Tweet
The forces of darkness are gathering for a carefully orchestrated all-out assault on Social Security and Medicare during the post-election lame-duck session. And, they are using the same hysteria tactics that they used for the Iraq war, the Protect America Act of 2007, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, and many others: “Time is running out. We have to act now. Otherwise, we’ll suffer a disaster.” That same train is coming again, this time to tear down the social safety net.
Grab your pitchfork, they're coming for our social services (Photo: eldeem / Flickr)
Make no mistake about it, this is “class warfare.” It’s not right vs. left or GOP vs. Dem. It’s the 1% vs. the rest of us. The official pitch is that we are caught between a “mountain of debt” and a “fiscal cliff” over which we are scheduled to fall on New Years Day, unless we act quickly. They’ll start counting the days down the minute the elections are over.
Here is a July 23, 2012 C-Span interview of Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and New America Foundation, Fiscal Policy Program Director, by C-Span host, Libby Casey. (h/t commenter Blue Onyx.) Maya is an official pitch lady, a pretty face, for this assault. And it’s mostly all lies prepared by a network of bought-and-paid-for think-tanks, journalists, politicians, and lobbyists funded by the likes of Peter G. Peterson, who has dedicated the past several years to battling “entitlements”:
Peter G. Peterson (born June 5, 1926) is an American businessman, investment banker, fiscal conservative, author, and politician whose most prominent political position was as United States Secretary of Commerce from February 29, 1972, to February 1, 1973 under Richard Nixon. He is most well known currently as founder and principal funder of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which he established in 2008 with a $1 billion endowment. The group focuses on raising public awareness about U.S. fiscal-sustainability issues related to federal deficits, entitlement programs, and tax policies. [Wikipedia]
The anvil against which the forces of darkness hope to smash the New Deal and the Great Society is the dreaded “fiscal cliff,” over which they claim we’ll plunge, like Thelma and Louise, on New Years day unless we sacrifice the social safety-net. But, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that if the laws currently in place take effect, the economy will contract at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the first half of 2013 and then grow again in the second half at a 2.3 percent annual rate. That’s a far cry from a cliff. It’s more like a six-month pot hole that could be filled in with a bit of stimulus funded by zero-interest borrowed money. The forces of evil however, want to fix that six-month short-term problem by making long-term cuts to our “entitlements,” which they hate.
It’s time for pitch forks and torches. Let’s smoke them out now rather than waiting for their assault.
17 Comments
This is a tremendously important issue.
Class warfare is on.
Rec’d.
Time to work against a lame-duck session? Works for me.
I’m all for attacking them now. But let’s do it right. Let’s get that $60 T coin minted, and get all this BS off the table for good. Then let’s double the safety net and get a Job Guarantee and let’s flat out deny that the debt/deficit crisis and destroy the fiction that we ever have to balance the budget as long we have demand leakage to savings and imports. We have to make people understand that if they want to save 6% of GDP per year and enjoy more imports than exports to the extent of 4% of GDP per year, then we must have deficits of 10% of GDP per year to have full employment and no recessions. They have to understand that this is just the way it is. There is no alternative. Let’s have our own TINA for a change, and let’s make everyone understand that we can do that while paying off our national debt by using high value proof platinum coin seigniorage (PPCs).
… and a pony?
How about simply trying to save SS and Medicare from the lame-duck attack?
How exactly are we going to mount this attack , when and against whom? Unless we can gather a few million people to march on the Capitol and Congress we can forget about it. After last yrs. Occupy fiasco, I doubt whether anybody is going to do shit. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
I don’t claim to know the tactics and strategies of such things, but I know that we’ll have more leverage before the elections than after. Among the things to attempt:
I’ve debunked a few of those talking points and will go after some other real soon.
seaglass–
Certainly you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s sort of distressing to see so much indifference regarding a program that for many, may be the difference between life and death.
Are you aware, that under The Moment of Truth (the Bowles-Simpson “reform” framework) cuts in Social Security monthly benefits are as high as 35-40% (some economists say slightly deeper cuts).
I, too, am disappointed in the Occupy Movement. But I’m certainly not ready to give up fighting for my promised Social Security or Medicare benefits.
I hope that your nonchalance is because you aren’t in need of a monthly benefit check. I say this because, if you are, you’ll probably be in for quite a shock, if this reform is realized. Best of luck to you.
Blue
wigwam–
Thanks for another excellent diary. I hope that you continue to put Maya MacGuineas, et al, out there for everyone to see.
I’m thinking that I furnished you a link of Nick Gillespie earlier, but when I searched everywhere, I couldn’t find it. So, here you go again. Disregard, if I’m being redundant.
This guy is really a piece of work. I’ve got a link to his C-Span, Washington Journal interview with host Paul Orgel (on July 25, 2012) below:
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Washington-Journal-for-Wednesday-July-25/10737432613-4/
Gillespie is the Editor-In-Chief of the right libertarian magazine, Reason. He apparently considers his role to be that of the protector of “young people,” from the “raw deal” of Social Security and Medicare.
I’ll also include a link to his Reason piece, entitled: “Generational Warfare,” below:
http://reason.com/assets/db/13402958555607.pdf
Thanks for all that you do. Highly recommended.
Blue
Funny you should mention it. I’m working on a post on the myth of intergeneration theft. My only problem is that where the environment is conserned, IMHO, intergeneration theft is a very real thing. But not so for the national debt. In fact, America never pays its debt. It simply rolls it over. I’m sure that our current national debt still reflects the cost of WW II. We’ve just out-grown it. It was 200% of GDP in 1945, but not it probably .002 percent of our current GDP. Anyway, I’m trying to work up something.
And, thanks for those links and for the encouoragement.
Let’s not forget Obama–who appointed Ye Olde Catfood Commission. He wants to smash the middle class for the same purposes the twin towers were smashed. Psychological shock and awe in order to effect dramatic change impossible until then.
9/11 gave us the roll out of the “homeland” (boy, does that not sound Nazi?) and the police state.
The Destruction of the Middle Class will remake us into some far more deferential blob of consensus for total control by the forces represented by a Peterson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc
Some won’t mind initially, as long as the tyranny has the right name and uniform.
I applaud the sentiment to save what’s left of the New Deal.
But O will be re-elected, and then bye bye SS and Medicare.
Clinton and Newt together would have done the job, but Lewinsky spoiled their plans (but certainly not on purpose).
Sorry wigwam, you didn’t reply to the issue I raised.
There’s always a short-term priority that seems more important than anything else at the time; but if we continue to prioritize tactics over strategy we always lose in the end. Look at the way the Ds have acted for so long. Everything they do is pragmatic short-term. That’s why we have this problem with SS and Medicare in the first place. Tip O’Neill should have told Greenspan and Reagan to shove it when they claimed there was an SS crisis in the 1980s and they set up this asinine fund thing. he should have said “Pay it out of general revenue automatically every year, cause there’s no way we’re doubling FICA contributions. But no, he had a be a smart ass, and now everyone thinks we can’t pay for SS when the stupid fund runs out.
Anyway, I’ve gone on too long about this. My point is that I don’t think your tactics will win the day anyway. They’re a loser. CBO’s projections are too easy to attack, and as I said the hawks use them when they support their case and just cite other projections when they don’t.
They’ll just keep repeating that SS will run out of money in 2037 and isn’t it better to make a minor adjustment now then to wait till later when it will be more painful? The only effective answer to that is to say “there is no later” because the Federal Government can never run out of money to pay for SS, and to fix it permanently all we have to do is provide for an automatic appropriation the way we do now for that part of the Social Security program called Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI). End of problem. End of story.
On Medicare, all we have to do for that is to provide for automatic appropriations too. If the hawks point out that doing that won’t handle the long-term cost escalation problem, then the answer to that is to say that the proper solution to that problem is not to solve it on the backs of working Americans but to lower costs by making the pool larger and get the insurance companies out of the general mix of health care funding.
That’s Medicare for All, HR 676, of course. So use that to reply to them, call for HR 676, and when they say that doesn’t solve the immediate problem because we can’t argue that one out in the lame duck, then we say then make the funding automatic for now using platinum coins, and we’ll fight out Medicare for All in the coming years.
Probably true! But we need to fight. SS and Medicare are emotional issues. If we can fuel a big fight over this. We’ll have all the old people hating on both parties. That provides an opportunity to get an inter-generational third party going that can unite the young and the old, because the young already hate the two parties and if the old hates them two, then a Green New Deal third party backed by MMT and the coin seigniorage option has a real opening to start building for 2014 and 2016.
seaglass, you may be right. But, what good does it do to say so. Does it make you fell better? Does it do any good for anyone else. We need to make an honorable fight here, and if we lose then we need to make sure we don’t forget who screwed us and that we pay ‘em back first chance we get, and we need to let’em know that’s going to happen before they vote and then, again, afterwards. Let ‘em know they’re putting their political careers on the line if they touch the third rails. Let’em know that if they insist on cutting something then it had better be the DOD, because we won’t tolerate anything else.
Be sure to review Warren Mosler’s argument on that issue in 7 DIFs. Also, if I recall correctly, there are some pretty cogent apers on it at Levy too.
When a vital position is about to be attacked, it is time to prepare its defense by arming every ally with simple, effective, easily wielded weapons that they believe in.
We tried selling the minting of coins last time, and it didn’t work. Most people simply giggled at the notion. And, everything ended in a “grand bargain.” Unfortunately, another grand bargain this time will likely look very much like Simpson-Bowles.
We’ve tried the Platinum Coin argument before, and it didn’t work. I’m not saying we should abandon it, but I think we need other weapons to prevail this time.
That exactly the point, the hawks use them. And, that makes them difficult for the hawks to attack. It’s like Judo: use their momentum against them.
No wigwam! The platinum coin gained traction last time. It made the mainstream, which is just why we should push it again. It will be easier to get it to the mainstream again. As far as the “judo” move is concerned, that doesn’t work with them, because the hawks don’t worry about contradictions. They just overwhelm them by using their money to flood the media, which is so cynical that they let the hawks get away with self-contradictions and lying all the time.
The strategy you’re suggesting here is the same as the strategy Washington village progressives have been using since the 8s to oppose the hawks. It wins some battles, but it never wins the war.
Essentially the argument you’re making is after the cliff, they won’t have a logical justification for cutting entitlements. But they won’t care. They’ll just propose a package around tax cuts that will make cuts in entitlements look necessary, and the Ds will fold in opposing their initiative as long as the Rs still have control over the debt ceiling.
The only way out of this is for the President to unilaterally short-circuit the debt ceiling move. He can do that through coin seigniorage, through using the 14th to keep issuing debt, or by issuing consols which are debt instruments without a term that don’t go against the debt subject to the limit. Of course, the other way out is for the Ds to take back the House. If one of these don’t happen, then the false CBO projection argument won’t work.