General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWho actually came up with the "chained CPI"?
Is this something Obama came up with on his own or did Republicans ask for it and he is just giving them what they want? I haven't heard a single Republican ask for this to happen but then I don't watch regular news shows.. From what I have been reading lately, Republicans are acting as if they are upset over this and going to the airwaves to blast Obama for selling out the elderly....
dawg
(10,624 posts)That would be my guess. Obama did not originate the idea.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Obama's always been real good at rope-a-dope type stuff.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)"Guess what? Chained CPI is the bright idea of Third Way, the Dem "policy shop.'"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2489745
The Third way folks are the real "professional left"...er...one percent posing as left.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022644983#post155
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/11/wall-street-uses-the-third-way-to-lead-its-assault-on-social-security.html#more-3690
A bunch of Wall St financiers posing as a "liberal think tank"
Corporate wolves in Democrat suits.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)if they could have a baby, it would look like the Chain CPI.
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2013/04/three-guess-on-where-chaining-cpi-came.html
Using Mr. Peabody's WABAC machine we set the dial for 1995. Ever heard of the Boskin Commission? Its formal name: "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index". It was created on the order of the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate majority leader then was: Bob Dole followed by Trent Lott. William V Roth Jr. was the chair of the committee.
This was the time of Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. The contract included social security reform. It also included welfare reform. (Clinton gave them that part of the contract.) Both were under the Fiscal Responsibility Act. You know, balance the budget rhetoric. Specifically: An amendment to the Constitution that would require a balanced budget unless sanctioned by a three-fifths vote in both houses of Congress...
With that (background on Michael Boskin) here is some history by way of Fredrick Sheehan by way of The Big Picture blog:
In the early 1990s, Senator Patrick Moynihan from New York warned his fellow legislators about rising social security commitments. Then the worm crawled out of his hole, so to speak. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate and House Budget Committee on January 10, 1995. He told the Committee the inflation rate was probably overestimated by 0.5% to 1.5%.
You really have to read the whole thing, as four paragraph excerpts can't begin to cover the terrain. Greenspan -who was thought of as a almighty but beneficent wizard at the time, instead of the charlatan who wrecked our economy- made his unsupported pronouncement about the calculation of inflation, and Republicans under the Gingrich-Dole appointed a Commission to "look into this" composed entirely of ideologues who had already made up their minds to attack entitlements, and who looked at only evidence supporting the Greenspan assertion that inflation was overstated and ignored all evidence that it was not. This Boskin Commission, which was named after the aforementioned Michael Boskin who made a raft of dire predictions about Clinton's tax increases all of which failed to come true, gave unto the villagers of Washington the neutral sounding axe with which to cut Social Security, called the Chained CPI. And it has been haunting the Potomac ever since.
But beware, for the Chained CPI if used to reduce Social Security cost of living adjustments it may also soon be used just as easily to reduce exemptions on income taxes as well. And so it presents the danger of a stealth income tax increase on the middle class in the here and now as well as representing a short changing of future seniors on their retirement. You can see how this kind of accounting chicanery would appeal to knaves of both parties.