions of dollars and ask nothing in return. We allow corporations through accounting helter skelter to pay no taxes and get a refurn on top of this. Then we have a blouted military that has an annual budget greater than the next fourteen countries. Amazingly we don’t call these give aways entitlements.
Social security and medicare have been paid for by workers through payroll deductions. It’s like buying a car and when it’s time to drive it the dealer tells you ‘by the way you don’t have air conditioning or heat because your climate is mild enough to get by with neither. This is what this CPI adds up to.
Another entitlement paid for by the taxpayer and used is the public housing at the white house occupied by those who are so anxious to cut medicare and social security. Guarantee this will never be called an entitlement.
xzr56
“Ronald Reagan told the truth about Social Security in this 37 second video — .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUoRD4pYzI
Social Security is self funded and does NOT contribute one penny to the deficit. America’s investing class wants to avoid paying back money borrowed from Social Security by reducing YOUR Social Security benefits via newly proposed “chained CPI” cost of living adjustments that will NOT keep up with the roaring inflation we have today.
Social Security and Medicare are YOUR EARNED BENEFITS which YOU paid into over a lifetime of YOUR work. They are not “entitlements”, and they are certainly NOT “welfare”.
Social Security was changed from a “pay as you go” to a “paid ahead” system back in the early 1980s by Alan Greenspan, so that baby boomers could pay ahead for their own social security retirements without burdening future generations. The 1983 reforms worked out exactly as planned and Social Security with its huge trust fund can pay baby boomers their full benefits for the next 25 years.
The only reform we need today is to establish proper and just taxation to adequately fund government operations and stop further borrowing from Social Security. For example, the US can establish a dedicated MILITARY PROTECTION TAX paid on all income of any kind so as to properly fund our US Military .
REMEMBER — Social Security is the THIRD RAIL of American Politics. ANY politician who reduces YOUR Social Security benefits must be VOTED OUT OF OFFICE”
Michael Shaw
Although I agree with most of what you’re saying about Social Security, doesn’t it seem strange that Ronald Reagan made us all pay ahead and now here comes the GOP again and this time with the help of a so called democrat to trash it via starving those on it and taking it to eventual privatization? Ronald Reagan increased the cost to Americans(FICA tax) by charging them(us) more for the same product at a time it was simply not necessary. He also gave us supply-side economics(the beginning of the end) and deregulated the FCC to the point where nearly all independent broadcasters are gone and Rupert Murdoch owns more than a third of our entire media. He also lied about his involvement in Iran Contra, setting up today’s crisis situation in the middle east while giving Saddam Hussein the weapons of mass destruction he gleefully used on Iraqi Kurds once Bush 1 was president. He gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Need I go on??? as for alan Greenspan, his Libertarian style pseudo economics strategy led to the destruction of Glass-Steagle and the current and ongoing disaster capitalism we in our lifetime will see no end to.
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