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Dianne Feinstein has put her foot down: she’s teamed up with the Fiscal-Scold-Seven on Social Security and Medicare. She won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling (required within a month or Uncle Sam defaults) without a law establishing a "bipartisan commission" that’s sure to ruin Baby Boomer benefits just as the Democratic coalition cracks over choice and Stupak.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein is joining 6 [sic] other Senators to demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi approve a commission to recommend cuts to Medicare and Social Security – or else they’ll refuse to vote to increase the US government’s debt ceiling:
Congress is under pressure to raise the cap on what the federal government can borrow by mid-December. If the debt ceiling is not raised above its current $12.1 trillion mark by then, the government will exceed its borrowing limits and will be forced to default on the debt. Economists have warned that the inevitable result would be a lowering of the U.S. credit rating, triggering substantial increases in the interest rates the government is already paying.
Look at the lovely crowd welcoming DiFi to their travesty:
But before Tuesday’s hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn’t come along with it.
Great. Just great.
Kent Conrad, who thinks co-ops will work for health care. Judd "I was almost Barack Obama’s Commerce Secretary" Gregg, Evan "Married to Wellpoint" Bayh, Mark "Telecom Millionaire" Warner, Short Ride Joe, Lame Duck George and Jeff "Couldn’t Get Confirmed as a Federal Judge" Sessions.
What a team.
It’s absolutely shameful. Dianne Feinstein should not be lending her name to this effort, a response to the Fiscal Scolding of billionaire Pete Peterson who fears he’ll have to pay his share of taxes when Baby Boomers demand our due.
Is the White House on board with this effort? Obama’s team has bucked up the Fiscal Scold play in the past, but endangering Uncle’s credit by talk of default is no path to success on the President’s Asia trip.
Any problems America’s elected leaders foresee with Social Security and Medicare need to be solved in the light of day where Americans can see what’s happening; we’ve learned from health care reform how bad things can get when policy is made in the back rooms.
Chris Bowers defines what the Fiscal Scold Seven (and DiFi) want:
Let’s review the threat that these five Democrats are making:
* They will allow the United States to default on its debt, which will vastly increase the overall amount we have to pay on our debt
UNLESS
* Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare entitlements. Keep in mind that deep cuts to Social security and Medicare that pass under a Democratic trifecta would doom the party at the ballot box for years to come.
This is completely insane, and there is no choice but to call this bluff.
The Speaker needs to call this bluff. It’s an unconscionable way to legislate and needs to be smacked down. It will also trump Stupak as the ruination of the Democratic coalition, for decades to come.
[Ed. note: Be sure to read David Dayen's related post on fiscal scolds at this link.]
64 Comments
This seriously undermines the President’s trip to visit our bond-buyers, in my view. And, as Holy Joe told us, we undermine our President in a time of war at our peril.
But Teddy. You know IOKIYAR And everyone on that list is a Republican. It’s just they don’t all actually admit it.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be all bi-partisan-y if they told the truth about their party affiliation, would it?
She has enough money to live in comfort, and all the Important People are fine with this, so she probably thinks that everyone else doesn’t count. /not quite snark
I doubt that she’s going to be running for any office when her term ends.
Isn’t it time for that old bat to go away. Geez. Did Ron and I get divorced for nothing? Cut Social Security? Not raise taxes on the One Percenters? fuck, fuck, fuck. The only reason I am glad I don’t live in San Francisco is cause she is there. Well, that and the parking.
You mean Diane “Banker Butt-licker, Margaret Thatcher” Feinstein?
Her jumping aboard this particular ship of fools shouldn’t be too surprising.
Said party affiliation being ‘CO’ for Corporate Oligarchist.
She’s the one whose hubby’s the war profiteer — erm, defense contractor, right?
Yeah. First make sure those of us on Social Security don’t receive any increases this year, kind of a tax on us if you want to see it that way (that’s the way I look at it) instead of taxing, oh I don’t know, hedge fund managers or CEOs whatever.
I’ve been telling my friends since before Obama was even the frontrunner that the reason a Democrat will be elected will be to either do away with Social Security or to deal it a mortal blow. Just like Clinton with welfare and the extension of the death penalty and the erosion of the 4th amendment, this “commission” (a word I told them to look out for) will further put the onus of fixing the capitalist train wreck on to the backs of those of us who can least afford it.
Let’s see how strongly Obama comes out in defense of Social Security. I think it’ll be not so much.
I strongly recommend Dean Baker’s book to everyone who wants to prepare themselves for the coming battle, this latest bit of class warfare directed against us, the class that has already been decimated.
It’s time to start using the correct terms and calling this what it is: class warfare, plain and simple.
Baby boomer? Check.
Age? 60.
Holding breath till Social Security/Medicare eligible? Check.
Just shoot me. Now.
No fiscal conservative is credible until s/he defunds wars.
Maybe somebody should check with the head of the Democratic Party on this? Obama’s been for “entitlement reform” from day one, no doubt causing multiple orgasms all over Versailles, and that’s what this is. And why does it undercut him in China? All he has to do is whisper in the Chinese ears that he’s going to cave to the pressure right after the midterms. DiFi, Bayh, et al are giving him just the cover he needs.
Bowers is, of course, wrong. He’s assuming that our elected representatives view their offices as something other than the equivalent of unpaid internships, but for the rich. If any of these guys lose their next election, they’ll go on to far more lucrative careers on K Street, in think tanks, in the media, or all three — and the more they screw over the peasants, the more lucrative their future careers will be.
COLA is zero because inflation wasn’t high enough to trigger it. My rent didn’t go up this year, either.
Dear Nancy:
Call their stupid bluff. Let the government shut down. It ruined Gingrich, and maybe it will finally clip the egos of these preening monsters.
I dare them to block raising the ceiling! Because, if we can’t raise the money by borrowing it, we’ll simply have to raise it via taxation. What other options are there? And, IMHO, the people to tax are the ones who got the tax breaks under Bush. And it’ll all be DiFi’s fault.
Your rent is an outlier.
Can anyone say why they chose this particular moment to make such an announcement?
Is it a distraction from health care? Or do they figure while we are focused on health care they can slip something like this through?
Wouldn’t the “Cat Food Seven” be a little more powerful as a piece of invective than “fiscal scolds?”
Since cat food’s what a lot of us are going to be living on if these “hard decisions” get made.
So …, if we’re so broke why don’t we just cut the military spending by, oh, I don’t know, leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, and see if that doesn’t leave us enough money to pay for SocSec, Medicare, Healthcare and College funding with a couple hundred billion a year left over for incidentals.
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
These fiscal responsibility people are so full of shit. Hypocrites and liars all.
See my 11.
This is all kabuki stacked on kabuki. The debt legislation is a must pass bill. Even these goofs know this. So it will pass. But the idea of a klatch of Senators making demands of the Speaker of the House is ludicrous. It would go down about as well if a couple of House members demanded that Harry Reid do something. In a town defined by turf, this is a major intrusion. Then there is the idea of a commission. Commissions are not used to solve problems. They are used to score points and then to fade away. Just look at the 9/11 Commission, at how difficult it was to make it happen, how subverted and hampered it was at every turn by the Bush Administration, how its mandate was shrunk, the years it took for its recommendations to be enacted, and this only because of the unusual persistence of some of its members. And this commission is not going to be any 9/11 Commission.
As for Social Security and Medicare, the Obama Administration has been gunning for these from the get-go. Remember the conference on Social Security that preceded the healthcare debate. Or that a major part of projected savings in healthcare Obama wants to get by slashing Medicare?
None of this means anything in the specific. More generally, it is stage setting for another attack on entitlements. To these pols, every dollar spent on the ill and the retired is one dollar less to spend on their mindless wars.
So, the bastards stole all of the money from the social security fund and now they have to cover their butts. Why else would they do this? Haven’t they used this pot to steal from for eons? What else could it be? And Social fucking Security is not an entitlement program. We paid for it. It was mandated! (where have I heard that word, mandate, recently?
Is DiFi Holy Joe’s long lost fraternal twin sister, or is their mutual dipshittedness just a coincidence?
and remember Obama saying something about turning the VA over to the private sector? THAT is our president.
Special tax increase on Bechtel Corp. NOW!
O/T: I’m late to the party, but has anyone seen this?
It’s a national tragedy. Obviously, I’m in mourning.
bbbb…bbbbbb…..uuugghh…barf.
I know. Tragic, isn’t it?
This is true. Form 2017 to around 2040, the government is supposed to start paying back the Social Security surpluses that were run up since the last big SS reform in 1983, and which Republican and Democratic Adminstrations spent on Iraq, Afghanistan, and gold-plated weapons systems, you know the stuff of empire. Rather than honor the government’s commitment to repay those surpluses, even at the price of crowding out spending on their imperial experiment, they want to convene a commission that will tell them it is positively irresponsible to pay back all that money they spent.
Oh such really good news. I was planning on working till 80 anyway, but poof that’s out the window now. These people need to get a grip on reality. Do they not realize they are just asking for riots in the streets? Do they not get that one of these days the middle class is going to reach a breaking point and they are going to lose more than just their jobs?
I’m sure you’re right about that. However, I think that’s all the more reason to raise hell/push back hard every time the subject is raised this way.
Otherwise, we boomers are going to be the first generation to be dropped back into the poverty of our great-great-grandathers.
Younger generations seem to hate us as it is; apparently they’re sick and tired of hearing about us. Well, sorry, not my fault I was born in 1949 and they were born in 1994. Out of my control. Would one of them like to put me up and feed me when they kill off social security?
It is why I think every day progressives continue to try to work with Obama and the Democratic Congress we lose something of ourselves. I know Jane is deeply invested personally in the healthcare debate but the final bill has been shaping up for a long time now as a complete and utter disaster. It reflects none of our goals. On this as on so many other issues the Obama Administration has lied and betrayed us. There is no change just buckets and buckets of more of the same. We castigate members of Congress for drawing red lines and then not respecting them, but many progressives are doing exactly the same. We need to draw lines and if Democrats fail us, and they have failed us, we need to move into opposition against them.
Yeah, I’m pretty close to drawing that line in the sand.
Definitely ready for a new political party – and in my new party, there will be membership requirements. If you start supporting issues that the party opposes, you will be kicked out, and will not be permitted to call yourself by the party’s name when you run for office.
I need to study the Brits’ system, I guess; they seem to do this, but I’m not quite sure how you go about it.
We need to draw lines and if Democrats fail us, and they have failed us, we need to move into opposition against them.
Seconded. We passed the “enough is enough” threshold a long time ago…
I’m feeling that hatred of the boomers too. All my friends do too. Don’t know where it came from or how it got started, but I can tell you we are going to need to be very careful about how we vote in future.
Possibly, but I’m in an area where the real estate market crashed hard. As far as I can tell, most of the apts in my price range and area haven’t increased in the last year.
I think they made the announcement because the debt ceiling needs raising soon, and they think they have some cards to play with Nancy, especially since health care’s on the bubble.
But it’s hard to tell what motivates that group of “preening monsters” except the red light atop an on-air television camera. Who’d ever what to associate themselves with that steaming pile of undeserved self-esteem?
I believe we also pay for Medicare. And for the congressional health and retirement plans, at least indirectly.
Someone might want to ask them where their pensions are going to come from, if we’re all too poor to pay taxes.
I think there are two types of commissions in DeeCee, actually. There’s the “wtf went wrong and how do we absolve everyone of blame” type, which the Warren is the prototype and the 911 the most recent.
Then there’s the “no one will engage in the democratic process type” like Base Closings, Tip & St Ronnie’s Social Security commish, and the proposed new Cat Food Commisssion.
Not bloody likely. They seem to think we’re only good for sniffing out great new neighborhoods for them to subsequently hipsterize. Move in with them? Ha!
Having people our own age in office doesn’t seem to be working out very well for us, since they are all independently wealthy and totally unaware of the importance of the mandates we’ve paid for and are due.
Egg-zackly. That’s what I fear.
Oh I totally agree there. I was mostly referring to making sure we know who they really are when they’re at home, before we vote.
Here You have these people who have been stealing the money from SS, and not doing anything to find ways to fund it, now wanting to cut it. The same with Medicare, they have let fraud and abuse run rampet, and not done one thing to fix it’s problems and fund it. While forgetting it’s 38 trillion dollar liability and not having done one thing to fund it.
In days of old people like this would have been boiled in hot oil, but in our wonderful country, our wonderful elected officials are looked up to has historic leaders of our country.
Maybe some day the American people will actually wake up and see the people in their government for what they really are, but I doubt it.
Well you can be sure I’ll be all over Bill Nelson first thing tomorrow. He may be pretty worthless, but you can be sure he knows who votes for him.
One thing about BILL out of fifty reps. I contacted He’s the only one who answered me. Even though He didn’t agree with me.
Yes, I’ve always gotten a nice reply. Sometimes we agree, sometimes not. But he’ll be on SS/Med like white on rice.
This is off topic, but I’m having a problem with FireFox getting to the Seminal diaries. I get the following message:
And then I have to open the evil Internet Explorer to get here. This started happening just a couple of weeks ago.
Can anyone help me? Goggling this error tells me it’s something to do with the coding on the site, not something I can fix from my end.
Oh and as for DiFi and the seven mental midgets? Screw ‘em. They can take my paltry $800.00 a month in social security when they can pry it from my cold dead hands.
They’ll just stop your check, before you get it in your cold dead hands.
Hey Healin Hollers.. I remember an old firedog by the name of bonkers talking up your products a few times in these parts (threads).
Welcome! I’ll ask an admin if there is anything they might suggest for you.
As for “riots”, that’s just what Obama threatens banksters with when they get too greedy even for his taste… they are not something that the administration or the oligarchs it backs take as a serious threat.
From that point of view “a whiff of grapeshot” or, rather, a few cannisters of tear gas, some cracked heads and a few blasts from the amazing variety of directed energy weapons now wielded by riot police and swat teams will do the job of whipping us back into line and “saving” the masters.
They’re wrong, of course. But by the time they realize that it will be much too late… much too late in many respects.
Try this first.
Empty cache at firefox, close and restart browser.
Um, after reading David’s link, the real fear here is trading the Commission INTO the HCR effort, to do away with Stupak.
Like trading pot of boiling oil for the black pan they use for cajun fish, that’s heated up to a red glow.
Either one is a sure fatality.
I can’t stand the crazy anymore.
Dawg help us all.
(where’s the Merlot, just hand me the bottle, nevermind the glass)
It IS part of HCR, the Senators are threatening to bring it to the Senate Floor for HCR reform consideration. Likely a swap for Stupak, or something else, in the final vote in both chambers post conferencing.
This is seriously sick shit.
Thanks Teddy, and David for two excellent shockers on this subject.
They just keep coming at us, wave after wave after wave.
And we keep falling back, further and further, we the people.
Two years, here, for us, in Sacto.
Two years, no increase.
But the property maintenance is down, amenities have been removed (due to upkeep costs), and general quality of life reduced due to loosened rules of applications, loosened rules regarding pet restrictions, and a cutback in security (we are in place where it’s convenient for kids AND adults with bad intentions to try and cut thru, walk thru and grab and run, despite our gated community.
But, life’s getting harder for everyone, and the quality we once knew and expected is being diminished on a daily basis.
To US boomers, it’s a loss, to those who have experienced this erosion from the day they were born, not such a big deal.
We adapt or die, at our own peril. Change or die, donkeys.
Right now, the biggest change is to adapt to reduced quality of life, and seek means to dampen the speed and spread of the quality gap.
Oh good gawd. Raise the SS contribution cap and be done with this foolishness forevermore. My dear Senator DiFi is on the wrong side of history here.
Didn’t Obama promise not to mess with social security benefits? McCain however was not as definite.
No, lets not raise the SS contribution cap. It’s already at $107,000 or so. That’s high enough.
Hitting the babyboomers with this is an outrage. We’ve made America what it is today.
No surprise that Diane “married to defense contractors” Feinstein has officially joined this crowd. She’s a Washington insider of the worst kind. She may call herself a Democrat, but I call her a self-interested crony capitalist. California should put the proverbial boot to her elitist ass if she attempts to hold the seat in 2012.
Too damn bad that most of these folks on this list did not vote against the war based on a “pack of lies” that have cost the U.S. massive amounts in blood and treasure. Amazing how concerned they are with the debt now. what a bunch of hypocrites
Raising the cap seems the wisest course, and thus the least likely to be implemented, since it also hits their class disproportionately.
What’s frigtening is how these so-called “fiscal hawks” have completely adopted the right-wing Peterson foundation’s talking points and made them their own.
This legislation to create a commission used to be called an “entitlement commission” but now they’ve wised up politically and have called it a budget deficit commission. And anyone who claims it’s like the Greenspan Commission which reformed Social Security in the 80′s is full of it.
8 staffers from the Greenspan commission wrote a letter to the Senate Budget Committee (of course they couldn’t testify because the panel was stocked with pro-commission witnesses only).
Here’s the statement http://www.ncpssmfoundation.org/senate_budget_committee_statement.pdf
and another good post at Entitled to Know on the Budget hearing http://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/?p=803
Our nation’s fiscal problems are NOT based on Social Security and/or Medicare. Both have income streams. Both are in relatively good shape. The real budget busters for decades have been the wars and the military. See the following link for more information on this: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
The real courage from either/both the right and the left will be to acknowledge this reality and to do something about it. Going after Social Security and/or Medicare is just a diversion. It is meaningless.
you all understand this pretty well, but there is no need to raise the cap, and some political risk in doing so.
social security is NOT in crisis. the cost of closing the projected “5 Trillion dollar unfunded” shortfall amounts to a tax raise of 20 cents per week per year per worker, and the money is needed ONLY to pay for that same workers longer life expectancy.
look up the NASI web site for more information.
The whole big entitlement crisis is a BIG LIE, and while you seem to know that, you need to know more about the details so you won’t be taken in and settle for a “compromise.”
Even Medicare costs will only go up if medical care costs go up. and if those go up is that really the best time to cut your insurance?