Whacking the Old Folks

The Nation

In setting up his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Barack Obama is again playing coy in public, but his intentions are widely understood among Washington insiders. The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink.

Obama's commission is the vehicle created to achieve this deal. He ducks questions about his preferences, saying only that "everything has to be on the table." But White House lieutenants are privately talking up a bargain along those lines. They are telling anxious liberals to trust the president to make only moderate cuts. Better to have Democrats cut Social Security, Obama advisers say, than leave the task to bloodthirsty Republicans.

The president has stacked the deck to encourage this strategy. The eighteen-member commission is top-heavy with fiscal conservatives and hostile right-wingers who yearn to dismantle the retirement program. The Republican co-chair, former Senator Alan Simpson, is especially nasty; he likes to get laughs by ridiculing wheezy old folks. Democratic co-chair Erskine Bowles and staff director Bruce Reed secretly negotiated a partial privatization of Social Security with Newt Gingrich back when they served in the Clinton White House, but the deal blew up with Clinton's sex scandal. Monica Lewinsky saved the system.

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Link: http://www.thenation.com/article/whacking-old-folks

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An informative article. After years of fearing the GOP would dismantle SS, and promises by Dems that SS is "the third rail", ironically it seems as though the Democrats may just do it for them. I understand this is an initiative by the DLC New Dems, but they still do see fit to put a (D) after their names.

conservatives.

Nice try, but 'NO'. eom

So much promise, so wasted by being a centrist.

:grr:

(look up the definition) ;-)

Never the less, I was trying to be politically polite, and I agree with you.

:toast:

:-)

Could be the key issue he was sent to DC to accomplish. Touching the "third rail" would have to be a significant bait-and-switch operation to pull off.

People expected the Republicans to try and kill Social Security & Medicare - but only those who are really paying attention will see it coming from the Democrats and by the time most people figure out what's happened, it will be too late. Remember who it was who sold us NAFTA and the destruction of the middle & working classes.

and there are still a few, sadly very few, of those left. I read elsewhere that this "commission" will try and push something through after the November elections, in the lame duck session of Congress.

real Democrats would never pull this crap on us.

I've heard the same thing you did about pushing it through the lame duck session. I take this as a sign that Obama meant it when he said he didn't care if he's a one term president. Four year or eight, it doesn't matter to him as he will be well taken care of for his role in this. I hope both FDR and LBJ haunt him if he goes through with this.

pull it off in the lame duck session. With the populist wind blowing again, I'm sure they fear a change in the political landscape of Congress following the election. The Specter and Lincoln debacles likely served to turn up the heat on their "committee work".

working out for you?
Isn't it wonderfully "progressive" to see Republican policies being implemented by Democrats and liberal policies being exiled again and again?

privatizing Social Security. The Congressional Dems only jumped on the anti-privatizing bandwagon once polls showed that the majority of people didn't want to risk their SS with Wall Street. I hope this attempt by Republicans masquerading as Democrats (the DLC Dems) gets progressive groups and labor activists out of the "veal pen" and leading the public outcry against Obama's attempt to make it harder for working Americans to retire with dignity.

Social Security benefits represent about 40% of the income of the elderly.
Among elderly Social Security beneficiaries, 52% of married couples and 72% of unmarried persons receive 50% or more of their income from Social Security.
Among elderly Social Security beneficiaries, 20% of married couples and about 41% of unmarried persons rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.

•In 2009, nearly 51 million Americans will receive $672 billion in Social Security benefits.

•An estimated 159 million workers, 94% of all workers, are covered under Social Security.

52% of the workforce has no private pension coverage.
31% of the workforce has no savings set aside specifically for retirement.

from: http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/basicfact.htm
more: http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/
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Benefits are invested in over 58 million people in the latest figures, and for about half of them, the most vulnerable, it is the final lifeline.

Instead how 'bout the administration invests in trying to employ 5 or 10 million people of the more of the 27 million under or unemployed? Don't beat up on the most vulnerable. Raise revenue by encouraging full employment.

their dirty work for them! Really wish I hadn't voted for him!

Happen

but information abounds that would seem to indicate otherwise. A continued public perception of "never gonna happen" is undoubtedly the conservatives greatest asset as they move forward to enact the recommendations of the Deficit Commission after the midterm elections, in the lame duck congress.

If you are concerned at all about the future of Social Security, it may be best to keep a wary eye, not to

retirement have been so drastically altered that all I have is Social Security to live on. No nice pension, no stock portfolio. Just an average American who worked all her life and paid for these meager dollars.

If the government takes that away or drops the payment significantly, I might just as well pack it in right now.

Hard enough to survive on this check, no way to survive on nothing.

what would be the upside besides lobbyists jobs for all the Dems who would be kicked out of office if they went along with this?