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Let me get right to the point. I’m against the proposed “chained CPI” cut in Social Security because it substantially undermines the protection against inflation that Social Security recipients enjoy under current law. The existing cost of living adjustment (“COLA”) already understates actual increases in the “cost of living”; the chained CPI would exacerbate the problem.
I understand that the vast majority of Americans — including, quite possibly, most people reading this – have no burning desire to learn anything about the chained CPI. It has, however, become a major part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, and so it has become one of those things that people have to learn about, for their own protection.
Where we are now in the fiscal cliff negotiations is that Speaker Boehner is talking about reducing the federal deficit in the exact same way that Governor Romney did – Boehner says that he wants to, but he won’t tell us how. President Obama, boxed in by the poll-driven sense that he must-must-must propose something “balanced,” is “balancing” the reduction of tax breaks for the rich against the reduction of the protection that seniors have against inflation. On the merits, however, reducing that protection is undeserved, unwise and unfair.
Social Security benefits are automatically adjusted each year to reflect increases in the cost of living, as determined by the consumer price index (CPI). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the CPI each month.
Here is how the “chained CPI” would change things: Let’s say that the cost of gasoline tripled, from $3.33 per gallon to $10 per gallon. Most people would call that a 200% increase in the price of gas. That’s how it would be calculated under the CPI today. Under the chained CPI, however, it would be calculated at less than 200%, because some people couldn’t afford to pay $10 a gallon. They would drive less. They might have to take the bus to work. They might take a “staycation” instead of a vacation.
Because a tripling in the price of gas basically makes everyone poorer, and thus less able to buy gas, the chained CPI doesn’t count that as a 200% increase. It reduces the percentage increase in proportion to the amount of gas that people can no longer afford to buy.
In fact, the bigger the price increase (and the poorer people get), the bigger the gap between the actual price increase and the chained CPI adjustment. This effect starts off small, and barely noticeable, but then as time goes by, it swells like a blister. In fact, it swells from $1.4 billion in the first year to $22 billion in the tenth year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So the chained CPI is inflation protection that, by design, inflation itself erodes. Ain’t that just grand?
To make things worse about the chained CPI, there is no evidence that the existing CPI is somehow overpaying seniors. On the contrary, as John Williams has pointed out at Shadowstats.com, if the Government simply calculated the CPI today in the same manner as it did through 1990, then every year, the CPI increase would be approximately 3% higher. If the Government calculated the CPI today in the same manner that it did before 1980, then every year, the CPI increase would be approximately 7% higher. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you pretend (as the CPI now does) that a computer with a CPU that is twice as fast is the same as a computer that costs half as much.
And let’s be honest: you know plenty of Social Security recipients. Have you seen any of them driving a brand-new Lexus, thanks to a COLA increase?
The political proponents of the chained CPI are hoping that you don’t understand it. Because when you do understand it, you won’t support it. We should be doing more to protect seniors against inflation, not less.
The chained CPI calls to mind something that W.C. Fields once said: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with . . . ” With the chained CPI.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
“And time goes by, so slowly,
And time can do so much.
Are you still mine?”
- The Righteous Brothers, “Unchained Melody” (1965).
74 Comments
The current, average monthly Social Security benefit is less than minimum wage
Minimum wage = $7.25x 40 hours x 52 weeks = $15,080
Average Social Security benefits (as of October 2012) $1,237 (monthly average benefit) x 12 months = $14,844
So poor little Obama is reduced to being
Bwahahahaha!
He’s the one who from the get-go relentlessly persisted in getting SS associated with the debt in the first place. He’s also the one who is pushing the chained CPI cut this time around.
Boehner is doing what any politician would do and is trying to figure out how to accept this gift from Obama without getting flack from his side.
I will never forget your plea for donations during the run-up to ACA, a plea that was accompanied by a promise to vote against anything that didn’t include a PO. You broke that promise and you kept my money. In non political circles, that would be considered crooked behavior.
The big question is how will Alan Grayson vote on SS cuts when the time comes around?
On another post someone tried to explain why Chained-CPI was inappropriate:
But actually proved it was.
No changes to SS are appropriate within the context of deficit reduction.
You’re against it. Good. Does that mean you’ll vote against any bill that has the chained CPI in it, no matter how hard President Obama and Nancy Pelosi plead?
Right, right. Because alan1tx saying “it’s proved” means it’s proved. Care to step thru your actual logical reasoning process for us?
Thank you, sir.
And when the White House’s hand-picked tools like Ezra Klein go on MSNBC in a split-screen and say, “Oh, it’s too boring and complicated to explain to your viewers” [para] and when hosts like Lawrence O’Donnell give explainers (who actually are okay with Chained-CPI, as it turns out!) about three minutes, cut down to 90 seconds (“We’re outta time, I’m so sorry!”) — it becomes very clear that the political proponents of the Chained-CPI are hoping to get this done before you have the right to a floor speech with some of your great charts that will go immediately viral on this topic.
There’s a reason this is being buried in the midst of Our Most Recent Great National Gun Massacre Mourning Period — and I submit it has to do with your return to DC. Please get the word out!
Thanks.
Guy doesn’t buy the same things as before = shop for the cheapest prices on virtually everything,
newspaper subscription went up, switch to internet
Communication bills too high, cheaper to bundle TV/phone/internet than buy them separately
CPI-W looks at all those things and says inflation went up xyz. This guy shows how Chained-CPI works, even if he and you don’t realize it. His costs didn’t really go up if he figured out how to substitute.
Presto.
When Obama whines about not getting enough credit for wanting to cut Social Security benefits, you realize his statements to that effect since before he became president are actually TRUE.
Yes, catfood substitution for ground turkey works the same way.
I just called Congressman Tiberi and urged him to say no to raising taxes on the rich and to say no to any offer made by Obama. The Tea Party may be the only way we stop the democrats from giving the poor and elderly a haircut.
I don’t disagree with that. But they are appropriate within the context of doing something to ensure the system doesn’t run low on funds. I personally don’t think Chained-CPI is much of a fix. Few people will really notice it, but it only covers about 18% of the future SS shortfall. My choice would be to raise payroll taxes from 6.2 to 7.2%, which solves the problem for the forseeable (75yr) future (and rates haven’t been raised in over 20 years).
I called his office not him directly.
Well, that sure sounds bad, but it’s probably not a good substitution, in my area you can get ground turkey for less than cat food. Why not use broken glass or sand. You can scare people and it would have the added benefit of being true.
Most people make choices all the time, but maybe you don’t. I can see how it would be hard to understand in that case.
Anything to keep rich people and corporations from paying the same tax rates they did in 1950, eh?
Exactly. Social Security isn’t part of the budget problems — it is self-funding. But Alan is cheerleading for his BFF Mr. Simpson, to whom we are all “lesser people”.
The very people that came out and put this asshole back in will now learn the meaning of the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
you all know with the price of canned catfood, we are talking eating kibble now :(
This latest theatrical “crisis” du jour happens to be about the deficit and debt reduction, not the future viability of Social Security.
Obama has labored from the start to associate SS with the deficit, and the fact that he has succeeded is just another indication of how double-dealing and dishonest both he and the rest of our leaders are.
So, no offense intended, but other than to say that when it comes to SS I believe that benefit cuts are both unwarranted and unnecessary, I’m not interested in discussing assumptions about the chained CPI at this time.
Oh, I meant the ones that put Obama back in not Grayson.
Of course most people make choices. Every day.
But claiming that making a different choice because the price of something went up has no affect on a PRICE index is absurd.
If the cost of cars goes up and everyone starts purchasing bicycles, it would be bullshit to claim that we had deflation since people are spending less on their travel now. People would suffer a real lowering of their standard of living and it would be because PRICES rose.
Chained CPI is nothing of the sort, as it measures SPENDING instead of PRICES. And a cost of living increase based on PRICES should use an index that measures PRICES rather than one that measure SPENDING.
EXACTLY!
Alan is against the chained CPI but what does that mean? I am looking for a promise to vote against any bargain, no matter how GRAND, that contains the chained CPI.
Come on Alan!! You want the progressive vote, act like one! Can’t depend on always having a weak opponent. It is not just today’s seniors affected by this, its that 50 yr. old bricklayer in NJ .. that 30 yr. old waiter .. anyone who makes a middle class wage and is going to need to retire in 15, 25, 30 years.
It’s the entire non-rich, non-upper-5% population! So grow some and actually vote against this misery if it comes to that.
You have pointed out something which I thought was only obvious to me as no one else points that out.
Even as prices don’t rise, we can always choose to buy the bike, or eat disgusting port instead of beef, etc., lower our own standard of living. But if prices of something go up 1% then yes the inflation was 1%. Saying the population has choices – you can move to a smaller apartment in a rattier neighborhood, buy food with expired date stickers on it, day old bread, etc.
Inflation has hurt you, period. And if you do all of the above (and I have literally known people who did all that, because food and heating and electricity all went up) well then you are suffering. If a senior keeps their apt. at 65 degrees and the cost of electricity goes up so now he does not heat it, does that mean there was no cost increase?
Too bad those greedy-to-keep-stealing-our-dollars-for-other-stuff rich scumbags running our country can’t grasp this or just don’t care one bit for the least of us.
Alan Grayson is posting in here? God, I love this place.
Ha ha, that’s what I was trying to get you to say, brainiac: when life gets too expensive, you can simply substitute death. Presto that, reichtard.
. . . . and from there to ground sawdust.
Thank you so much for that, timesthree. You made my day. When you see even the putatively “ornery” politicians of the Democratic Party trying to cover Obama’s ass as he sells seniors down the river — and see that the “ornery” can’t even bring themselves to say they’ll vote against such a despicable plan (a promise which, as you note, wouldn’t in any case be worth the pixels it was written on), you KNOW that the Democratic Party has had it as far as any purpose to the American people goes. Dead party walking — putrefying, nauseating dead party walking.
… X 2 times3
First torture, next indefinite detention, now chains.
Alan
No need to tell us that CPI is a bad idea…you need to call Obama Nancy P and the rest of the Dems and tell them. I am glad to see you are back and I hope you will have a courage to stand up for us first.
That was my post. And it didn’t prove that the chained CPI is appropriate. It pointed out that my wife and I are boxed into a corner and have nowhere else to cut. That doesn’t mean we somehow are resourceful and won’t miss a few bucks here or there. It shows we’re suffering the financial equivalent of The Death of a Thousand Cuts.
So, Wise One, where are we to trim next? Eat Spam instead of chicken and pretend it doesn’t matter? Use old catalog and magazine pages to wipe our asses instead of buying toilet paper? Put water on my morning Wheat Chex instead of milk?
I don’t think anyone is trying to keep the public in the dark or confuse them .Clinton and now Obama ,and then the next Clinton will say :”yeah we have tucked you ,we are fucking you ,and we will continue to fuck you pursuant to adhering to the global agenda of neoliberal realignment and you fucking retards will still have no where to go except with us ,the party that promises to use protection when it politically sodomizes you .
There is no such thing as a progressive dem ,it is a fund-raising scam with a clown caucus that works on the Pelosi plantation .You re either in the corporate monopoly tank or you are against corporate-owned governance .Sorry ,that is the progressive choice ,no nuanced position is capable of eliminating debt-leveraged feudalism .
Obama is a clerk who has been tasked with the exact same mission as every other selected and vetted G-22 mascot .I listened to George Osborne posit the same anti-economic expansion agenda as Obama and Merkel and all the other austerians .
OWS ,with our full support ,must align itself with British and Euro anti-austerity movements to create unprecedented mass resistance .If it has global legs ,they cannot stop us without fomenting a violent revolutionary backlash to their repressive state terror .
Either resist or assist .I guarantee that the inaction of Boehner will be the invitation for Obama to further sell us out .We’ve already seen this movie .”The pubs were holding the nation hostage ,I had to be the adult in the room and extend age eligibility for Medicare and voucherize ,block grant , reform or strengthen less for you losers .Grand bargain is just another ferm for clusterfuck.
Any idiot should know the debt is unpayable , and the fiscal cliff is churl munch for the masses .Your fear is their weapon .
Obama put Simpson on the EatKittyChow Show — Obama(D) picked Simpson — Obama(D) picked Simpson to lay siege to SS — but Obama is a D!! — was done by Obama — a so called D POTUS.
R vs. D junk does not describe/explain this set of political acts/choices.
It is past time to junk the R vs. D junk — it is not moving/does not move the ball. Obama keeps wanting to rehab the Rs while doing what G.W.Bush was doing as POTUS. What kind of D is Obama? Obama stayed with doing Bush/Cheney warmongering and war crimes. Barack Obama stayed with the Bush tax cuts ( Obama tax cuts now ) while backing the same 2008 Melt Down Academic Economic/Fed Reserve/Wall St. charlatans Bush and Clinton went with.
This Fiscal Cliff/USG Deficit fearmongering that Obama seems quite willing to allow as POTUS to treat as fiscal sanity while dragging SS into the middle of it Obama could stop anytime but has not. Geeezzz … wonder why? Going with R vs. D junk is pointless.
Barack Obama as a D POTUS is mounting this long siege on SS/MC — has been doing so since 2009. Staying with R vs. D junk is political nonsense as a means of framing/describing/understanding what Barack Obama is doing as POTUS.
thats the problem with the framing for these issues. we also talk about screwing the seniors.
Its screwing all of us. Everyone of us will be seniors at some point. Im not worried about Grandma. Grandmas gonna be OK. Im worried about me.
jeebus you are dim, but your masters must be pleased. you should try out for the WSJ editorial page, seriously.
presto.
Thank you for your response. He took my point and twisted it to bolster his inane argument.
Actually, we’ve been talking about this since Fake-Fiscal-Crisis round one, after you and your ilk went Galt on the public option and the Tea Partiers came into their own the next year, Alan.
And now we trust you to behave exactly as you have in the past. Maybe YOU will be one of the few who is “allowed” to vote to oppose cutting SS/Medicare/Medicaid, (I like how Medicare/Medicaid has suddenly dropped out of the discourse) if your vote isn’t needed. Or maybe you’ll just be called upon to “stand with the President”.
Give me some useful ideas for fixing the Democratic Party and I’ll take you CPC members seriously again. Talk about being willing to run as a Green Party member or something. Anything. Stop being a politician and be a human.
Also, can we please ban the rightwing commenter troll? He has officially become disruptive.
Your point was valid, and it’s a point I experience every time I go to the grocery store: “Oh, that peanut butter is 25 cents more expensive this week, better go generic.”
I didn’t CHOOSE generic peanut butter — or paper towels, or window cleaner, or toilet paper, or mac-n-cheese, or any of the other store brands that grace our shelves nowadays — I was FORCED down to them. Because the prices went up on my chosen brand! It’s ridiculous to say my costs didn’t go up; they did. And they went up BEYOND MY MEANS.
This is only unclear to people who can work more to make more. For those of us whose prime — and that option — is past, not so much.
I really like your last sentence. It is true that the national debt will never be zero. It is arithmetically impossible.
Crimmy! *Making do with less* by substituting one thing for something else is not a price measure, which is what a CPI should properly be. Therefore NOT a proper measure of inflation.
The true measure of inflation would be what it would cost for that someone to maintain his/her current purchases. It’s you who are lost and don’t realize that you’re agreeing it’s a cut. The CPI-E is showing that the current COLA actually *understates* rather than overstates inflation’s effects.
-stewartm
We’ve told you some umpty-ump times how to keep the system from “running low on funds”, not only keeping it solvent but showing you how you could lower the retirement age and/or increase payouts.
You just choose to ignore it.
-stewartm
And will you vote against the Chained CPI cut like you voted against the ACA with no public option?
Oh, wait…
Sad to say, it doesn’t even require a return to 1950s tax rates (though I would favor that).
-stewartm
That’s because their incomes are going down, for the past 30 years too, during the wonderful “prosperity” of conservative Reaganomics.
People will eat tree bark when they become hungry enough; they’ve done it before. So let’s see, tree bark is cheap so that substitutes for breakfast cereal, right?
-stewartm
First, why would you suggest raising the FICA tax rate when we could just eliminate the income cap instead and start collecting FICA on all the income over $110,000 that isn’t currently taxed? This would be much fairer than making people who make less than the current cap pay more while those making over the current cap continue to pay on less than 100% of their earnings.
Next, you should also realize that “saving” social security has nothing to do with the debt, deficit, or fiscal cliff as any savings in social security cannot be applied to the debt or deficit.
Finally, re Chained CPI, some people have already switched to the lowest cost alternatives and CANNOT make any further changes because they are already at rock bottom. What do yo expect people to do then? And, doesn’t the existence of a “rock bottom” where there are no real alternatives to switch to prove that Chained CPI isn’t really an accurate reflection of reality?
It’s been said before by others, but Alan (Grayson that is)–
When are your votes gonna match the rhetoric? Where is your line in the sand? The public option you also touted, but when the White House came calling you fell right in line.
At least the Tea Partiers do some things right, they buck their own leadership when their principles, as looney as they are, are being violated. Progressives could learn from that. Obama shouldn’t be able to take your vote for granted, and he will unless you make it clear you will vote against him if he crosses that line in the sand.
-stewartm
So..when Obie and the Dems won in 08, we got the “public option” sacrifice on the alter of the god Bipartisan. Never mind that this FUBAR kabuki dance earned a resounding defeat for Dems in 2010. Now its round 2 with deficit negotiations focused on a program that is not part of the deficit.. After the Republicans self immolated in this election, the Dems have handed them exactly what they need to rise from the dead.
just dazzled by the brilliance, fer sure..
It sounds like you and I are in the same leaky boat. I’ll bail a while and then you can spell me.
Maybe they’ve run the math and his vote isn’t needed. It’ll pass anyway, with a few CPC members vocally opposing it (Like the first debt ceiling fiasco.)
Or maybe the plan now is to gut other parts of the safety net, instead. (this is what I’m really thinking might play out.)
Everyone should be warned that alantx is a long time troll and should be ignored.
I will admit that in an academic sense, substitution can be a valid component of an inflation metric. But *only* where there it involves a new technology that comes along that is cheaper or which does something better or wtih greater versatility for the same cost.
An example might be the substitution of electronic calculators for adding machines or slide rules. It might be legit to compare prices on those things.
-stewartm
You got that exactly right. The Dems had the Repugs in a place they should never had been able to recover from after the 08 election. But, they way they royally screwed up with the Healthcare debate, dragging it out forever with dems fighting against dems and then throwing away the public option allowed the repugs to come back from the dead in 2010. And, that 2010 win allowed them to gerrymander themselves into house leadership for the foreseeable future.
Now if the Dems go ahead and become the party that cuts Social Security in order to pay for increasing the income for lower tax rates from $250,000 to $400,000, 2014 will be 2010 all over again as the Repugs will campaign against the dems who cut social security to protect people making $400,000 per year.
I KNOW! Right? It is so awesome to be able to comment on Rep.-Elect Alan Grayson’s blog right here at the Lake. I was still at work when this first went up, so I didn’t see it until I got home. But I just had to drop a note saying how amazing it is to have someone like Congressman Grayson take time out to visit the Lake himself. Glad to see I’m not the only one pleasantly surprised.
That’s kind of like being willing to make changes to programs like Medicare that actually lower costs without affecting benefits ( calculator vs slide rule or drug price negotiation) and not being willing to lower the federal government’s Medicare costs by cutting benefits and transferring those costs to individuals (switching from eating ground beef to eating dirt or raising the eligibility age)
Of course as it relates to Soc Security, the way to strengthen it is to bring in more revenue, not reduce the benefit payments. Reducing the benefits may “strengthen” the government. But, it certainly doesn’t make Grandma stronger. And, there is no reason to offer up cuts to soc security because you balked and raised the tax rate cutoff from $250,000 to $400,000 and need to make up the loss in revenue.
Yes, but won’t it even be more exciting if the Congressman elect comes back to tell us why we should trust him this time to not fold on Entitlement programs when he folded on the Public Option?
Congressman Grayson, THANK YOU for the extended takedown of the chained-CPI. I am extremely confident that you will be extremely effective in the new Congress. I can’t wait until you are sworn in. Don’t be offended by the hard-core Firepups who want instant solutions.
For one thing, it seems quite obvious this evening, after the Speaker’s clownish performance with his “Plan B” went completely bust, that you won’t have to vote on any “Grand Bargain” at the start of the new Congress. As David Dayen said three hours after you posted this blog, the Speaker’s performance was laughable. There is no “political party” left in the Republican Party; it’s all nihilism and denialism. You should have a wide open organizing territory for progressive moves in the House, not that anything will move through that chamber for the foreseeable future.
Thank you, again, for stopping by to share some common sense on how to stop benefit cuts.
I believe the priority right now is twofold.
One, make Social Security an acceptable scapegoat for the deficit in the eyes of the public, and two, make it seem normal that things like the MIC budget and corporate subsidies are never even mentioned.
Look at Grayson, for instance. Does he argue that Social security is a bogus sacrificial lamb? Is he proposing cuts to MIC spending or other true drivers of debt?
Even if cuts to Social Security don’t make it this time around, the die has been cast and politicians will stick to this playbook like glue from here on out.
Committee votes on the health insurance reform bills were horrifying disasters in the House and in the Senate. I don’t remember which House committee had a chance to push the public option, but I don’t think Congressman Grayson was on any of those key committees. Obamacare sucks in so many ways, but if CMS & HHS & preznit can pull off the Medicaid expansion wrapped up in Obamacare, they will rescue millions of elderly and poor (and poverty-stricken seniors) from an early death. All without one single additional bill passing in the useless House.
IIRC, Bernie Sanders also bailed on the public option in the Senate, right?
So, there is a lot of blame to go around on the failure to make serious headway on the public option. No reason to jump on Cong. Grayson tonight.
I came up with a new bumper sticker in a comment here over the summer: Medicare For All (Save $1,000 Bucks!). The per-person savings from Medicare for All will only rise over time as the greedy insurance companies slowly kill their own market by jacking up premiums. So, Cong. Grayson has two years to take a shot at expanding Medicare.
I don’t believe that Grayson will stand firm this time anymore than he did last time. And, I believe there will be a “Grand Bargain” he will be asked to vote for. Obama wants one. He already moved to $400,000 on taxes and offered up cuts to Soc Sec to pay for that change even though savings in Soc Sec can’t be applied to the deficit.
If Obama needed to cover the lost revenue for the bump up to $400,000, why not do it with a change like drug price negotiations which would save MUCH MORE and the savings could actually be used to lower the deficit and would not be cuts to beneficiaries?
It’s my feeling that since Obama now knows that his current offer (where he compromised much more that halfway already) can’t pass the house, he will turn around and move EVEN FURTHER to the right to try to bring the republicans on board. He wants a deal. That’s the only explanation for the rightward moves he already made to the $400,000 and the soc sec cuts. We know from his first 4 years that he doesn’t play eleven dimensional chess. He just keeps moving to the right until the Republicans finally get what they want out of him and then declares victory.
I just checked for Australia (land of US$16/hr minimum wage and 5.2% unemployment). The minimum benefit for their version of Social Security (which they call “Social Security”) is the equivalent of a US$9.76. hr full time wage. I don’t believe their version of Medicare (which they call “Medicare” but its for all aqes) deducts monthly premiums from retirement, so the actual amount received is greater than the same nominal would be in the US.
UPDATE: Australia adjusts its COLA twice a year by the higher of either price or wages, so the wage equivalent info I gave earlier is out of date. As of last month, their minimum Social Security benefit was equal to US$10.49/hr. I’ll tell you, those Australians know how to run a railroad.
Great to see Alan back, looking (as they say) tan fit and rested and ready to go.
Let’s remember the voters voted for benefit cuts across the board.
NO ONE can deny that Republicans ran on slashing benefits across the board.
The Republican House voted repeatedly on and passed bills that slashed benefits.
So, the voters elected a Republican majority to the House because the voters clearly want benefits cut.
Don’t blame Obama or the Democrats for the voters voting for benefit cuts by voting for Republicans who absolutely made it clear they were committed to benefit cuts.
Did Alan Grayson even write that? Or did a staffer?
Do they even check the comments?
I haven’t seen anyone blaming Obama and the Dems for who and what Republican voters voted for.
I blame Obama and the Dems for not only trying to cut SS, but also for trying trying to cut it under the guise of deficit reduction.
Pretzel logic aside, I don’t see how I could, should, or would, blame Republican voters for that.
Grayson came in on one thread that I know of. If there are others, I don’t have knowledge of it.
If I recall correctly, on that one thread I saw, he blew his cool and resorted to ad hominem when replying to criticism.
Good point Teddy. I saw that “3 minute” bit with Lawrence as well, and said to myself, “What the ? — the biggest story of the day gets relegated to the end of a news show. Well, at least he mentioned it. Good for Lawrence, who really is good.
My point is there was, and still is no need for Mr. Obama to offer any cuts to Social Security. It may have been prudent to try last year or the year before when he still believed he could negotiate with these scoundrels. But this time should be different, coming off an impressive Democratic victory. Mr. Bonehead didn’t even bring it up. And now, after tonight’s Plan B debacle, I still wonder how the Dems will blow it. Especially when I see Steny Hoyer or Pelosi being interviewed.
Of course, Mr. Grayson realizes that there are those among us who believe we shouldn’t rail against our beloved president because his Chained CPI offer is consistent with his long-held desire to slash the earned benefits in search of politically balanced budget agreements.
I just hope he’s learned how to better negotiate and realizes that Social Security does not need to be part of any fiscal cliff talks unless the proposal is to strengthen it with greater benefits.
I suppose the non-Obama-Dem blamers are willing to give them a fresh chance after the election to see if they’ve learned anything or grown any backbone. That’s probably the respectable thing to do.
But it shouldn’t take too long to find out.
No, but at least let the Republican victors be the ones to offer it up. Not Obama.
Doesn’t it just. But I don’t reply to whatshisname anymore because I don’t believe he’s serious about his arguments: he either enjoys chain pulling or he’s a professional disruptor, or both. Beyond a waste of my time, he’s boring.
Instant solutions??? It’s been five years. Please do not apologize for the ” hard core firepups”. They make this site relevant ! Also one of many reasons i belong. The time for change is coming. Let’s hope it’s not too messy. Keep up the fight “hard cores” !
That, sir is insulting and arrogant. Or is that just Congressional bubble dwelling elitism in action? One more thing that you inexplicably never even mention: Social Security has nothing to do with the debt. Zero, zip, nada. Whcih to my mind is the best argument against using a chained CPI to offer “balance” in the
fiscalfictional cliff “negotiations”. I’ve defended you here Mr. Grayson but you’re on your own now. Maybe you can use this post to some effect on mouth breathing NASCAR fans in Florida but to publish it here is an insult to every reader here.Grayson (or a staffer) interacted with commenters here once…
He got grilled on Grayson’s vote on the ACA. Got abusive and got modded as a result. Couldn’t handle the (quite valid) criticisms tossed his way.
Grayson (or a staffer) really thinks the shit Grayson pulled with the health insurance CEO act doesn’t stink to high heaven.
Doesn’t acknowledge it and, to my knowledge, never apologized for it.
And now this… it would be nice if we could believe him this time…
It’s good to see the derision that greets this man’s postings. No one is fooled by him. That’s how it should be. It was just a shame he had such a limp opponent at the last election.
Already, he writes this piece with no mention whatsoever of a commitment to vote against any such legislation. He’s very much of the “sternly worded letter”/”grandstanding for C-SPAN” variety of congresspig.
I won’t even hope I’m wrong, because there’s no chance. This is Lucy, Charlie Brown and a football, and I’m not Charlie Brown.
Ha! I knew it.
Just curious, checked, and yep:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/20/1172407/-The-Chained-CPI-Cut-If-You-Can-t-Dazzle-Them-With-Brilliance
I stepped away. Thanks for all your fine responses, hopefully we can chat on the next one.