Harry Reid

Sabotage the Supercommittee? We Say Go For It!

Richard Eskow — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:55:30 -0500

Ezra Klein's "Wonkbook" is invaluable for anyone trying to follow the Washington policymaking process. Each day it offers its readers everything from the latest CBO analyses to the newest latest adorable animal videos. Since I'm both an obsessive reader of reports and a watcher of cute animal videos (I personally posted this clip of a baby kitten being hugged by its mother when it was having a nightmare), I'm glad it's around.

In the contentious and confused world of political debate, the data informs us and the videos humanize us. (Although I have to say the Corgi riding a playground swing in this morning's Wonkbook video doesn't look too thrilled with the experience.) But that doesn't mean we'll always react to the same information in the same way.

Take the bipartisan Congressional "supercommittee"[1] tasked with cutting the Federal deficit. This morning's Wonkbook tells us that Republicans on the Committee aren't just resisting a deal. They're also working to undercut the defense spending part of the "triggers" - those automatic cuts that were to take effect if no compromise was reached.

Ezra writes that Republicans are "reneging on the terms of the debt-ceiling deal," and concludes: "The reality is, the supercommittee might not just end without reaching a deal. It might end by undoing a previous deal, and by making the two sides trust each other less in future deals. That's not just failure. That's sabotage."

You say that like it's a bad thing. A supercommittee failure would be great news. It doesn't matter who blows up the process, as long as it's stopped. Sabotage the supercommittee? Don't mind if you do!

The idea was a terrible one from the start. The country's wracked with devastating levels of un- and underemployment (the figures vary from 24 to 25 million Americans), wages have stagnated for the middle class, and our infrastructure is crumbling. Yet both parties have adopted the misguided right-wing idea that deficits - an important long-term concern - are our most important immediate concern. That defies both economic logic, which says we must invest now to get the economy going, and polling data, which shows that the public wants Washington to fix the economy before it cuts deficit spending.

It would be anything but tragic if the supercommittee process broke down over Republican intransigence. In fact, it would be terrific! But continued Democratic missteps could lead to a real tragedy. Right now Harry Reid and the President are both insisting that those triggers be enacted to both defense and domestic cuts if the committee fails to propose a plan. That puts them in the position of advocating Medicare cuts that Republicans can then claim to have opposed. The GOP ran that play against them in 2010, and it worked.

Wouldn't it be better if the Democrats moved the dialog back where it belongs instead - back to creating jobs and rebuilding the American economy? The President made a start with his Jobs Act, which has helped him in the polls. And while it's far from what it should be, enacting it would be very good for the country. So why not go with what works?

Americans - and often even a majority of Republicans - oppose cutting Medicare or Social Security to reduce Federal deficits. Yet that's exactly what the Democratic supercommittee proposal suggests.Somehow the White House team has even managed to convince itself that this would be smart politics. Klein's White House sources as usually very good, and as he reported the other day:

"For most of this year, the White House has thought that the surest path to President Obama’s reelection was to strike a big deficit deal with Republicans, or at least be seen trying to strike a big deficit deal with Republicans."

Good Lord.

The deficit-cutting process was always a political death trap for Democrats in particular. The party once known for Social Security, Medicare, and fighting poverty had nothing to gain and everything to lose by sacrificing middle class and lower-income interests in a misguided effort to please markets that are indifferent to their efforts. The fact that they must deal with the most extremist Republicans in political history makes the exercise even more ill-advised. Perhaps to provide a veneer of legitimacy to future deals, the President and some in his party increasingly adopted the nonsensical rhetoric of the anti-government right.

Here's the truth: Deficits matter, but they're not our urgent priority - and job creation would help there, too. And no, Mr. President, a government's budget is not like a family's budget. The markets and ratings agencies don't seem to care much about the supercommittee.

Besides, no family would let Grandma go without needed medical care just so that it could lower its FICO score.

Their miguided efforts led to a political dialog that's wildly divorced from the electorate's concerns and wishes. While voters struggled with underwater mortgages, low wages, and a shortage of full-time jobs, Barack Obama and Hill Republicans were posturing over who would cut the Federal deficit more. The austerity train rumbled forward relentlessly, rendering Washington's arguments largely irrelevant to the public, while voters looked on as helplessly ... well, as helplessly as a Corgi in a playground swing.

That's why the Occupy movement has captured the public's interests. It has helped shift the dialog back where it belongs: to creating jobs, restraining Wall Street, and asking the wealthy to pay their fair share. The President's Jobs Act, while not as strong as it should have been, was a step in the right direction. But it's not clear that he and other Democrats are getting the message. Today we're told that "the Obama Administration is quietly bracing for supercommittee failure."

"Bracing" for failure? They should be praying for it. I know I am. Sabotage the supercommittee? We say "go for it."

___________________

[1] Style note: Klein and the Washington Post have been using "supercommittee" when writing about this extrajudicial body, while I and others have been using "Super Committee."

That's another problem with this attempted end run around the political process, using an unprecedented body that deliberates in secret and whose decisions must be subject to a straight up-and-down vote with no amendments and limited debate.

Writers like us know the naming conventions for democratic political terms like Congressional Committee, Caucus, or cloture. But when it comes to a non-democratic body like this one, the rules haven't been written yet. So give us all a break and knock it off, would ya?

'Super Committee' of Doom: Who'll Protect Us From the Extremists?

Richard Eskow — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:10:06 -0400

An unelected and unrepresentative group they call the 'Super Committee' has been given extraordinary power over our own economic destiny. Think if it as a political Justice League of America, except that its mission is to rescue Treasury bonds, not people.

Problem is, the bonds don't need to be rescued. People do.

Donner party of twelve, your table is ready!

The twelve people on the Committee, six Republicans and six Democrats, come half from the Senate and half from the House. Their assignment is to find $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reductions, dollars that can only be found by collecting more taxes or by cutting more spending. The last deal, negotiated primarily by the White House and the Republicans, consisted entirely of spending cuts.

This twelve-person junta need to come up with roughly $1.5 trillion more in deficit reduction. The Republicans have already sworn not to raise taxes on the wealthy. The Democrats say they want to to be "balanced" and they're eager make a deal.

We've seen this movie before. We don't like the ending.

The Twelve

In the 1950's teleplay Twelve Angry Men, a jury was ready to convict an innocent defendant until a lone holdout changed everybody's mind. Even as recently as the mid-fifties, nobody found it remarkable that juries included only men. Boy, how times have changed! Today it's all of us, middle class and lower income who stand in the economic dock, accused of nothing but facing our punishment anyway. But at least our jury of twelve isn't all male. There's one woman. [1]

You've come a long way, baby!

They walk on without the Lord's name/ All twelve of them - into the distance/Prepared for the worst, Willing to spare no one. "The Twelve," Aleksandr Blok

Here are a few questions worth asking about this unelected junta, whose proceedings will be hidden from public view and whose judgments will be fast-tracked to a high-pressure up-or-down vote:

Democrats hold the Senate and the White House. That's two out of three. So why is the group's composition evenly split between the parties?
Why are the Committee's members forbidden to come up with any solutions except deficit reduction?
Why are normal legislative rules being suspended to give them such extraordinary power?
Why aren't we doing anything about our far more immediate economic crisis - jobs?

This is a stacked deck, any way you look at it. But you go to war with the Super Committee you have, not the Super Committee you wish you had. So it's time to suck it up and let go of that democracy nostalgia. Representative government is so nineties!

Besides, it's time to meet our new overlords.

The Antimatter Jobs Plan

Ladies and gentlemen, let's meet our Republican panel! Leading off on the Senate side is Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, chief architect of the GOP's 'jobs plan.' If that's a plan for creating jobs, the Black Plague was a public health initiative. Let's take a look at its highlights, which we can call up from Sen. Portman's own website before you can say bring out your dead!

The plan's first statement is that we must "begin living within our means." That's coded conservative language for cutting government spending on things like police, firefighters, and teachers. \This part of the "jobs plan" includes a "balanced budget amendment," spending limits, and "spending cuts." That's three different ways of saying "let's create jobs ... by firing a lot of people."

There's more "job creation" in the Portman plan, too:

More tax cuts for capital gains and dividends, very much like the cuts that didn't produce any jobs over the last ten years.
More tax cuts for millionaires, very much like the cuts that didn't produce any jobs over the next ten years.
Anti-regulatory roadblocks to prevent "costly new mandates and burdens associated with Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare."

Last year's Dodd/Frank bill is a first small step toward urgently-needed bank reform which the Republicans say it's too "costly" and "job killing." The total cost of unreformed banking in 2008 was tens of trillions in lost wealth, and tens of millions of lost jobs. What they're really saying is, "Wall Street spends billions of dollarson campaign contributions, and it would be too costly to lose them - too costly for us."

"ObamaCare" is the Republican code for "the health law we supported when it was first drafted by the American Enterprise Institute, and then it was proposed by our Senators as an alternative to what we then called 'HillaryCare', which we embraced when Mitt Romney passed it in Massachusetts, and which we then decided was intolerable when it passed during a Democratic President's term -- after which we affixed his name to it as a pejorative term."

That's what they mean to say when they say "Obamacare."

Unlike his Republican peers, Portman said recently that he'd be open to some "revenue enhancement." That phrase is Beltway code for "increasing taxes on the middle class so the wealthy aren't disturbed." Expect more of this "flexibility" in the weeks to come.

There's way too much in the wacky Portman plan than we can cover here, including a ban on any control of greenhouse gas emissions and lots of new international trade deals that'll create new jobs ... in other countries, by destroying millions more of them here.

If there's one common thread running through this grab bag of far-right wish list items, it's this: None of them create jobs, and most of them would destroy them by the millions. It's an antimatter jobs plan, produced in some alternative universe, and like anything made of antimatter it would cause a massive explosion if it touched anything in our world.

Now Boarding, Crazy Train, Track 2

That's the bad news about Portman. Want the good news? He's the moderate Republican on the Committee. Another Committee member, Jed Hensaerling, voted for the Republican Study Committee budget, a document that's the political equivalent of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a live bat onstage (an act he swears he never performed). Here are some of the highlights of that document:

It would increase defense spending, by about $50 billion over ten years[2].
It radically cuts other government spending, the kind that does create jobs.
It slashes Social Security and Medicare benefits, and weakens Medicare by turning billions over to insurance companies.
It slashes assistance to the needy, whose ranks have grown dramatically.
It would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The last time that happened, sleazy executives used their government mandate to pay themselves billions and engage in practices that helped run the government into the ground.
It would cut $45 billion in 2012 alone for supplemental nutrition assistance - because nothing says prosperity like hungry poor children.
It would reduce the state children's health insurance program by3 billion in 2012, because nothing says prosperity like hungry poor kids who can't get medical treatment when they come down with rickets.

Funky Dollar Bill

It pollutes this air in the name of wealth. It'll buy you life, but not true life ... the kind of life where the soul is hard. My name is dollar bill." Funkadelic, "Funky Dollar Bill"

Isn't this plan crazy enough for you yet? Then get this: It also eliminates the $1 bill and replaces it with a coin. That may seem silly at first, but think about it.: Dollars are like pennies to the wealthy, and other people won't have enough of them to matter. Besides, it helps the poor a little too. When all those malnourished and uninsured kids grow up blind and disabled, they'll know if you really dropped a buck in their cup because they'll hear it rattling against the tin.

All the Republicans on the Committee expressed support for the Paul Ryan budget proposal. That would have eliminated Medicare and replaced it with an increasingly worthless voucher, which they called "Medicare" in order to hide the fact that it was an increasingly-worthless voucher. The House Republicans also voted for steep cuts in funding for education and state and local police. (We've just seen how well that worked out in Great Britain.) There's a lot of other crazy stuff in there, too.

All the Republicans have pledged not to raise taxes on the wealthy. But they seem to be open to "revenue enhancements" that would devastate the already-struggling middle class, like reductions in* the employer health benefit deduction (which would strip millions of medical coverage and create billions in out-of-pocket costs) and an end to the mortgage interest tax credit (which could put millions more homes into foreclosures and drive real estate values even more).

At any other point in modern history, people in both parties would have seen these six Republicans for what they are - extremists who seek the wholesale destruction of governmental institutions, the decimation of the middle class, and the transfer of even more national income national income to the ultra-wealthy. Eisenhower, Nixon, and even Reagan would recoil at their radical agenda.

The Defenders?

The Democrats on the Committee are the nation's last line of defense. They must be outraged about these Social Security cuts, don't you think? They must be gearing up to save us from this insanity right now, right? Actually the best-known Democrat on the Committee, John Kerry, told Meet the Press that we need "a mix of reductions and reforms in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

Kerry's recently been repeating some of the economically meaningless mantras that were designed and promoted with billionaire Pete Peterson's money, as when he said that our problem "is not the short-term debt... (but) the structural debt of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation."

No, it's not. Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. The demographic problem, or "baby boomer wave," was fixed in the 1980s, which is why there's currently a $2.6 trillion surplus in Social Security. And the way to fix Medicare and Medicaid, which are long-term problems, is by reducing or eliminating the direct and indirect cost of for-profit medicine from our economy.

Hey, maybe the Super Committee will say we can't afford to treat health care as a get-rich-quick scheme for MBAs anymore! They won't, of course, but any group that was sincerely committed to fixing our long-term deficits would.

~~Ladies~~ Lady and gentlemen, have you reached your verdict?

The President's already agreed to two deals that relied exclusively on spending cuts and gave the wealthy a free pass to keep enjoying their historically low levels of taxation. Many of the Democrats on the Super Committee have been praised for their "balanced" approach, while all of the Republicans have refused to consider taxes for the rich and are even proposing more cuts at the highest income levels.

These Democrats are the nation's last line of defense. That's reason to be concerned about their resolve, and reason to demand that they stand firm on behalf of measures supported by the majority of Americans. The majority wants higher taxes for the wealthy, no cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits, and deep reductions in military spending.

There's a reason why this Committee was designed to bypass normal democratic processes. The public hates what it's trying to do. So do policy experts who understand how destructive their cuts would be to an already-wounded economy. The Republicans of today are radical extremists, and Democrats would rather appease the radicals than fight for what's right.

The "Twelve Angry Men" scenario could never happen in this group, since the Republicans have already said they'll never change their minds. If Democrats hold out for what's right and fair, they can still protect us. But if they opportunistically choose to appease the radicals for misguided political reasons, they'll be guilty of watching millions of people get hurt without lifting a finger. The words of Edmund Burke might have been written for today's Democratic Party: All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Correction: Make that "... for good men and one woman to do nothing." Like we said, times have changed, at least a little. The question is, will these Democrats change too? Because the Republicans won't, so the old Democratic politics of compromise would spell doom for our economic future ... and the Democratic Party's political future.

_________________

[1] Since the House and Senate are both dominated by white males, especially on the Republican side, this isn't as surprising as it seems. But it is unfortunate. The best way to change it is by electing a legislative body that more closely resembles America.

[2] Defense spending creates far fewer jobs for the money spent than other forms of expenditure.

* This originally read "elimination of," but there are no current proposals to eliminate these deductions altogether.

Choose Your Poison: As the Economy Burns, GOP & Dems Fight Over How to Make Things Worse

Richard Eskow — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:30:44 -0400

Gandhi famously answered the question "What do you think of Western Civilization?" by saying "I think it would be a good idea." That phrase might come in handy the next time somebody asks what you think of a two-party democracy: It would be a good idea. As the economy burns to the ground, nobody's calling the Fire Department. Both parties want to throw gasoline on the fire, and their only disagreement is whether to use regular gas or unleaded.

Here's a challenge, if anyone's willing to take it: Can you read the statistics below without concluding that our current debate is a national disgrace? Both parties are pushing radical and counterproductive cuts that would devastate middle class and lower-income Americans, compounding the misery for ninety percent of us. Neither asks the top one percent of earners, some of whom caused this crisis, to help repair the damage after enjoying historically low tax rates.

And this isn't just somebody's opinion. These are the numbers talking, not me. John Boehner's plan is a radical right-wing assault on government that would have embarrassed previous generations of Republicans. Nevertheless, his party's base and members of the House will probably reject it. Harry Reid's proposal is also devastating - and his party's rank and file may very well support it. It's hard to know which is a sadder statement on the degraded state of our politics.

Both proposals would defer the most brutal cuts until after the election. Both try to insulate their architects from the consequences of their actions - actions which the public strongly opposes - by placing them in the hands of an unelected 'Super Congress' whose directives would be given a high pressure up-or-down vote. That's cowardice, not courage. A vote for either plan is a vote against democratic process, and a vote against the middle class and those in need.

Democratic failure of leadership

There are sane and courageous Democrats and independents, to be sure, like the Progressive Caucus in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate. But the party's leadership have become "leaders" in name only. Even Nancy Pelosi, who could once be counted on to be a voice of reason, has suddenly begun murmuring the mad mantra of austerity economics as her friends and supporters struggle to decode her words for a hidden explanation.

""It is clear we must enter an era of austerity," said Pelosi, "to reduce the deficit through shared sacrifice," "She said 'we must ,'" one told me yesterday, "so she might have meant 'she has no choice.'" But that's like trying looking for hidden messages in the gestures of kidnapped soldiers as they make their taped confessions to a hostile government. This is a time for clear calls to action, not coded signals sent by semaphore.

The Democratic failure starts at the top. The President has relentlessly sought to cut Social Security and Medicare, apparently to prove his "post-partisan" nature before the 2012 elections. He appointed a "deficit commission" led by two entitlement haters; had senior Administration officials privately tell people (including this writer) that "a deal will be done" to cut benefits (although Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit); planned to include Social Security cuts in the State of the Union message, until a political backlash loomed: and now insists on including entitlements in these negotiations by saying "let's do all of it at once." (Who insists on negotiating cherished programs when your opponent has something as effective as the debt ceiling to use as leverage?)

It's a replay of health and financial reform. The President's relentless pursuit of a deal - any deal - that he can hang on his wall means he's eager to sacrifice popular and needed programs, both for expediency and to burnish his own chosen image as "above left and right." His focus on process over policy has led him to chide members in both parties of Congress to "eat their peas" by embracing explosive cuts that will harm the economy. This "ap-peas-ment" strategy would sacrifice the middle class in pursuit of "peas in our time."

Leader Reid and Leader Pelosi may feel that these are the only proposals that have a chance of being enacted. But they're not saying that. And they're certainly not proposing urgently-needed solutions to our jobs and housing crisis. Where is the real debate we should be having? Where is the distinction being drawn between Republican and Democratic policies, so that voters have a choice and not an echo? Not in Washington.

What do the numbers tell us about the debate we should be having? Here are the flickering vital signs for an economy on life support:

A dying middle class

Jobs and Wages

The real combined figure for unemployment and under-employment is approximately 22 percent
The number of Americans who "live paycheck to paycheck," has gone from 43% in 2007 to 61% today, and more people are tapping their 401(k) accounts and other retirement savings.
Total wages have fallen 5% from 2007, or about313 billion (in fixed dollars). But incomes went up at the very top, so the real figure for everybody but the wealthiest among us is even worse.
The median wage fell by $159 to $26,261 between 2009 and 2010, which means half of all workers made $505 a week or less. The median wage is now $196 less than it was in 2000.
From 1930 to 1980, income for the bottom 90% of Americans grew by 74%. Since 1980, the year of Ronald Reagan's election, it's grown 1%.

Housing

The average cost of a house nearly doubled between 1975 and 2008. Prices have been falling since the crisis, but tens of millions carry a worthless debt burden and can't unload their houses to achieve relief. Only the top 5% earners have seen their incomes increase enough to cover this explosion in housing costs.
The number of employed Americans grew by more than 21 million between 1992 and 1990, but only 2.8 million more were on the employment rolls nine years later.
108 million people, 45 percent of working-age Americans, are either unemployed, underemployed, or "not in the labor force" (which often means they've given up altogether - there are 85 million people in that category).
Residential real estate has lost more than six trillion dollars in value since 2008, after 57 consecutive months of decline - although a large chunk of that money is still being repaid as bank loans.
Housing values are down by a third over the last three years. Even more ominously, they're down 4.6% since their 2009 lows, and they're still falling.
Overall, middle-class Americans have lost an estimated $7.7 trillion in assets - and the end is not in sight.

Generational Decline

College tuitions have gone up 900% since 1978. The country's total student debt is now greater than its credit card debt, and will reach1 trillion this year.
Only 44% of those polled believe that children will have "a better life than their parents." Ten years ago that figure was 71%.

The bottom line? For the middle class, the dream is over. And it's not coming back unless strong action is taken.

Poverty USA

The overall figures are staggering:

Since the financial crisis, more than two million Americans have fallen into poverty.
More than 43 million Americans now live below the poverty line. More than 20% of this country's children now live in poverty, more than twice the figure for children in Great Britain or France.
More than one household in twenty lives with "extreme food insecurity," which means normal eating patterns have been disrupted "at times" during the year because they didn't have money for food.

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows how devastating the new economy has been to minorities:

Median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009 (versus 16 percent for white).
Median wealth for African Americans fell 53 percent.
Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic household, twice the difference that existed before the year 2000. (And that disparity was disgraceful.)
Wealth disparities in this country are the greatest they've been in a quarter century, since this data was first collected.

Party on, Rich America!

Ready for some good news? When it comes to the wealthy, there's plenty:

66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
The average income for Americans earning 50 million or more surged from91.2 million in 2008 to518.8 million in 2009. In the midst of the recession, there were fewer of these high earners, but the survivors - just 74 people - made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America.
The top 5% of American households have seen their income increase by 103% since 1975 (as opposed to a 1% increase since 1980 for the bottom 90%).

Burning Down the House

By failing to fight for job-creating infrastructure programs, Democrats are losing a chance to put people to work and save the economy trillions. As a new report explains, "the nation's deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure will cost the American economy more than 870,000 jobs, and suppress the growth of the country's Gross Domestic Product by $3.1 trillion by 2020." Savings include lost productivity and added travel time as well as safety and travel costs.

Austerity measures in Great Britain, on the other hand, have weakened the economy more than expected. The International Monetary Fund notes that a cut of themagnitude being debated here " typically reduces GDP by about 0.5 percent within two years and raises the unemployment rate by about 0.3 percentage point." And since both the Boehner and Reid plans leave the tough decisions until later, the actual impact could be even greater.

Austerity's already hurt us. As a senior Goldman Sachs analyst (not one of the trading guys you probably despise - an analyst) explains,"fiscal adjustment ... (in) the first quarter of 2011 showed the largest negative impact of government spending (cuts) on real GDP growth since the mid-1980s..." He estimates that we've already lost more than 1% of our growth through austerity measures like those being proposed by Reid and Boehner.

Who would be affected most by these cuts? The poor, as programs for them are cut back. Seniors, as Social Security and Medicare are slashed. (Yes, Mr. President and Leader Reid, the "chained CPI" and a raised retirement age are "slashes.") The middle class, as their taxes go up through a "chained CPI" and the elimination of deductions that benefit them. In other words, between 90% and 99% of the country would suffer.

Real Solutions

Where are the real solutions? We need an 18-month "job surge," where governments invest in job-creating programs that also build up our crumbling infrastructure. That will prime the pump and get the economy moving again.

If we can restore $313 billion in lost wages and then build to an acceptable employment level we'll see billions of dollars billions in added income -- which will leaded to new spending, which creates even more jobs. And the taxes paid by these newly-employed people would go a long was toward reaching the Boehner and Reid goals for cutting the deficit. The remainder could be addressed in a couple of years, once the economy's moving again.

Democracy Fail

The political posturing by leaders of both parties isn't just ruthless, or foolish, or cynical, though it is all of those things. It's counterproductive. The nation's two capitals - its political capital in Washington and its financial capital on Wall Street - aren't just refusing to help the suffering majority. They're actively working to inflict more damage. Don't believe for a moment our leaders will be there for you when you need them. The public will need to pressure them through calls, votes, and demonstrations.

The economy's burning, and the leaders of both parties are treating you the way Rhett Butler treated Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind: Frankly, my dear, they don't give a damn. Or if they do, they've either miscalculated badly or they're too intimidated to say so. Either way, it's up to us to act.

3 Simple Things to Do Today Instead of Saying "Eff You Washington!"

Richard Eskow — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:09:23 -0400

People in the capital were thrilled by Twitter's role in 2009's Iranian uprisings. They probably weren't as excited this weekend when a new "hashtag" (topic) suddenly climbed toward the top of Twitter's trend list. It's not printable here, but the first word began with a "F." After that came the words "you" and "Washington."

The frustration's understandable, given Washington's bizarre monomania with applying the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. But there are more constructive ways to spend your day than tweeting four-letter words in the general direction of the Potomac River.

Tweet Dreams

The Twitter trend was started by the seemingly mild-manner media analyst Jeff Jarvis, who explains (warning: not work safe): "I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling ...After dinner, I tweeted: "Hey, Washington *****, it's our country, our economy, our money. Stop f**ing with it."

Somebody responded by tweeting, "Hashtag it: #F***YOUWASHINGTON." Says Jarvis: "So I did ... And then it exploded as I never could have predicted."

It's easy to make too much out of this sort of thing. Twitter users aren't a cross-section of America. Too much can be made of its top trends -- which as of this writing include #Dear Taylor Swift, #Fantasy Football, and #Russell Brand. If hashtags alone can predict our political future, comedians will rule a nation of make-believe athletes who write love letters to teenaged country singers. (Somebody's probably muttering, 'You mean, like right now?')

The revolution will not be twitterized.

Genuine and Widespread Discontent

But there may be a larger phenomenon here, once that can be seen in polling numbers too. People are in despair for their future. Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe we're still in a recession (which, for many people, we are). Consumer confidence has plunged. Almost 40 percent of Americans believe we've entered a state of permanent decline, while nearly half expect another major recession in the next year.

And they don't believe anything's being done to stop it, since unemployment is still high and the views of the American Majority aren't being represented in this week's deficit discussions. More than 60 percent now say that the country's on the wrong track and unfavorable opinions of both parties are nearing record highs.

In other words, "F**k you, Washington."

Deal or No Deal?

Harry Reid's "grand bargain" won't include cuts to Medicare and Social Security. If he's successful (the president now supports him) that will mean that public outcries have once again thwarted attempts to cut these programs.

But Reid's proposal has problems, too. Like Boehner's plan, it would create a "supercommission" empowered to recommend drastic cuts, which would be submitted for an up-or-down vote with no modifications. (It's not clear if entitlements would be excluded from Reid's version.) There would be no tax increases under the Reid plan, either, which means the wealthy would continue their easy ride while other Americans bear the brunt of spending cuts. You can't fix our economic problems without increasing taxes, as this chart from economist Menzie Chinn shows:

It's all there. Spending rose sharply and tax revenues declined dramatically when George W. Bush took office. Both trends spiked again after the Great Recession. Why? First came the cost of two major wars, along with the Bush tax cuts. Then came the cost of (partially) repairing the damage left by a deregulated and unsupervised Wall Street, along with lost tax revenue as millions of people lost their jobs.

In the face of all this, here's Washington's plan: Continue the wars, preserve tax cuts for the wealthy, and fight Wall Street regulations. Hey, what was that hashtag called again?

Into Action

But despair not, ye infuriated Americans. As promised, here are three things you can do today (unless it's not Tuesday, July 26, in which case you can only do two of them):

1. Use this link to tell your Senators and Representatives that you oppose any deal that would cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, and ask them to raise the debt limit without any conditions attached.

2. Call your Senators and/or Members of Congress to tell them the same thing. (The link above should give you their contact information when you're done. It will ask you for a donation, too -- which, if you decide to give, would make four things you can do today.) If the phone numbers don't appear, they're publicly available.

3. If it's before noon on Tuesday, you still have time to find your Representative's local office and go there for a noon demonstration sponsored by a number of groups, including MoveOn and the Campaign for America's Future. You can find the nearest office here and then, as MoveOn says, "tell your Representative that they need to protect the programs working families rely on, and make the richest few pay their share."

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee summarizes the goals of these actions as 1) thanking the 81 Democrats in Congress who signed the Progressive Caucus letter opposing cuts to Social Secial, Medicare, and Medicaid, 2) urging other Democrats to oppose any plans that includes these cuts, and 3) telling Republicans to stop pushing for cuts to these programs. (They could add a few Democrats to that list, too.)

These actions could make a difference. And if these actions continue and grow, we may someday live in a country where the biggest trending hashtag on Twitter is "#thankyouWashington."

Taylor Swift might be disappointed, but the rest of us would be pretty happy.

(Abbreviated from an earlier version that was published in The Huffington Post)

How Much Would A Social Security Deal Cost You?

Richard Eskow — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:42:48 -0400

How much would you lose in benefits if President Obama makes a deal with the Republicans to cut Social Security? The Administration isn't denying reports that just such a deal is in the works. As the President prepares to meet with Congressional leaders tomorrow, the financial security of millions of Americans may hang in the balance.

According to the polls, so could his political future.

If the President and his party accept a proposed "chained CPI" benefit cut, they - and not their opponents - are likely to be painted as "Social Security slashers. " (Remember the GOP's Medicare strategy in 2010?) Dealmakers hope to avoid that by hiding the reduction in a lowered cost of living (COLA) adjustment, but it seems wildly optimistic to think a cut of this magnitude can be hidden from the public. It's doubly unfortunate because COLA adjustments should be increased, not reduced.

If you have a copy of your statement of estimated Social Security benefits (a document which, interestingly, the government seems to have stopped sending), this chart may give you a sense of how this deal would affect you:

The middle line shows today's benefits. The bottom line shows how those benefits would be reduced under the "chained CPI" cut. And the top line shows how quickly living expenses are going up for America's seniors.. A fair COLA would be based on the top line. Moving to the bottom line, as this proposal does, is a sharp cut in today's benefits.

If you apply these percentages to your last estimate of benefit payments, you'll get a sense of this change's impact on you personally. If you don't have your last estimate of benefits (or haven't received one yet), here's a helpful graphic from my colleagues at Social Security Works that illustrates the impact of this cut on anyone who, well, eats:

The COLA adjustment also determines tax brackets. Changing it would be a two-pronged assault on the financial security of the middle class. It would cut the benefits they depend on in their senior years, while at the same time raising their taxes by pushing them into higher brackets. Guess who doesn't have to worry about this kind of "bracket creep"? Rich people. (They're already in the top bracket.)

The average retired woman receives $890 in Social Security benefits, so the "chained CPI" cut would slash her benefits by almost $500 by the time she's 80. Here's how the cuts work out overall: By the age of 75, benefits would be cut by nearly 4%. By 85 that figure would be 6.5%, and by 95 it would be 9.2%. It gets much worse for younger people, because the effect is cumulative.

Why would the President and his team agree to a cut like this? That gets into the realm of speculation. But there's a naive calculus, expressed by Kevin Drum and others, that a deal now would "take Social Security off the table for a long, long time." Is that your impression of how today's Republicans operate? Deals are made to be broken, and if they invent a phony "crisis" over morning coffee it'll be reported as fact by dinnertime.

Similar reports last January said that the President planned to announce Social Security cuts in the State of the Union, and they were later confirmed. These new stories have been surfacing for weeks without any denials from the White House. Instead we've seen more evasive talk about not "slashing" benefits (one person's "surgical cut" is another person's "slash"). Direct questions have met with responses like Press Secretary Jay Carney's, who said that the President doesn't see Social Security as a "driver" of deficits. (It's forbidden by law from adding to the deficit at all.) Carney added: "The president supports measures to strengthen Social Security, but he does not support anything that would slash benefits for future generations."

Contrast the White House's bobbing and weaving with Harry Reid's firm statements on the topic. In January Reid said Social Security cuts were "off the table." He asked the President to leave Social Security out of the deficit talks in February. In March he said he wouldn't consider restructuring Social Security for twenty years. But now the President has announced that he's taking direct control of negotiations, and it could be hard for Reid to block a White House/GOP deal - especially if that could lead to a government shutdown.

That means that Social Security is now in the President's hands, and he's not telling us what he plans to do. We're told that we can't expect tax increases for the wealthy, the wisest solution to the deficit problem, because "Republicans ... can't sell anything with the words 'revenue' or 'taxes' to their Tea Party members." Obama's base might want to consider applying some pressure to restrict its leaders' negotiation room, too.

A COLA change would also raise taxes on everybody but the wealthy. Is that the kind of accomplishment the President and his party want to campaign on in 2012? The charts and figures here should give you a sense of what this deal will cost you. The polls should remind the President and other Democrats what it could cost them.

If the President Won't Do Something About Jobs, Who Will?

Richard Eskow — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 01:29:51 -0400

When it comes to jobs, sometimes it seems as if the White House is from Mars and the middle class is from Venus. And Republicans act like they're from the Death Star, patrolling the economy in their Imperial Cruisers directing laser blasts at every job initiative they can find.

The resulting political paralysis has left millions of Americans trapped in geographical or demographic pockets of full-blown depression. Unlike Wall Street's America, theirs is a bleak economic landscape from which there seems to be no escape.

The Administration's mishandling of jobs has become a Rorschach test for those who understands that more needs to be done. Is the White House following a misguided political strategy, thinking people want lower deficits more than they want jobs? Has it been "captured" by the conservative thinking of ex-Republican Tim Geithner? Are the President and his advisors too reluctant to propose measures they know will fail in the Republican House because they want success stories?

Ask anyone these questions and the answers will tell you a lot about them, but very little about the White House (unless they have inside information, of course.) But the answers doesn't really matter. The President's staunchest supporters and his harshest liberal critics have the same work cut out for them.

St. Louis Blues

Sometimes I'd rather hammer nails into my skull than look at the latest job figures. But my toolbox is in the garage and it's raining, so here I am reading some new reports from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. We already know about our ongoing and staggeringly high overall unemployment. We know about sky-high youth and minority joblessness and record levels of long-term un- and under-employment.

Now, thanks to the St. Louis Fed's data, we also know that we lost more than one million retail jobs between 2007 and 2009. That's the result of lost demand, which in turn comes from joblessness, fewer working hours for people with jobs, and a lot more money tied up in real estate than it's worth. The St. Louis numbers also show that the average number of hours worked declined by nearly an hour per week.

As the states shed jobs, we need between 300,000 and 400,000 new jobs each month to make up for unemployment and for young people and others entering the work force. The number of new private-sector jobs last month was 38,000. The government needs to put people back to work, and quickly.

Friendly Fire

A lot of people think the White House wants to spend more to create jobs, but doesn't want to propose anything that won't make it through John Boehner's House. That argument was undercut by the Administration's actions this week. Democrats in the Senate proposed an additional $$600 million in public works spending over a three year period. That's a very small number - our Citizens' Commission on Jobs and the Deficit recommended much more investment in jobs and growth, as did the EPI and others - but it's a move in the right direction.

Predictably, Republican Jim De Mint attacked the measure as "another failed job stimulus" idea - a line of attack that's only made possible because the White House chose to ask for less stimulus money in 2009 than was actually needed, rather than let Republicans shoot down the right number. That approach would have allowed Democrats to explain clearly why the economy's still stagnant.

It's also exactly the approach Harry Reid was using when he labeled the Republican House a "big black hole" from which nothing escapes except "their ideas on how to kill Medicare." At last! Finally, a Democratic strategy for underscoring the difference between Democrats and Republicans and the need to invest in job creation.

How did the White House respond? "White House says Senate Dems' jobs bill is too expensive," read the headline in The Hill. "...(T)he bill would authorize spending levels higher than those requested by the president's Budget,: the Administration wrote, "and the administration believes that the need for smart investments that help America win the future must be balanced with the need to control spending and reduce the deficit."

Aaaargggh.

Instead of explaining that we spent too little on stimulus rather than too much, the President and his advisors have allowed Jim DeMint's assertion to go unchallenged. Added DeMint, "We've already wasted hundreds of billions of tax dollars on a misguided stimulus that left us with record high unemployment, and we don't need to repeat the mistake."

Come together ... over jobs

Whatever his reasons, we now know that President isn't about to use his "bully pulpit" to contradict Republicans like DeMint. So if the White House won't step up to the plate, who will? Somebody needs to take action. To paraphrase Al Franken, why not you?

Public pressure has persuaded the White House to change course before. In the run-up to the President's State of the Union address, advanced reports said he planned to announce Social Security cuts. A lot of people raised the alarm, call-ins and other actions were organized, and in the end no cuts were announced.

Those of us who supported these actions got a lot of pushback from people who consider themselves the President's supporters. This kind of comment from Democratic Underground was typical. "Don't buy the Hype. Obama will not announce cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Once again this phantom has been blown up into a major sh*tstorm by those who oppose Obama on the Right and the Left. Once again it will fail to materialize. When the dust settles, Obama will have only reiterated what he has said before ... (there will be) no big scary cuts after all. Just another false alarm."

That's exactly the kind of friend the White House doesn't need. As the Wall Street Journal later reported, the Administration "considered offering specific benefit cuts and tax increases to shore up Social Security's finances, but ultimately decided to back off." The Journal added: "The decision to hold off was made as the White House came under pressure from Democrats and liberal interest groups who oppose any cuts to Social Security benefits."

That pressure didn't just save American seniors from needless hardship. It also prevented the White House from committing political suicide.

Later, additional grassroots activity forced the White House to hold the line on Medicare cuts. That allowed Democrats to draw a clear distinction between themselves and the GOP - exactly what they can't do right now on jobs, thanks to the White House - and the resulting backlash against Republicans led to an upset Democratic victory in New York's special Congressional electoin last month.

Now the Administration needs to be rescued by its friends again - this time on jobs. Citizen action is needed that will force the Administration to draw a clear distinction between its policies and those of the Republicans. The public needs to hear an honest and open debate about what the economy needs. It's not small-"d" democratic of the White House to deny them that debate. And it's not big "D" Democratic to allow the President's party to be labeled the party of joblessness.

We had eight years of the Republican approach to jobs, tax cuts, and deregulation. The result is a broken and devastated economy. For reasons we can't know, the Administration has embraced deficits over putting America back to work. It will continue down this path until its friends and its critics come together and demand that it stop. There will be more opportunities to call the White House, sign petitions, and send a message in other ways. These tactics work.

The White House's staunchest supporters and its fiercest progressive critics share a common goal. They both need to persuade the President and his advisors to make the case for creating jobs. Whether the Administration wants it or not, right now it needs a little help from its friends.

What the President Should Have Said About JT Henderson - and All the Other "Real People"

Richard Eskow — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:58:14 -0400

Last night the President took a lofty, almost disinterested stance regarding budget deadlock in Congress. He seemed to chastise Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner equally, focusing on the consequences of a shutdown and ignoring the consequences of making a bad deal to avoid a shutdown.

A Federal shutdown would have "real consequences for real people," said the President, mentioning one "real" person by name: J.T. Henderson of Louisville, Kentucky.

So let's talk about J.T. Henderson - and about all the other J.T. Hendersons who are just as real, and just as important, as our friend in Louisville. You'd be surprised how many there are.

Meet the Hendersons

Who wasn't the President talking about when he mentioned the name "J.T. Henderson" last night?

He wasn't referring to J.T. Henderson, Georgia's Commissioner of Agriculture in the 1800's. Commissioner Henderson did groundbreaking work (no pun intended) on the development of government resources that help farmers and therefore boost the entire economy. His achievements include the expansion of his department of agriculture and the creation of one of the earliest weather services.

The Republicans want to cut funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and for weather services too. That would leave state institutions like those created by the late Mr. Henderson in a severe financial bind.

Nor was the President referring to the late Reverend J.T. Henderson, a Methodist minister in Norman, Oklahoma who died over 100 years ago. Rev. Henderson's church is still going strong there in Norman. The National Weather Service issued a "red flag alert" in Norman today, which will help the people prevent costly and life-threatening wildfires. The EPA's helping to investigate possible contamination of the city's drinking water.

The Republicans want to cut funding for the National Weather Service and the EPA.

The President wasn't quoting J.T. Henderson, a church saxophonist in Baltimore, Maryland. That J.T. Henderson played in the band at a public university and almost certainly in his high school band, too. High school music programs have already been cut back dramatically, and face even more severe cuts if Federal education funding is reduced in the ways that have been proposed.

Public universities are likely to struggle, too, as states are forced to replace lost Federal funding and fewer students are able to obtain Pell Grants.

Nor was the President referring to the J.T. Henderson who plays football at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina. When public universities lose funding, sports programs face cutbacks too.

And the President wasn't referring to J.T. Henderson, a plumber in Nacogdoches, Texas. His shop's located at the spot where Farm-toMarket Road meets Guy Blount Road, not far from Spanish Bluff. I don't know if that J.T. has kids, but it's going to be tough to send them to college on a plumber's income without Pell grants. And the GOP budget slashes farm assistance programs, including those which help middle-class farmers, so Farm-to-Market Road may not be getting a lot of traffic. And that could hurt J.T.'s business.

I'm sure it was unintentional, but the President's choice of words left the impression that all of these J.T. Hendersons, each of whom could suffer from the wrong budget deal, aren't quite as "real" as the J.T. whose check would be delayed under a shutdown.

The man of the hour

Here's who the President was talking about: J.T. Henderson from Louisville, Kentucky. J.T. and his wife are waiting for the tax refund they'll get as the result of an adoption tax credit. "If I could speak directly to the President or the Congressional leadership," said J.T., "I would just tell them that their grandstanding has effects as it trickles down to normal, everyday Americans."

According to ABC's website, "Henderson works in development for a non-profit in Louisville, Ky., and his wife is a first-year pediatric resident at Kosair Children's Hospital. They have struggles with large bills from medical school loans, moving expenses and Tedi's adoption."

Said J.T.: "We live check to check."

That nonprofit organization where J.T. works is dedicated to reducing child abuse and neglect in the community, which is among the most noble of vocations. J.T. himself appears to be a good guy, with the background of a person who (in the words of my Southern Baptist relatives) is "right with the Lord" and has been steeped in the hardcore fire-and-brimstone gospel. I have the feeling that, whatever his politics or theology, he has a pure and kind heart.

But J.T. may not realize that this fight isn't just about "grandstanding." It's also about ensuring that student loans are available for his child, as they were for his wife. It's about ensuring that his wife and other physicians aren't confronted with the dilemma of either accepting little or no pay to care for the elderly or turning them away altogether.

Here's something else that might interest J.T.: Studies also show that child abuse and neglect are closely linked to poverty and income levels. Poverty has already surged in the past several years, and withdrawing support for low-income families is exactly what shouldn't be done if we want to reduce this scourge from our children.

Dear Mr. President

The President quoted J.T.'s remarks about "grandstanding" and its "effects as it trickles down to normal, everyday Americans." and added: "I could not have said it better myself."

With all due respect, Mr. President, I believe you could have said it better yourself. That's no criticism of J.T., who's reacting based on the information available to him. But you have more information than he does.

Mr. President, you could have said that there is a clear struggle here between those who would defend the middle class, and those who would defend the wealthy. You could have said that you respect the outcome of the 2010 election, but that you believe that respect is a two-way street and that the 2008 election deserves respect too. You could have said that threatening a government shutdown does violence to our political system by turning the collegial give-and-take of politics into a hostage negotiation.

Mr. President, you could have said that you came to Washington to change the tone, but not by being victimized by bullying attempts to bypass the political process, or by permitting lasting harm to people who aren't responsible for our current economic crisis. You could have also said that you had already agreed to the Republicans' figure - $33 billion in cuts - only to have them demand even more.

And respectfully, Mr. President, you could have avoided a locution which suggests, however unintentionally, that the middle-class families who wouldn't be able to purchase a home, afford health care (especially in their senior years), or send their kids to college aren't "real people." Or that the children who attend Head Start programs and the families that depend on food stamps aren't "real," either.

I'm sure you didn't mean that, Mr. President.

Dear J.T.

And a quick word to J.T. Henderson of Louisville, KY: Sorry you've had to go through this, but hang in there, buddy. These media firestorms end as quickly as they begin. This too shall pass.

Someday you'll tell your grandchildren that the President of the United States mentioned you on television, and that you were famous for a few days before life mercifully got back to normal.

They'll probably say "What was television, Grandpa?"

Let's just hope you're not forced to live with the grandkids so that you can pay your medical bills.

Our closing J.T.s

Here are few more J.T.'s that weren't mentioned by the President:

The President wasn't referring to J.T. Henderson from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's a "discount realtor" who will sell your house for less than $500, and he specializes in "HUD homes" - foreclosed homes that were backed by an FHA loan, whose ownership has now reverted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The rapid rise in the number of "HUD homes" is another product of the financial crisis brought on by Wall Street deregulation. They're also trying to use the threat of a government shutdown to roll back the partial reforms enacted last year.

Nor was the President referring to the J.T. Henderson who says somewhere on the Internet, "Got so much money I should rob myself." The guys who really fit that description are on Wall Street, but they're not robbing themselves.

And the President wasn't referring to the J.T. Henderson who was a Scoutmaster in West Texas fifty years ago. That J.T. painted large nature murals on the tents of the Boy Scouts under his supervision, and they were apparently a big hit at the 1964 Boy Scout Jamboree. He's not relevant to the budget issue the way the other J.T.s are, but his murals were pretty cool.

All of these J.T. Hendersons have something in common with the man the President did mention last night - and with people on food stamps, students with Pell Grants, people with FHA loans, with you, and with me.

We're all real.

__________________________________________________________

[1] To track the impact of budget and public policy debates, go to www.TheMiddleClass.org.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Ezra Klein Is Right About Social Security, Wrong About The Threat

Roger Hickey — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:30:19 -0400

Ezra Klein has a prominently displayed piece in the Washington Post this morning, entitled The Pro-Social Security case for Social Security reform. He takes to task liberals most committed to Social Security for being unwilling to “reform” Social Security out of fear that reform would turn out to harm the system. He then goes on to outline his version of reform that no liberal would ever quarrel with: no cuts to benefits, dealing with future shortfalls by lifting the cap so all the income of the wealthy is subject to FICA tax – and improving Social Security benefits for low income retirees and spouses.

And then he pooh-poohs the fears of program’s defenders who, he says

“are so concerned that conservatives will slash benefits — now or down the road — that they are afraid to open the pension plan to any reforms at all. I think they’re wrong. This country is better than that. A political party that tries to tell ordinary Americans their retirements are too secure and too long will quickly learn its lesson when the election rolls around. Poll after poll shows the vast unpopularity of cutting Social Security benefits, and Republicans can read those surveys as easily as Democrats can. A politician may as well burn a flag on the Capitol’s lawn.”

My only response is to ask: “What planet have you been living on, Ezra?:

This country is, indeed, better than the huge number of proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Polls show that voters hate the idea of benefit cuts, and increases in the retirement age. But in Washington, these kinds of plans are everywhere. For example:

Yesterday, as Richard Eskow reported, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to hold a big rally and press conference to vow to protect Social Security from the deficit hawks in both parties who want to cut benefits.

Gene Sperling, who Ezra quotes approvingly for his plan for “add-on” private accounts, is now the national economic czar for Barack Obama. President Obama appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, whose proposals to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age are being cited as the centerpiece of bi-partisan Senate budget negotiations. Neither Sperling nor Obama have denounced those Social Security cuts, and they keep signaling that “everything is on the table.”

Ezra might want to read the countless editorials by his own paper and columns by Samuelson and others, all calling for cuts to Social Security and increases in the retirement age. Washington Post editorials have repeatedly asserted that Social Security contributes to the Federal Deficit, denied that the Social Security trust fund is real, and urged Social Security cuts as the first step to reducing deficits.

Even good liberals, like John Podesta, who in a piece about the Deficit Commission, acknowledge that Social Security contributes not a dime to the federal deficit, but urges cuts anyway because Social Security “reforms could starkly demonstrate to skeptical debt markets that the United States is willing to take on a politically difficult fiscal issue." This is akin to the argument that the real problem is rising health care costs, driving Medicare costs, but another round of health reform is too difficult right now, so cutting Social Security is the easy place to start, even if it has nothing to do with the deficit.

The point is that politicians and policy wonks from both parties all over Washington are calling for drastic cuts to Social Security. Some, like the folks at the conservative Third Way Democratic corporate front group, are making the case that Social Security benefit cuts are the best way for liberals to “save Social Security” even if what remains is a welfare system that abandons the middle class who are now struggling to figure out their own retirement and have only Social Security to count on.

Ezra Klein’s reputation is as a straight shooter who looks at the data and the facts. He courageously changed his position on raising the retirement age when he realized its impact on older working people. His position on Social Security is a good one: no cuts, raise revenues, and improve. But he ignores the strong and deadly serious push that is swirling all around him. The enemies of Social Security want to do all those destructive cuts that Ezra opposes. And they call their destructive policies “reform.” Defenders of Social Security are right to oppose that kind of “reform” coming from conservatives and misguided liberals – and we are going to have to defeat even them, even as we wait for the right time to strengthen the social insurance system that means so much to all Americans.

For similar take on Klein’s column, see Dean Baker today.

Before He Cuts Social Security, I Hope the President Listens To This "Obama" Guy

Richard Eskow — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:13:47 -0500

In an open letter to the President this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned "worriesome reports" that the President is planning to cut Social Security. These reports don't come out of the blue. They're the culmination of a months-long campaign. The White House has been privately signalling for months that it was leaning in that direction, and now the sky over Washington is darkening with trial balloons floating up from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before you make such a disastrous and unwarranted move, Mr. President, there's someone I think you should meet. Actually, you may have run into him before: He's a skinny guy with an keen analytical mind and a gift for brilliant oratory. Sound familiar? He ran for President last time around, and he had some very sensible things to say about Social Security:

As you can see in this video, Presidential candidate Barack Obama opposed exactly the kind of cuts that are being discussed now by the White House. Candidate Obama pointed out that John McCain had indicated he would cut retirement benefits, either by raising the retirement age or slowing down the cost of living (COLA) adjustments, and responded unequivocally. "Let me be clear," the Candidate said. "I will not do either." That statement is admirable for its clarity and forthrightness - so much so, in fact, that it bears repeating:

"Let me be clear. I will not do either."

The Candidate showed a genuine command of the topic, and clearly understood what actuaries and others with specialized knowledge of the topic had been saying for years: that raising the cap on payroll tax deductions - or perhaps applying it to income above $250,000 - would remove any long-term concerns about the program's solvency.

In 2008 the public has just weathered a nerve-rattling attempt by Republicans to 'privatize' and cut Social Security, and it had survived an Administration that was openly run by lobbyists and special interests. Recently their trust in government has been shaken by the appointment of a series of right-leaning business figures to this Administration. Candidate Obama promised a different kind of government - and he pledged to defend Social Security.

Lobbyists have been hard at work trying to destroy Social Security ever since that election, and now they see their opportunity. The Chamber of Commerce, which the President is scheduled to address on February 5, continues to press for Social Security cuts and privatization. And the President's own Deficit Commission was stacked with a number of people in the past or present employ of Pete Peterson, a billionaire who has made Social Security cuts a lifelong passion. Peterson has quite a few people in Washington lobbying for his point of view (some of them have economics degrees).

But that's not who Barack Obama was elected to represent. The President was elected to represent the New Silent Majority, that vast number of Americans who have seen nobody in Washington fighting for them. Three out of four Americans want the government to do more to crack down on Wall Street, so the President's recent appointments won't please them. Are they about to discover that the President's pledge to protect their old-age financial security is being broken?

Our latest polls show that eight out of ten Americans oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit. That includes 78% of independents, 82% of Republicans, and 74% of Tea Party supporters. That's worth repeating: The President may be on the verge of adopting a position that's too right wing for the Tea Party.

Our polling page also details the Democratic Party's plunging support among seniors. That's a fifteen-year trend that has accelerated under President Obama (the gap has widened from 8% to 21%). Wonder how candidate Barack Obama would have performed with this age group, with his straightforward position on this issue?

It would have seemed unthinkable in 2008 that Democrats could lose their lead over Republicans on the question, "Which party do you trust on Social Security?" Yet the figures are clear: The President and his party have lost the public's trust on this issue. "Trust" is a profound and delicate relationship. If you make an unequivocal promise, and then start equivocating as soon as you're in a position to meet your commitment, trust will fade away like dew on the White House lawn.

But it's not too late. The President can still stand up for Social Security in his State of the Union address, repeating the sensible (and financially accurate) comments of Harry Reid. Reid was absolutely right when he said that the "arithmetic" for Social Security was sound. There are reams of actuarial and economic studies to confirm that comment. Reid was eqully correct to say that Social Security cuts are "something that's perpetuated by people who don't like government." (The President may feel that such a comment isn't "civil discourse," but I don't feel it's very civil to frighten people needlessly for political reasons.)

The Candidate was right: We can protect Social Security benefits - which are too low, if anything - and fix future financial problems (scheduled to occur in 2037) by raising the cap. That would be smart policy and smart politics. It would also send the message that Candidate Obama and President Obama are one and the same person - a person who keeps his promises.

I'm sure his advisors are telling him that he must cut Social Security, even though it's politically unwise and fiscally unnecessary. Before he does, I hope the President will take the time to listen to Candidate Obama. I think he'll find that he's a pretty impressive guy. We certainly thought so; we elected him.

The President might want to give special attention to the words spoken by that candidate when he declared his intention to run for President, on a winter's day in Springfield just three years ago:

"Too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own."

The President we elected will stand up and defend Social Security in his State of the Union address. We're hoping to see him there.

________________________________________________

This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Rights Come with Responsibilities; the Right Shirks Theirs

Leo Gerard — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:27:43 -0500

Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.

The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.

Words have consequences.

Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech has provoked the delusional to violence.

It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.

What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.

Conservatives are yammering that they’re not the only ones who engage in brutal rhetoric. That’s true. But in a contest for production of violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, “kill” the Democrats.

The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April 2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress – almost all from opponents of health care reform – in other words, from Republicans, right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, who personally profit from the hostile climate they generate.

They didn’t stop though they had fair warning about the consequences. Consider the case of Byron Williams. He launched a 12-minute shoot out with California Highway Patrol officers last July after they stopped him for erratic driving. A police affidavit filed the following day said Williams intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

The Right has for decades slammed the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect constitutional rights, but Glenn Beck had made the Tides Foundation, once an obscure progressive organization, famous by attacking it repeatedly – at least 29 times between January and the July shoot out last year, including two tirades the week before Williams began his assassination mission.

Williams, who was armed during the shootout with a handgun, shotgun, rifle and body armor, said he watched FOX News to see Beck, who blew his mind, and who he viewed as a “schoolteacher.”

Still Beck, expressed no remorse and tried to squirm out of any responsibility for inciting Williams, saying on his show:

“I am the only one that has mentioned the Tides Foundation. . . So that’s what they’re using. This guy couldn’t have found this out on his own; it had to come from me. . .America, if you don’t think that they will use anything, they will. They absolutely will.”

Words do have consequences, Mr. Beck, no matter how many times you cravenly shout denials.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives insisted on reading the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the new Congressional session. It was, however, nothing but political theatre because conservatives disassociate the rights it grants from the incumbent responsibilities. Right-wing leaders like Beck disavow responsibility altogether.

When it was Arizona Rep. Giffords’s turn to read, the chamber had come upon the First Amendment, which guarantees, among other things, the right to free speech. It even guarantees Republican Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl the right to go on television the day after the shootings and contend that Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik didn’t have the right to speak about the complicity in the crime of vile, hateful and threatening political speech.

The courts have established the “crowded theater” test to determine when free speech ends and responsibility begins. Americans are responsible to refrain from yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when, in fact, there are no flames. The freedom to yell ends at the point when it endangers others.

Republicans are recklessly yelling. During the fall campaign, Arizona Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle suggested her supporters consider their Second Amendment rights if Sen. Harry Reid were re-elected. Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman said at a Tea Party rally on July 4, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and then was hired by new GOP Congressman Allen West to serve as chief of staff. Tea Party contender Jesse Kelly held a fund raiser in June asking his supporters to “get on target to . . . remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting a “fully automatic M16” with him.

Republicans bear responsibility for the consequences of this kind of brutal discourse – a political atmosphere charged with violence. Just like Glenn Beck, though, Republicans guard their rights, but shirk the concomitant responsibilities.