Friday, April 5, 2013

Obama Officially Proposes Social Security Cuts



In his budget:
WASHINGTON — President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition.
A politically idiotic move by a moral monster willing to hurt the weakest among us to achieve his economically damaging goals.

And good luck in your next race house Democrats, because when the Republicans say you're trying to cut social security, they aren't lying!

It needs to be pointed out that this is not surprising in the slightest since Obama has been setting up this exact moment for years. When Republicans nearly shut down the government and held the debt ceiling hostage to cut spending, Obama used both crisis moments as opportunities to push a grand bargain that cut social security. When those failed, he designed the sequester's austerity as a mechanism to force a grand bargain that cuts social security. When the sequester failed to force a deal and started actually hurting the economy, he now has proposed these cuts in his budget. Now it seems the bet is to force liberals to choose between a deal that cuts social security and one that makes the sequester's austerity permanent. If you've been paying attention to the reporting (or even what Obama himself was saying), you've known this day was coming.

Now it's time to fight back, and inflict as much political damage on Obama as humanly possible. It's a shame it's come to this, but then again, it's a shame Obama is hurting the economy as leverage to force cuts that will kill old people.

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