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Gaius Publius has put together a list of the Democratic Senators who have not signed the letter to President Obama demanding he preserve Social Security.
LINK HERE. The title of his/her essay is: These Democratic Senators Won’t Say No To Social Security Cuts.
My own Senators, Schumer and Gillibrand, from the State of New York have signed this letter which was written by the Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Have your Senators signed??? This is the letter which 29 Senators signed. A List of Your Senators and Their Contact email addresses are HERE.
Campaign For America also has a petition to legislators HERE.
Gaius Publius has a second goal for the negative space of the lame duck session:
Let the Bush-Obama-Tax-Cuts expire! That is a great idea.
Update: “Still no straight answers on Social Security.” written by Tim Price of the Next New Deal.
22 Comments
I live in the greater Philadelphia pa area; in South Jersey so my 2 senators signed the letter. I know people in Del and PA I will let them know their senators did not care enough about them to sign the letter. In fact I will call these senators to let them know I will be spreading to word to members of their area. I am also calling the NJ Dem leadership and telling that I will not vote for Obama unless he says he will not cut SS medicare
Thank you Mr. bearman. And also to Gaius Publius, a hero in the battle to preserve the leading edge of the New Deal, the people’s Social Security program. Next stop, the WPA.
Thank you. These phonies aren’t Democrats. They are elitist corporatists like John F-ing Kerry.
Is it conceivable that the Pols do not know that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid indirectly make the dreams of families possible?
Independent living is made possible through having enough income to maintain one’s own household, to be sure. But what about indirect effects. There are indirect, informal, social and emotional benefits for families.
Social Security makes it possible to help family who are unemployed or working at a job that pays a low wage. Social Security also makes it possible to be of service to other family members, to have the time to volunteer to help other family members to carry the burdens of raising children and taking care of family members who are ill.
When I think about Pols consideration of any cuts to Social Security, I scratch my head and wonder. What about all of those grandparents I met who brought their grandkids to my clinic? What about all of those people who are helping their grown children who are trying to find work? What parallel, disconnected universe do the Pols live in?
So we work to dis-elect these Blue dogs and replace them with Republicans who will work even harder and organize a GOP Senate unanimous voting bloc to even more effectively shred the safety net and retain the Bush era tax cuts?
Am I the only who understands the conundrum is not resolved favourably through self-defeat?
We’re talking merely about a non-binding letter not legislative action.
Gaius Publius may not have it so glibly resolved a course of action as it first appears.
Perhaps he is really Gaius Republius in
sheepProgressive’s clothing?Everyone in Minnesota needs to know Amy Klobuchar refuses to support Social Security.
I actually agree with you here, donkeytale (tah-dah!!)
There is nothing these people can promise at this point in time, not Obama, not any congressperson, that can be relied upon.
They have proven this.
No we are talking about support for the gang of 8 rich white guys planning behind closed doors to shred Social Security and Medicare. My Senator Austerity Amy has expressed support for catfood in the past all gussied up with high faulting lingo about the deficit. The extremism on the right is giving bipartisan cover for the austerity agenda.
All the usual suspects. Government of the rich, by the rich and only for the rich… Loathsome and disgusting.
Neither Bennet nor Udall of Colorado signed. Bennet’s a fffftttt, no surprise, but I’d have reckoned Udall would have signed, then changed his mind later, lol.
Cousin Tom Udall in NM signed, though; always been a bit more for the people.
Note, though, that they said they wouldn’t support cuts as part of any deficit reduction package. Not quite emphatic enough, really.
Thanks, TomThumb, miamigo. ;o)
Thanks for letting us know about Bennet and Udall of Colorado. This just in from Salon: (thx to Tim Price for letting us link here)
Tim Price, The Next New Deal, “Still no straight answers on social security.”
MARRIED his money…..lets call him and HEINZ 1000 times day
shame him and his Billionaire wife
H. J. Heinz Company
One PPG Place
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
United States – Map
Phone: 412-456-5700
Fax: 412-456-6128
Website: http://www.heinz.com
Martha Raddatz lied about Social Security during the VP Debate: She claimed that it and Medicare are “Broke.” SS in fact has a $2.7 Billion surplus. It would have even more of a surplus if Obama and Biden hadn’t consistently opposed requiring people making over $100,000 like themselves to pay SS taxes in equal percentage to what the rest of us pay: Obama said he wants to keep the current regressive system in place until 2019.
Shills “understand” very little, though they do loudly proclaim so about themselves like braying asses.
2.7 trillion prepaid dollars for the generation which is retiring now. Raddatz was wrong to describe “the poster child for fiscal responsibility” as being bankrupt! In my opinion, she’ s playing for the wrong team and they are feeding everyone lies. They could indeed raise the cap and pay for quite a bit of the ‘projected future deficit’, but I believe that the powers that be want to keep austerity for the masses and reduced taxes for themselves. When only 29 Senators sign a pledge not to cut Social Security, and the President and Vice-President won’t commit to not make any cuts, and the former Speaker of the House (D) says she now supports the S-B recommendations for SS cuts, it would appear that the fix is in. I want to fight this by putting them all on notice,…. that we have our eyes open and we are watching their every move regarding this highly popular and highly visible social program.
There’s still time to vote all the incumbents out. If they spend these weeks campaigning instead of stopping the car from going off the cliff, all the while keeping secret from us their bosses what they are planning, well, isn’t that Treason or something?
The one in which only the issues that matter are the ones important to THEM.
Looks like they are more worried about moving our jobs to China, than they are worried about what worries US.
Bain nuked jobs in Freeport.
The KINGS have decided to downsize our social safety net through Bowles (Wall St.) and Simpson (government gravy train) recommendations for cuts.
I agree with you. “If Obama Cuts Social Security..” was written by Sirota on July 7th, 2011, the day the media disclosed O. was willing to make cuts in a Grand Bargain with Republicans. Since then, the online community has been pushing Obama to change his mind. But cutting Social Security seems to be a place of ideologically driven rigidity for Obama. At the very least, for their own political survival, the Democrat Senators might want to save themselves in this and future elections by distancing from Obama’s position on Social Security.
If there be treason, I would point to the media collusion to create a fabricated “debt” crisis which then must be “resolved through cuts”. Especially the Washington Post, Pete Peterson and his avatars, Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson, Walker, Rivlin. And reinforcing the media confabulations and the fake think tanks, are the technocrats, like Orszag and the charming, wind-up salesmen, like Bill Clinton at the Dem convention. All together, they create the illusion of a deficit crisis, which is misunderstood by many to be reality. The money men who fund all of this are largely invisible to the public eye.
Who will be blamed if and when the Senators make the wrong decision and make the cuts?
I see Sherrod Brown signed it. Of course, he also campaigned on voting for health care reform only if it had a public option, and then did just the opposite, so I have to take that with a big slab of salt.
Gaius_Publius in an interview describing the seriousness of cuts during a Grand Bargain in the Lame Duck session after the elections.
This is very likely to happen.