photo: Barack Obama via Flickr

There was another salvo in the shock and awe campaign to cure the deficit by cutting Social Security in the New York Times on Monday. The article claims that even before his inauguration President Obama wanted to “signal seriousness” on Social Security, by making the hard decisions on his watch. That’s easy to translate now: the President hasn’t alienated a huge section of the people who voted for him, and this is a great way to do it.

Another salvo came Thursday. The Congressional Budget Office told the NYT that revenues from FICA will not be sufficient to pay the entire cost of Social Security this year. No matter that the amount is small, and covered by interest on the securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Something must be done. Steny Hoyer shows the path:

… the moderate Democrat who is the House majority leader, gave a speech this month in which he called for the two parties to compromise on a mix of tax increases and benefit reductions to avert fiscal chaos. Among his options were proposals to gradually raise the retirement age for future Social Security recipients and to reduce benefits for those with high incomes.

That is just ludicrous. Why should average workers pay?

Alan Greenspan and others engineered a revision to the Social Security system in the mid-80s to meet the shortfall between revenues and payouts. The idea was that all of us would pay increased FICA and the money would be saved in a trust fund for this very day, when it is needed to fund the system. That created an immediate influx of money to the general fund of the Treasury. It was used to buy a special form of treasury bonds. The Trust Fund now holds something like $2.5 trillion of this unmarketable security.

The money was not invested into productive business or research and development or infrastructure. Those were left to languish into the current state of decrepitude. Instead, the money was used to hide the size of the deficits created by the Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Under the guise of protecting Social Security, Reagan and Bush and the complicit Congress raised taxes on average Americans and reduced taxes on the richest Americans.

Tags: Alan Greenspan, FICA, Social Security, taxes, trickle down, trust fund

photo: inoneear via Flickr

The prospects of movement on unemployment and COBRA benefits are dim. House Democrats scuttled a deal on a paid-for, one-week extension that would have taken the deadline to the first day returning from a two-week recess. At that point, Tom Coburn could easily stand in the way of progress, as is his forte, denying unanimous consent on an extension bill.

Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, yesterday prevented the chamber from passing a $9 billion measure to extend aid for a month as lawmakers prepared to leave for a two- week recess starting this weekend.

Lawmakers are unlikely to work out a deal by the time benefits begin expiring for some of the unemployed on April 5, said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Manley said he anticipated lawmakers would approve the extension, along with retroactive benefits, when they return to the Capitol next month. The break ends April 12.

Chris Bowers seems to want to give Senate leaders a pass for this, but I cannot join him. My understanding was that Harry Reid filed cloture yesterday on a short-term extension; and since he knew this was coming even before voting began on the reconciliation bill, that cloture could have been filed Tuesday. That way, the cloture motion would have ripened yesterday, and the motion to proceed taken. This would have started the thirty-hour clock at that point, and if the Senate pressed through and Democrats hung together, they could have either forced a lot of Republicans into a terrible vote or actually gotten this done by this weekend. And once cloture to end debate was invoked, Coburn would have buckled and given back the post-cloture time.

But instead, this will become a political issue to wield during the recess. “Because of the GOP temper tantrum over health care, they blocked unemployment benefits for struggling Americans.” And that may be true. But there was a path to break that impasse, and the leadership chose not to take it. And there is collateral damage for that decision.

So, while Reid and Coburn are trying to hash out an agreement — Bunning eventually settled for a vote on an amendment that would have paid for the bill using unused stimulus funds, which failed — other Senators are looking at leaving and then passing legislation when they reconvene April 12. “Whatever we do will be retroactive if we don’t get it done now,” Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters.

The problem with this solution is that some benefits start to expire April 5. And as the country learned the last time these provisions ran out last month during Bunning’s filibuster, that means thousands of Transportation Department workers getting laid off, gaps in unemployment and health coverage for some of the most desperate Americans and bureaucratic nightmares costing millions of dollars for the necessary paperwork to retroactively apply benefits.

Republicans are wrong to take out their loss on health care on the unemployed. Democrats are wrong not to press through and make Republicans take as many awful votes on denying aid to the needy as possible to get this done. The people who are suffering expect no less.

Tags: COBRA, Democrats, filibuster, Republicans, Senate, Tom Coburn, unemployment insurance

Bloomberg is the latest polling outfit to discover that the Teabaggers are deeply confused, ignorant people.

Tea Party activists, who are becoming a force in U.S. politics, want the federal government out of their lives except when it comes to creating jobs.

More than 90 percent of Tea Party backers interviewed in a new Bloomberg National Poll say the U.S. is verging more toward socialism than capitalism, the federal government is trying to control too many aspects of private life and more decisions should be made at the state level.

At the same time, 70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.

Yeah, it’s KEEP YOUR DAMN GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!!1!, all over again.

The activists say they believe the government is on a path to socialism, although they don’t see all federal programs in that light.

Fewer than 10 percent say the Veterans Administration is definitely socialist, 12 percent identify management of national parks and museums, and 36 percent say expanding Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor and Social Security amount to socialism.

In other words, for Teabaggers, “socialism” has no meaning beyond “stuff I don’t like.” That’s it.

And who are these people?

Tea Party supporters are likely to be older, white and male. Forty percent are age 55 and over, compared with 32 percent of all poll respondents; just 22 percent are under the age of 35, 79 percent are white, and 61 percent are men. Many are also Christian fundamentalists, with 44 percent identifying themselves as “born-again,” compared with 33 percent of all respondents.

You don’t say.

Tags: Tea Party, teabaggers, Wingnuttia