My only question is, when are we going to march on Washington?

Oh hell. Out of retirement already.

I just have to post this. For all those “progressives” that think Barack Obama is playing some kind of 11-dimensional chess on Social Security, he’s not. He’s wanted to do this for years. From the very beginning of his presidency.

2011

Every time I think I can’t get any more disgusted

2010

I wasn’t the only one who caught this.

At some point, these people will wake up and smell the coffee. A supposedly liberal/progressive/Democratic president would not be so ignorant of his own party’s history (or his country’s history, for that matter) and parrot conservative talking points, let alone believe them.

The “steal our retirement commission”

Social Security was never going to be killed at the hand of a Republican. Nope, it appears that it will take a “Democrat.”

2009

Beyond Discouraged

Obama: Social Security is most definitely in play (Lambert again)

[OBAMA] Now, I will tell you that Social Security disability has gone up significantly during this recession. Some of you may have read in the last couple of days that Social Security — the Social Security trust fund is worse off now because of the recession than it was. We were already having some issues with Social Security, and so we’re going to have to do some significant reforms of Social Security.

Sigh

Remember in 2004, when GWB won a great “mandate” by running on terra, terra, terra, and then after the election out-of-the-blue immediately went on a national barnstorming tour to “reform” Social Security? Remember how the Dems beat that one back?  What are they gonna do  now?

President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.

That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a “fiscal responsibility summit” before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.

“What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further,” he said. “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.” (WaPo)

The thing is, this isn’t out-of-the-blue. Obama’s been signaling this all along.

We tried to tell you.

Link to all my posts about Social Security

Reprise: Go Ahead, Raise our Taxes

Let’s just do it.  Let’s just go over the fiscal cliff slope.  

The Bush tax cuts were designed to expire in ten years. For everyone. We’ve gone two years beyond that expiration date and it has cost the country dearly.

Before anyone starts talking about cutting Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or closing loopholes or what-have-you, let’s just push the re-set button. Let all the Bush tax cuts expire. End the Payroll Tax “holiday.”  All of it. 

I posted this back in November of 2010. It is timely and bears repeating:

We’re willing to bite the bullet along with the fat cats. Seriously.

I looked at our joint tax return from last year and going back to 2001 rates would mean paying an extra $102.63 in taxes between the two of us every two weeks. Basically $50 a week. At least as best as I can figure. That appears to be the maximum we would owe.

That’s the sacrifice we are willing to make.

Sweetie and I are fortunate. When it comes to household income, we land in that upper bar. Barely. But if Sweetie were to lose his job, we’d immediately plunge down to the bar second from the bottom.

We know how to live with less, but we can’t live with nothing and we have never felt so job insecure in our lives. If either one of us were to  lose our job today, there is nothing comparable in terms of income out there for us. It’s a fact.

We’ve had ten years of Bush’s tax cuts and really, what has it gotten for the vast majority of us? Stagnant wages and job losses.  Worries that Social Security is on the chopping block. Less social safety nets. Less police and fire, less education for our kids, pot-holed roads.

If tax cuts create jobs, then why have we lost millions upon millions of them? If tax cuts generate tax revenue, then why are states and local municipalities slashing their budgets to the bone, laying off employees, requiring wage cuts, freezes, furlough days, cutting vital services, and on and on?

We can live without that extra $50.00  every week.

You guys have had your chance.

Starving Social Security

Harkin is absolutely right.

Harkin (D-Iowa), who has long been a staunch defender of Social Security, hammered it as the beginning of the end for the program.

“This Congress will be making a grave mistake — a grave mistake — and reinforcing a dangerous precedent,” Harkin said in a dramatic Senate floor speech late Thursday. “And I’m dismayed that Democrats, including a Democratic president and a Democratic vice president, have proposed this, and are willing to sign off on a deal that could begin the unraveling of Social Security.”

Harkin argued that Social Security had always been strong and protected because it was funded by its own dedicated tax stream that ensured every American would be guaranteed a basic income in their retirements, and that the program added not “even one dime to the deficits or the national debt.”

But he said now that Congress was going to pay for this cut with borrowed money from the general treasury funds, the best argument of the program’s defenders was gone.

I’ve said this from the beginning.

On that Payroll Tax “Holiday” - December 7, 2010

The piper will have to be paid.

Or killed.

All those times when we’ve said that SS doesn’t add one dime to the deficit? Well, Obama fixed that yesterday with his “deal.”  According to the conference call that ”senior administrative officials” held with press and bloggers, the $120 billion that the tax holiday will cost the Social Security Trust Fund will be paid back with monies from the general fund.

See also this and this.

And don’t Democrats remember when a Social Security “Payroll Tax Holiday” was a Republican idea and one that they recognized as a back door way to defund Social Security? Now all we hear is how we Must Pass This Bill because suddenly $20 less a week is going to send the average American to the poor house. Hogwash.   Understand that for the vast majority of Americans this “tax holiday” amounts to far less for them individually, but what it is doing to take down Social Security as a whole is catastrophic.  And Congressional Dems are going right along with it.

Unbelievable.

See what I mean by “the crazy?”  It isn’t just limited to the other side.

Mr. President, please don’t starve Social Security

I’ll pay my payroll taxes, and gladly. Please, please don’t put my retirement in jeopardy under the guise of a “job creation” bill. I can do without those few extra dollars in my pocket if it means my senior years are a bit more secure.  And please don’t make me wait until I’m 67 or older to be eligible for Medicare. 

As far as those “tax breaks and credits” to businesses? My company isn’t going to hire one single more person until they need to.  They’ve got all kinds of matrixes and charts for determining how many bodies need to be here.  It’s called Labor Utilization when Labor Utilization percentages are low, not a single person will be added to the payroll, tax cuts and credits notwithstanding.  And as far as Social Security? Anything they save on payroll taxes will go to the bottom line, not to a new employee.

The protector of our prosperity

Anyone surprised by this?

I saw this coming:

At the same lunch, which was sponsored by three conservative think tanks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he plans to seek a legislative way to waive the $600 billion in national security cuts that would be required if the superpanel fails.

And this too:

At the lunch event and during an earlier House Armed Services Committee hearing, it became apparent that pro-defense Republicans — who also staunchly oppose any tax hikes to swell federal coffers — want the entire $1.2 trillion amount to come from domestic entitlement programs.

During the GOP supercommittee members’ closed-door meetings, “there is a feeling that the discretionary side has already given its part” of needed federal cuts under the August debt deal, Kyl said.

The Republicans will press the 12-member bipartisan panel to focus solely on reforming politically volatile entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

“In a $3.5 trillion [entitlement] budget, there is enough slop in the system” to find $1.2 trillion in savings “without touching benefits or how those programs work,” Kyl said.

But I haven’t heard it put quite this way before. Jeebus on a triscuit:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) also zeroed in on entitlement program cuts.

“It is time we focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of the debt, instead of the protector of our prosperity,” McKeon said.

Up is down and black is white in Buck’s world.  McKeon has it exactly backwards. It isn’t Social Security that is driving out debt, it is endless wars and a bloated defense budget.  The protector of our prosperity IS our social safety net.

“Progressives,” what does he have to do?

Come to your house and personally kick you in the teeth?

Now, Democratic commentators — mostly the President’s most hardened loyalists — continue to invoke this “he’s-weak-and-inept” excuse for Obama, but the evidence is far too abundant to sustain it any longer.

As I was driving to work this morning I was listening to Hal Sparks (who is sitting in for Stephanie Miller), and he almost started to call Obama on the carpet. You could hear the confusion in his voice. How could his idol do this?  He was almost ready to see it.

But, no.  He got hold of himself, put his blinders back on, and true to form, he blamed Democrats who “stayed home” in November. That’s where he went.  It wasn’t Obama’s fault at all.

Pathetic.

Every time I think I can’t get more disgusted

 

From the New York Times:

The president’s renewed efforts follow what knowledgeable officials said was an overture from Mr. Boehner, who met secretly with Mr. Obama last weekend, to consider as much as $1 trillion in unspecified new revenues as part of an overhaul of tax laws in exchange for an agreement that made substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.

The intensifying negotiations between the president and the speaker have Congressional Democrats growing anxious, worried they will be asked to accept a deal that is too heavily tilted toward Republican efforts and produces too little new revenue relative to the magnitude of the cuts.

Congressional Democrats said they were caught off guard by the weekend White House visit of Mr. Boehner — a meeting the administration still refused to acknowledge on Wednesday — and Senate Democrats raised concerns at a private party luncheon on Wednesday.

But hey, Obama is the first-evah president to tweet!! 

And look at this framing. It isn’t CUTS, it’s “slowing the growth.” And it’s not extortion, it’s “cajoling.”

To the degree that any deal wins bipartisan support on slowing the growth of Medicare, for example, it would deprive Democrats of what has been one of their most potent arguments heading into 2012: their assertion that Republicans would gut the traditional Medicare system and leave older Americans vulnerable to rapidly rising health care costs.

Faced with the prospect that the federal government would default on its credit obligations, Democrats might indeed be cajoled into backing an agreement they did not strongly support. But at the moment, there is substantial private and public grumbling about what looms ahead.

Please, somebody, primary Obama, and any other Democrat who goes along with this.

And if I hear Stephanie Miller do her old, “what else can the President do” schtick, I’m going to go ballistic. Oh wait, she’s on vacation. Surely, Hal Sparks won’t be defending this. Will he?

I knew this was coming

I just thought it would come from Republicans, not our “Democratic” president.

All this will do is cut even more funds from Social Security.  And the promise that it will be repaid out of the general fund, say what?   This is the same smoke and mirrors done with the employee payroll tax ‘holiday.’

Repeat: Employers will not hire unless demand requires it. You can cut their taxes down to zero and it won’t change that fact.

Oh, and what Gaius said. Again.

I am tired of voting for Democrats who agree that “the Era of Big Government is over” and that the proper mission of America is to lead the whole world into a new era of globally integrated and interdependent, democratic capitalism.

I want to vote for someone who frankly wants to run America for the good of the Americans, and by that I mean the working and ordinary people of America.

Why should we vote, again and again, for a Democratic Party that nowadays essentially agrees with conservatives, billionaires, and libertarians that the entire working class and all the ordinary people of America are grossly and needlessly overpaid by world standards and need another half century of decline, at least, to bring them down to, say, the level of Brazil?

Hey you 20 and 30-somethings!

Yeah, you! 

I’m talking to those of you who’ve swallowed the lie that you “will never see a dime of Social Security” and are sitting on your hands instead of doing everything you can to protect it.

You need to take a second and listen up.

When your next door neighbor or your co-worker or your Congressman or Senator or even your President starts making noises about reducing Social Security or Medicare benefits, or raising the eligibility age, or imposing a voucher program for Medicare in place of the system that now takes care of every senior in the country, remember that they are talking about taking away the most successful poverty prevention program in the history of the United States.

If that isn’t enough for you and you think protecting Social Security doesn’t have a thing to do with you, answer me this:

Do you want your parents moving in with you?

Because that is what you are looking at if Social Security and Medicare go away. When your parents have no retirement income or are bankrupted by medical bills where do you think they’re going to go?

Don’t get me wrong. You may love your parents with all your heart, but honestly, come on! Do you really want them moving in with you? 

You might want to think about that. Let your imagination run free.  Let it sink in.

Think about being a teenager in their house. Wasn’t a bed of roses was it?

And now you’re all grown up. You’re making your own money. Paying your way. You’ve got your own circle of friends. You’ve made some decisions about how you want to run your life.

Now.

Imagine your parents hanging around when you want to have a bunch of friends over for a night of loud music and booze. 

What about when you want a romantic evening with your significant other? No more living room sex for you!

Do you relish the thought of your mom or dad telling you how to raise your kids? How to balance your checkbook? Questioning your expenditures? Telling you what you should cook and how you should cook it? how to properly mow the lawn? Organize the refrigerator? Asking you why you haven’t _______________ yet?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

And I’ll tell you what, I don’t want to live with my kids any more than they want to live with me.  We all like our independence too much.  And we want to stay independent for as long as we possibly can.

So if you don’t want to be stuck with us then, you might want to stick with us now and help us fight to save Social Security.

Good Cop, Bad Cop – update

Susie was right.

And didn’t we all suspect this was the plan all along?

Update: Just saw this image over at Cannonfire, and I had to borrow it.