(Short Term) Victory On Social Security

Obama caves (for now) in his 5 year long quest to cut Social Security:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House says President Barack Obama's upcoming budget proposal will not include his past offer to accept lowered cost-of-living increases in Social Security and other benefit programs. Those had been a central component of his long-term debt-reduction strategy.

Officials said Thursday that those potential reductions in spending, included in last year's Obama budget, had been designed to initiate negotiations with Republicans over how to reduce future deficits and the nation's debt. But Republicans never accepted Obama's calls for higher tax revenue to go along with the cuts.

One official said the offer would remain on the table in the event of new budget talks but that it would not be part of the president's formal spending blueprint for fiscal 2015.

Well done to all of us who fought hard to against this. We don't get many wins but he put a ton of weight behind efforts to do this so it's a big deal that he's backing off, if only for now.

Democrats Organizing to Cut Social Security (Part 10,000)

If it's a day that ends in y during the Obama Administration, there is some group of democrats attempting to lay the groundwork for social security cuts. DSWright at firedoglake:

You would think after winning the shutdown and debt ceiling battle Democrats would press their advantage, instead they seem to be volunteering cuts to Social Security as a solution to a future budget deal. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin went on Fox News to promote a deal that would cut Social Security in exchange for tax increases.

Durbin said that Republicans had to put tax revenue on the table to get entitlement cuts. Fox host Chris Wallace noted that Durbin has previously supported entitlement cuts, and asked why Republicans should have to give up tax increases to get something that many Democrats support. President Barack Obama has repeatedly endorsed Social Security cuts as part of budget deals, and Durbin acknowledged that he did support Social Security reforms.

“Social Security is gonna run out of money in 20 years,” Durbin said. “The Baby Boom generation is gonna blow away our future. We don’t wanna see that happen.”

Yeah, social security is not going to "run out of money in 20 years" but if you've read this blog or spoken to me in the last 10 years you probably already know that. They want desperately to cut social security. They try every which way to make it happen. They pre-compromise with social security cuts not because they're bad negotiators but because THEY ACTUALLY WANT THESE CUTS. The administration is pushing this, and the congressional leadership has made it clear during the other 10,000 times they've floated this idea that they're on board as well.

We'll fight them like hell on this, and hopefully we win again. But seriously, fuck these people.

Social Security Works

This graph on retirements is stunning, and makes this president's endless attempts to cut social security even more senseless and cruel:

EPI:

As we celebrate the 78th birthday of Social Security today, it’s worth noting the vital role the program continues to play in Americans’ retirement security. Though Americans are increasingly turning to savings in 401(k)-type accounts, Social Security remains the most reliable and equitable system of retirement savings. The expected stream of Social Security benefits for a household at the median is not very much less than for a household in the top 10 percent—in 2008, the median household age 65-69 had $315,300 of Social Security wealth, while a household at the 90th percentile had $643,100, a little more than twice as much.

Another Reason For Immigration Reform

Immigration reform that has a path to citizenship is smart for a lot of reasons, but Digby kind of blew my mind with this:

An analysis by the Social Security Administration says a bipartisan immigration bill pending in the Senate would boost the retirement program's trust fund by adding millions of taxpayers to the economy.

The finding comes in a letter to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who requested the analysis, from Stephen C. Gross, chief actuary for the agency.

It could provide a boost for the immigration bill, which has been attacked by some conservatives as overly costly, as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to begin amending the measure on Thursday.

The analysis says the bill would add more than $300 billion in net additional revenues to Social Security and Medicare over the coming decade.

Gross writes that the overall effect of the bill on the long-range trust fund balance "will be positive."

Now just to be clear: The people who want to destroy social security will always want to do so, and there is no actual crisis that requires social security reform. So maybe none of this will matter. Then again, anything that makes it harder to advocate cutting social security = positive.

Why Not Expand Policies That Already Work?

Atrios makes the case that increasing Social Security benefits should be a major progressive cause in the future/now. I couldn't agree more.

There is a weird fetish in "liberal" policy circles that wants to create new awesome solutions rather than expand on the extremely successful polices we already have. Obamacare was a perfect example of this. Rather than focusing on measures to reduce all health care costs and a medicare buy in, all the liberal groups got together and created this Rube Goldberg device of policy making that will be almost assuredly less efficient even if it manages overcomes seemingly endless hurdles that stand in the way of it's full implementation. We created something called a "public option" when we had one of the most popular government programs that people know and love (medicare), already in existence, just waiting to be used. Madness.

We can't afford to make the same mistake with social security. People's retirements are less secure than ever, and we should be looking to expand social security benefits to higher levels. It's the most popular program in the history of the US government. Maybe we should use that to our advantage.