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Gene Sperling
How many times can the Obama administration offer cuts to the social insurance system, before Americans realize that the focus on government deficits is just a ruse?
The mendacious focus on the deficit is just a tool to drive cuts in our social insurance programs, the only part of the government that is truly paid for through income taxes and FICA. The assault on working people continues:
According to this report, Gene Sperling, a senior White House economics adviser, offered to cut social insurance programs as a solution to the sequester budget cuts. Yesterday.
From a CNN Program:
President Barack Obama raised anew the issue of cutting entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security as a way out of damaging budget cuts, a White House official said on Sunday, as both sides in Washington tried to limit a fiscal crisis that may soon hit millions of Americans.
Signaling he might be ready to explore a compromise to end automatic spending cuts that began late Friday, Obama mentioned reforming these entitlement programs in calls with lawmakers from both parties on Saturday afternoon.
“He’s reaching out to Democrats who understand we have to make serious progress on long-term entitlement reform and Republicans who realize that if we had that type of entitlement reform, they’d be willing to have tax reform that raises revenues to lower the deficit,” White House senior economic official Gene Sperling said on Sunday on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
Obama and the Democrats are only interested in keeping taxes low for rich people and corporations. If it is hard for you to believe this is true, think of this koan, “Cuts to earned benefits are a form of taxation.” But only for people with incomes below the FICA cap of about 113K.
And, for Gene Sperling, this has been his plan for a long time.
This We-Must-Make-Cuts policy is 180 degrees opposed to what small business owners say. And if you ask the American people, the majority are opposed to cuts to social insurance programs too.
Photo by Center for American Progress Action Fund under Creative Commons License
54 Comments
Obama was not elected to do damage to his people.
Unearned income should be taxed at 80% since not earning your income is the definition of a “taker”.
Obama is the sock, Dick Cheney and the Republican corporations are the hand in the sock.
This would be thievery, plain and simple and the end to contract law between the “government “and the citizens. We paid the premiums all our working life , the baby boom generation being a bulge in the population and the funding and now this little shit wants to steal our promised payout. Well FUCK YOU and ANY politician who supports this national theft for the wars of profits.
Anybody want to argue that o isn’t a placeholder for the bush clan anymore ?
“Obama and the Democrats are only interested in keeping taxes low for rich people and corporations.”
Obama is a lost cause and clearly the more effective evil.
If there is any hope of knocking this down it must happen in Congress where most incumbants DO want to be re-elected. Shutting this down could be the most interesting bi-partisan effort ever.
This must be stopped. Can’t the members of Congress see this is suicidal? A plan is needed now.
Read the comments in this GovExec article — too many of the commenters don’t think Sperling/Obama is cutting ENOUGH:
http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2013/03/actual-sequestration-furlough-notice/61624/?oref=workforce_week_nl
“Can’t the members of Congress see this is suicidal?”
Do they even care?
2014 will be a replay of 2010 if Democrats line up behind this.
There aren’t enough Congresscritters left who remember the shutdowns of the mid-1990s. And since Republicans, being authoritarians, have difficultly with abstractions or learning from what happened to other people, they’re going to have to feel the effects firsthand.
That will be coming in another few weeks, once the USDA and other agency furloughs kick in. Because those are starting fairly late in the fiscal year, the effect will be to concentrate them in a small time frame.
We’re talking about scenarios where large meat plants — who in some congressional districts may be not only the biggest employers, but the biggest donors to the Republicans elected to those congressional districts — will be forced, during the height of the summer and fall grilling season and as they prepare for turkey and duck slaughter for the holiday season, to shut completely down for one day a week for twelve or more weeks.
They’re all still in denial over this, but some are wavering between anger and bargaining — thinking that there’s some magic way to wriggle out of this. But that will end pretty soon.
Just Friday I heard part of a statement from Obama, saying, “I’m willing to take on the problem where it is – in entitlements.”
Could it be more clear?
It took me a little digging to find out that this is not a relative of the Gene Sperling who founded Phoenix University and has been gouging poor students and influence peddling to ruin higher ed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/university-of-phoenix-lobbying_n_2248921.html
Ok, we get it. But is the “Veal Pen” doing anything about this? Anyone with the inside scoop care to weigh in? Jane?
I just keep telling myself that Obama is STILL better (or at least no worse) than Mitt would have been.
Boxturtle (I notice that nobody over at Kos seems to have noticed this)
No worse than Mitt?
The difference lies in Congress. Dems would fight back against Mitt like they did against GWB’s attempt to privatize SS. They will roll over and play dead for Obama.
Who would you rather get fired or foreclosed by? Barack the BS artist or Mitt the Donald Trump admirer?
I wish these idiot fucktards would stop using the word “entitlements,” since SS & Medicare are basically insurance policies into which virtually all working Americans have paid over their entire working lives.
Hey CNN Asshats: Entitlement this…
I think congress would have fought Mitt with the intent of losing. The large majority of Dems are DINOs.
Boxturtle (cynicism rules)
Obama does not have to run for re-election again so it WILL be up to the congresscritters to put the brakes on these negotiations and take them off the table.
I do not trust Obama on any of this but I do think that members of Congress, knowing full well that 2014 is coming up fast and they need to show that they are against this taking of earned benefits in any form, off the table. Some seats may be safe, but not all of them.
I hate the word “entitlement” and I refuse to use the word.
I don’t know what to tell you. I do know what Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report says
Earned Benefit Programs
You were posting as I was writing about “entitlements” good minds think alike.
Thanks Om, you said it best.
Just repeating what I heard, and liked, but thank you :)
Yep. Obama is a lost cause. The focus needs to be on Senate and House.
Luckily while the GOP politicians may very well wish to cut “entitlements” the actual constituency disagrees with them by a majority. BOTH sides of the electorate agree that cuts to Social Security and Medicare should not happen. If BOTH sides apply pressure we may well be able to keep it from happening AGAIN.
Someone actually acting against the people of this country, doing real harm, having repeatedly stated his plans to do so, and relentlessly pursued those plans, isn’t “better than” something that didn’t happen. It’s what is happening. It’s what we have to deal with. I don’t know how we do that, but continuing to claim that it’s “better than” something else isn’t going to help.
Glen Ford is ever so right. Has anyone ever heard of “The Obama Deception”? Believe it.
Just like with Climate Change Obama here once again you have a man that thinks no one pays any attention to what he’s actually doing, not saying. He’s a disingenuous piece of crap. Glen Ford was absolutely right when he characterized this bastard as the more effective evil.
We do have an entitlement problem, but it’s not with the people, it’s with corporations, with the defense industry, with overpaid CEOs and hedge fund managers…
Well put.
Don’t any of you read Ezra Klein (who isn’t always right) or Jonathan Chait (who usually is)?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/02/this-is-why-obama-cant-make-a-deal-with-republicans/ (follow links to Chait http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/would-teaching-republicans-about-obama-help.html# and Klein’s previous article)
Chait proved to Klein (and to me) that no matter what Obama or his “right hand man” offers in compromise or “reaching out”, the GOP is going to call it moving the goalposts in just another transparent example of projection.
Actually, it will be worse. A House with an even bigger Republican majority won’t be able to resist the temptation to bring a resolution of impeachment against Obama. (They might even pass the resolution first, and draft specific articles later.)
The most amazing part of the sordid drama will be Obama’s continuing insistence that he can “reach out” and “find common ground” with Republicans, even as the House managers troop into the Senate, crying “Benghazi!”
And the ratio of DINOs to progressives gets larger with every successive Congress.
I only hope that the Democrats and Republicans realize what you are saying.
I agree with your assessment totally, but we do not have the brightest congresscritters.
here is a part of the problem..the MSM gives there clowns creds:
JOHN HARWOOD: You succeeded Larry Summers, a world-class economist
John! Larry Summers is a world class crook. What has Larry Summers done that has made anything better? NOTHING!
You should ask Gene S: What makes you think cutting SS (That has nothing to do with the debt)and making old people pay more health care will turn things around? Could you gave an example of where in the history of mankind this has worked. Why has the top ecomimst have come agianst these cuts yet you and Obama claim they are needed.
Why do you want to cut SS and Medicare while at the same time say nothing about giving away trillions to the Wall st banks.
Instead we get Harwood fawning all over this guy! You know John maybe you should teach journalism at the Uni of Phoenix
And to think it’s only Monday.
I think I know just how Custer’s bugler musta felt.
Right in indeed. Here is Glen smacking down the insufferable quisling michael eric dyson……
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/7/effective_evil_or_progressives_best_hope
Today on msnbc alex wagner and her crew are laying the free pass on the keystone pipeline.
It will be interesting how much of this kabuki/smoke and mirrors are going to permit the veal pen austerity…there will be an eruption if there is an attempt to tamper with SS and medicare, I think medicaid will the the foot in the door.
Not exactly.
Many people on Medicare today didn’t pay in to that program all their working lives.
Also, Medicare payroll taxes, premiums and deductables only cover about 25% of Medicare expenses. So just because people have paid into the system doesn’t mean benefits have been covered.
You succeeded Larry Summers, a world-class economist
Which is like calling Mark Burnett an eminent theologian.
On the word “entitlement” I think the Luntzes of the world have won a round.
To many of us, the word sounds like a grant of an unfair privilege, being created a Duchess or something. But as near as I can tell, having looked into the matter only a bit of late, the word “entitlement” came into economics as part of a lengthy examination of a certain question about famines and similar periods of extreme hunger at something like a national level. The economist Amartya Sen is best known in this country for such work.
One of Sen’s findings in comparing the histories of many famines is that in most or all cases there actually was enough food around in the nation to have sustained healthy life with no large-scale startvation. This is a problem for an economist: one would expect a market system, a rationing system, something, to have prevented such an extreme result.
One of the factors Sen isolated in his analysis of famines was entitlement to food —that is, simply a legally enforceable claim over a personal or family food supply. Those who lacked entitlement —a state which could be entered by not having enough money, but by other means as well— tended to starve.
There is quite a bit more to the story than this, but certainly one result is that Sen, and others following in his line of study, recommend the creation of new, special purpose entitlements in the face of relative scarcity of food and related resources. These can be income supplements, but also work requirements in helping to maintain food programs or other ways in which the people being aided can pay in kind.
I seem to recall some difficulty in getting U.S. efforts to assist the people we were displacing in Iraq and Afghanistan to see the wisdom of these kinds of work programs. No doubt, there was some worry about all the entitled lairds that would result, thinking they had some say in things.
Anyway, I’d bet that the deliberate corruption of the word “entitlement” from its simple meaning of “legal right” in the context of development economics began somewhere around the time Sen’s work began to be noticed by certain types in this country (note Nobel prize).
Yes, “entitlement” is a classic case of Luntzification (is that a word?).
The word has a specific meaning the law: in order to qualify for benefits under a government program, a person must meet certain requirements. In the case of SS, it is age and years of work. Thus SS is an entitlement (a better term is earned-benefit) program. It is thus distinguishable from welfare programs, which are based on need.
Unfortunately, the right-wing noise machine has managed to erase the distinction between entitlement and welfare programs in an effort to lower the public’s opinion of SS and make its demise politically acceptable.
Right, ‘Entitlement’ has been hitched to ‘sense of entitlement’ which is an unwarranted claim to something as opposed the virtue of being entitled through the aforementioned ‘earned benefit’.
Regrettable potus and his toadys speak in the luntzian dialect, and mean it.
Good gawd. This is no longer a trial balloon. Not that I didn’t realize that, but I’ve been in several arguments this morning with people who are arguing that it is.
Great diary, Tom.
Congressman Ellison is sending a letter to the White House about this insanity. Make sure your Democratic Congressperson has signed the letter (93 did not).
More information here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/04/1191389/-Reuters-Great-Betrayal-Is-Official-Obama-Puts-Medicare-and-Soc-Sec-Compromises-On-Table
Here:
http://ellison.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=963:majority-of-house-democrats-call-on-president-obama-to-reject-benefit-cuts-to-medicare-medicaid-and-social-security-benefits&catid=1:latest&Itemid=16
Seems like the only thing protecting us from Social Security cuts are THE REPUBLICANS. If you don’t think this is going to cost Democratic votes in the midterms then you’re on crack.
Your so-called cynicism needs a tune-up for consistency, because Obama also appears to “fight” Republicans with the intent of losing, and is also a DINO.
Ms. Hamsher and most of the pups here at FDL have been correct in their assessment that Obama has wanted to cut Social Security since he came to office in 2009.
And the rubes still think the “guvmint” is coming for their guns – they’re coming for their SS checks!
Take a hard look Barry – this is going to be your legacy.
Agreed, people forget that deficits only matter when Democrats are in the White House. George W. Bush expanded the food stamps program to covers more families in need and he added new Medicare benefits for seniors, granted Part D is larded w/ corporate welfare but there are seniors who can afford medicine today only because of that program. Here’s the thing, do you W. spend 10 seconds figuring out how to “pay for it”? Of course not, he’s not a Democrat so it didn’t matter.
Not only would Democrats not going along with “President Romney’ in cutting entitlements, I doubt Romney would have even bothered trying.
B.H.Obama(DINO) does a nice waltz with GOPs while doing Obama’s GOP like agenda…
Recently I read an article stating that the baby boom represents 27% of the total population and that the millenials represent 32% of the population so, really, there will be know shortage of people paying into the system. If there is a system. And O is detrmined that there will not be.
I’ve just received my “substitute cat food” letter from Dick Durbin. It isn’t just The Droner and his advisors. It’s all the Democrats who do as O and their major campaign contributors tell them to do.
The email response I received from Durbin mentions “substitution bias” in determining cost of living increases:
Got that? Just substitute cat food for the real thing and maybe a tent for that apartment.
Actually he was. The fact that you did not realize this does not change the fact. It’s exactly why he was elected.
The people at CNN and the 1% refuse to pay their fair share of FICA:
Link Here.
http://americablog.com/2013/02/our-growing-income-inequality-causes-43-of-the-projected-social-security-shortfall.html
It’s why they project their own guilt onto us when they call our earned benefits by another name.
Midterm elections do not matter too much anymore. Especially for those who believe the camera time given politicians is just a ruse. This reports sounds like it’s just another part of the Grand Bargain (which should be read as Grand Scheme).
This is the best advertising the elites can buy to promote cuts: NPR to blast Seniors with generational hatred because the Sequester cuts children’s programs.
LINK Here.
This is the wind up to a pivot to cut social insurance programs. Using one set of cuts to generate resentment against an uncut group, to justify further cuts to the Seniors and other adults who are affected by cuts to SS, MA, Medicaid.