Still sick at heart that he even considered it.

"Never was" would have been so much better than "no longer".

probably was under cover agent Bob Woodard's idea. I suggest the Republicans sleep on it. Tell the Republicans to just run on cutting these programs. We should be happy to run on those issues in the next elections. They want to run against our candidates on getting rid of these programs, pure and simple! They lied in the last Election, just man up and say so! And their platform should be very simple in the next Elections. They want to abolish all those programs and cut taxes for the Wealthy. That is a very simple platform.

Our President played them all.

If for no other reason than to say they did...and to possibly learn new data...


Remind me not to include YOU in any vendor selections

I know, because I've embarrassed myself by doing it.

We know that he was considering this in the 2011 debt ceiling fight, so it's not like there was no reason to be wary of this being on the table.

all of us to make sure that our elected representatives are acutely aware of our position on this.

But having said that ... perhaps ... just maybe ... those who have been predicting that Obama is on a mission to kill these programs will take it down a notch.

Not "shut up" ... but maybe take a break from announcing, with great confidence, that Obama is about to screw all of us.

Such predictions have been made over and over on DU in the last few years. Every Obama utterance parsed to find the secret code in which he puts forward his real plan to kill Social Security and Medicare. Its going to happen, any second. Just you wait!!!

And then it doesn't happen. And things return to normal.

But in a few months, DU will again be on fire with predictions of Obama's evil plan.

Or maybe not. Maybe, the discussion will be a productive one.

Or not.

If lowering the tax rates on the rich and super-rich worked so well in the past, this will be a winner.

It will show that the trickle-down theory really works.

You're asking for a "specific prediction"?

President Obama is the one who is proposing lowing the corporate tax rate. If we take him at his word, it's going to happen. It's up to him and Congress to decide the specific date when he is going to sign the legislation.

Since you are asking for a prediction, I predict (and this is only my opinion) that he will sign such legislation before he signs the pending let's-send-even-more-jobs-to-foreign-countries-to-benefit-corporate-owners-and-screw-what-is-left-of-the-American-middle-class "free-trade" agreement.

If there is a better way to destroy what is left of the American middle-class than signing the pending TPP (the NAFTA of the Pacific), what is it?

We already know that the corporate tax rate, while at 35%, is actually much lower because of the numerous loop holes and deductions that exist. Many companies pay closer to 0% today.

And so, if you want them to pay an effective higher rate than the current 0%, you would need to do something.

Now, one approach would be to decrease the 35% rate, while also removing the largest loop holes and associated deductions. Taking such an approach could actually RAISE the effective tax rate above the near 0% many corporations pay today.

Using your prediction, even if we raised more revenues through such an approach, you would take the rather naive view that since the 35% rate dropped to say 25%, that's bad, even if the effective rate increased from 0% to 20%.

And so ... if you want to make a prediction about how bad such a deal is going to be, please indicate how much revenue you expect Obama to lose in the deal.

Which is why you need the laws to change.

Perfectly legal.

Are you a tax attorney?

Or are you working on the theory that everyone is presumed to know the law?

For instance ... you claim Romney "settled" with the IRS. Really????

I'm going to bet you have no evidence of that, although I wish you did. Unless you do, your claim is baseless, and that fact lies at the center of this issue.

And what does Romney's potential tax avoidance issue have to do with how the US economy collapsed thanks to reckless derivatives trading, which was the root cause? Such trading was legal. Thanks to a bill known as the 1999 Graham-Leech-Bliley Act.

all the ignorant assholes that spent countless quantities of time and text before the election trying to silence all those who had concerns over the fact that he hadn't taken it off the table yet?

You know, the ones that were called "concern trolls", rightwing trolls, ect, by those assholes, who maliciously and stupidly charged those concerned with changes in the social safety nets with trying to dampen enthusiasm and throw the election to Mutt?

Do you know any of those people? Use the DU email system and let them know, no?

BHO finally took it off the table.

Exactly.

And some might, while hoping for good news, wonder whether there is only one table.

No compromise on cuts to Medicare or SS

If I say, publically, during a negotiation, "Everything is on the table ... We must look at every avenue to strengthen this program" ... Does that mean I would actually consider everything that is raised by the other side?

Example:

Hell No!

President Obama can truthfully say, "It was on the table and cosidered."

an example is Durbin himself, and Chris Van Hollen. They started changing their tune recently, it was a sign Obama was planning to hold the line on Medicare, so he didn't need their cover. Now Durbin is saying it outright.

cannot claim he would not even listen to them - this is why I have no patience with the idea he is to be condemned for even considering it. And he may not have considered it, really. But it's smart to tell the right wing and the people that he did not dismiss the idea out of hand.

that recent PEW Research Polling indicates that the non-DU public agrees.

K&R

is Durbin saying that the White House was previously considering raising the Medicare age?

about Obama killing SS/Medicare gets shut down -- yet again.

Thanks for the confirmation.

which we hadn't heard until now.

HELLO

the people that insist the left is just crazy with wild conspiracies about Him are proven wrong.

"No longer considering" means that it was being considered in the first place. Those crazy leftists were right again, in other words.

dire predictions about Obama "killing Medicare" have been shouted from the rooftops every few months since he took office. Those of us who have said each and every time that it would not happen have been proven correct each and every time, despite vocal insistence otherwise.

Those are the facts.

he'd leave Medicare and SS alone, for the most part.

Even if he can't run again, and even if he wanted to, he knows launching an attack on either of those would damage our brand too much.

To see what the public reaction was. So the protest on blogs, and especially on the White House twitter account, might have helped, if indeed the president has now taken this off the table (Durbin's word on it is probably good, although things could change).

We already knew President Obama had considered agreeing to raise the age in July of 2011, so I figured it was probably at least under consideration.

That said, the rumors about him "killing Medicare/SS" were obviously exaggerated. Raising the retirement age would suck but it wouldn't kill the whole program.

--Medicare. No big deal.

Y'all just refuse to see it, don't you? He is NOT a progressive/liberal.

K&R

YES!

& country. Instead of cutting medicare, we should be proposing a single payer system since it would save money and lower the deficit. Imagine eliminating the middle men (insurance companies) and saving employers money on their employees health care.

That the savings were so small that it made no sense to make this chain.

Let Republican Congressmen take us over the "Fiscal Cliff" if they so choose. Then in 2014 we can elect a few dozen more Democrats to the House of Representatives, and pass nation-wide, single payer health care instead. With that legislation in effect, everyone will have medicare as soon as they're born.

...are they currently considering?

Now we need another statement that THIS is off the table.

If we calculated inflation using the older method, we get an inflation rate hovering just under 6%, likely due to historically low interest rates and relatively high energy prices:



However, if we went to the method Jimmy Carter and earlier presidents used to calculate inflation, we'd be looking at just under 10% inflation. Personally, the revisions and the chained CPI nonsense was likely pushed as a way to under-pay Social Security benefits without actually coming out into the open and officially cutting the program:



I generally follow this website for economic reporting. The person reads through BLS reports and reduces down the gimmicks used to massage the numbers to arrive at these results:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

Disturbing that it would ever have been "considered" by the white house, but none the less, I'll take it and continue to hope that a president who no longer has to worry about reelection will be all the stronger for it.

any change in the home interest deduction or charitable contribution deduction amounts to the same thing as a tax increase on the middle class.

I don't try to keep up with personalities, so maybe there is a lot of history involved. But, I still don't understand the hostility.

that Obama is going to kill Social Security and Medicare.

So every time there is a budget proposal under discussion, or a debt ceiling discussion, or a stimulus discussion, or in this case, a discussion of tax rates ... there is a flurry of those "Obama is going to kill Social Security and Medicare" predictions.

It happens roughly every 6 months or so. There are many threads dedicated to parse Obama's every utterance to find the secret code words he used to lay the foundation for said cuts.

And then .... (insert musical fan fair here) ... it doesn't happen.

For the last 2-3 weeks or so, with the "fiscal cliff" freak out, those predictions have again been put forward over and over here on DU. Obama was going to cave and raise the Medicare age ... yup, it was going to happen, at any second it was going to happen, and Obama would have sold us out because he's really a corporate shill, and raising the age was his plan all along.

So Durbin's statement that raising the age is off the table once again prevents the predictions from coming true (again). And some are not happy about it. They really want Obama to do it so they can say "Ah ha!!" told you. But because it didn't happen, and won't happen, the outrage shifts. He was bad for considering it, he still wants to do it, blah blah, bah.

I tend to think Obama was just stringing the GOP along on this ... let them take the position of raising the age, dare them to do it. Make the GOP come clean in front of the American people. And still say no. Which is what he did.

The predictions will fade. And then in 6 months, or heck maybe in February when the debt ceiling comes back up, the predictions of Obama's evil intent will again surface for a few weeks. It won't happen (again), and then the cycle will continue.

A much better idea.

When Medicare Part D was passed, the government was barred from negotiating lower drug prices with the prescription drug industry. It was reported that insurance companies could separately negotiate lower drug prices. However, there are millions uninsured, so obviously they would not benefit from insurance companies negotiating individually. It would be very interesting to see numbers of what funds could be saved if the Federal Government could negotiate those lower prices, and additionally, I am thinking if great savings could be achieved, that would also benefit participants in Obama Care (we can call it that now, right?).

Of course, the prescription drug companies would not be happy with that (and I am thinking the Republicans would not either, at least those that receiving campaign donations from these entities) that alternative could be President Obama's bipartisan compromise and Boehner could brag he achieved cuts in Medicare, sounds like a possible win/win to me.

Just started to think about this today, so perhaps I am missing something ....

Sam

Luckily my sens and rep are somewhat progressive dems.

Amazing that keeping the status quo now counts as victory. But it does, and it is.

Excelsior!

that the earlier reports that it was "on the table" were indeed correct. That is shameful, and I'm glad someone talked sense into him

Was lowering the age ever on placed on the table? We have pretty low expectations

At least not as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. It was a few years ago when the ACA was being considered. Maybe at some point in the future, but it has nothing to do with these negotiations, because it is either revenue neutral (if premiums for buy-in are unsubsidized) or adds to the cost (if premiums are subsidized for people under 65). They are talking about how to lower costs, not raise them.

People over 50 are going to get absolutely reamed, and many millions of them stand to be bankrupted, by skyrocketing insurance premiums coupled with deductibles, copays, and services conveniently excluded from coverage.

Say, to include Mental Health parity, Dental, and proven reliable and valid alternative treatment modalities, e.g. "naturopathy"?

Mental health care is medical care and there should be no difference in coverage from other medical care. Dental care is not traditionally part of medical insurance. It would be nice if it were, because it has a bearing on physical health. Cosmetic dentistry should be 100% patient-funded.

representing the other perspective on what is going on with this stayed up there for almost an entire day.

it ain't over til it's over

No shit, Sherlock! Keep those letters, emails, phone calls and faxes coming in, everyone.

Mission accomplished

The rest is all window dressing. The Cliff is coming, embrace the cliff.

The revenue from the increase in capital gains will fix a lot of the issues after the cliff.
There will never be another opportunity to raise capital gains, so bring on the cliff.

We'll still see hair on fire posts about it.

We'll see post after post of, "Well, President Obama really wanted to; but we beat him back!"