How Obama's policy advisors explain his giveaway on the safety nets.

madfloridian

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Sun Jul-24-11 07:57 PM
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How Obama's policy advisors explain his giveaway on the safety nets.

And I don't buy it at all. It's a bunch of words from centrists who have no thoughts for how those cuts will hurt ordinary everyday people. It's like they live in the rarified air of rich folks who only have to worry about talking points for the next election.

Obama takes political, policy gamble on �big deal�

Here are some of the explanations. They don't fly with me because I believe that has been the goal all along.....to reduce Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and eventually turn them over to corporations in the form of personal accounts.

Obama�s political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president�s standing among political independents, who abandoned Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections and who say reining in the nation�s debt is a high priority.

No, even independents don't want those programs harmed.

The risk for Obama now is that his pursuit of a sweeping package could deeply disappoint his Democratic allies, who believe the president may be giving away too much. His calculation that an ambitious plan to reduce the nation�s debt by $4 trillion over 10 years is so important that he�s willing to endanger one of the best weapons in his party�s arsenal � the argument that Democrats will protect Medicare and Social Security at all costs.

�It�s a political and policy gamble � the idea that people would welcome a large deal when it required middle-class Americans to sacrifice, even down the road, at a time when they have fewer resources,� said Neera Tanden, chief operating officer at the Center for American Progress and former domestic policy adviser in the Obama administration.

Of course, it is a huge political gamble, but I think it has been planned all along. The policy makers do not believe they need to worry about the people who object....that there is nowhere else to go if both parties do it.

�The president ran for the office to bring both parties together to solve big problems. That�s what he is trying to do here, even if it comes with political pain,� said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, in an e-mail. Obama has said a big deal is best for the nation�s economy and would help preserve entitlements over the long run. He has also started making the argument to liberals that they won�t be able to get their priorities accomplished until there is a plan to tame the debt.

And the Third Way weighs in.

�It benefits him politically a great deal if there�s a big deal,� said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way, a left-leaning group that has been supporting an ambitious plan. �The deficit favors Republicans. But if it seems like it�s been solved, then you take away one of the biggest Republican issues and at worst you neutralize it and at best you win it.�

So that's the advice Obama is getting? That if the GOP accepts his offer which includes cuts to programs that are vital to seniors, the needy, the disabled....that he will win?

Obama and his advisors fully understand that this is going to be a bloody process. In fact Senator Obama himself said so back in 2006.

Bob and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy. There has been a tendency in the past for us to say, well, look, we have got to grow the pie, and we will retrain those who need retraining.

..."....Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg,Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don't have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded. They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.

He was speaking then to the very ones who are advising him now. In his speech he never attempted to offer a solution for the problems coming from their policies...nothing at all about how to stop the bleeding.