VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: And by the way, any letter you send me [asking for an earmark] I’ll entertain.
Here is one my favorite parts of last night’s debate:
MS. RADDATZ: You did ask for stimulus money, correct?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Sure he did. By the way — (inaudible) —
REP. RYAN: On two occasions, we — we — we advocated for constituents who were applying for grants.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: (Chuckles.)
REP. RYAN: That’s what we do. We do that for all constituents who are — (inaudible) — for grants.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I love that. I love that. This is such a bad program, and he writes me a letter saying — writes the Department of Energy a letter saying, the reason we need this stimulus — it will create growth and jobs. He — his words. And now he’s sitting here looking at me — and by the way, that program — again, investigated — what the Congress said was, it was a model: less than four-tenths of 1 percent waste or fraud in the program. And all this talk about cronyism — they investigated, investigated; did not find one single piece of evidence. I wish he would just tell — be a little more candid…
…VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: And by the way, any letter you send me I’ll entertain.
REP. RYAN: I appreciate that, Joe. (Laughter.)
At least Biden didn’t tell him to go home and get his f*cking shine box.
Still think the line of the night was the Jack Kennedy line.
I played that line back beaucoup times already. Even the “silent” audience laughes at that one.
http://youtu.be/dHdtUB3Vo4k
This was hilarious:
REP. RYAN: Now let me just — let me say this. We are not — we are saying, don’t change benefits for people 55 and above. They already organized their retirement around these promises.
It’s statements like this get my blood boiling. I’m less than two years away from Ryan’s “magic 55”. I have worked, uninterrupted, for over 36 freaking years. I did not stop working throughout all my time in college. I paid for all of my college out of my own hard earned wages. I have been putting into Social Security and Medicare since I was 16 years old. Does Paul Ryan think that I have not “organized my retirement around those promises”? Am I now just supposed to suck it up because politicians are too chickenshit to do the right thing? Am I just supposed to chuck it all into the crapper, work until I’m 70 and take the Ryan/Romney health care coupon and buy some high deductible, low coverage health plan so people like Mitt Romney can keep adding car elevators to their multiple homes?
Well screw the SOB’s. Screw them 1000 ways from Sunday. When I hear statements like Ryan’s, I just want to run up and give him a swift kick in the nuts.
I’m 40. When I hear this line about 55 and over not having their SocSec benefits changed, I get the message that they can’t even bother pandering to younger voters like myself.
And yes. Screw them.
I’m three years away from 55 myself, and I completely agree. Could Romney/Ryan actually take a hit with the 40-54 demographic for this? I hope so.
I’m already “on the dole” so no worries there, but there’s the little matter of our children and grandchildren, about whom most of us care very deeply.
I feel the same way towards Obama and Biden when they refuse to answer the entire question (although Biden was more convincing about the part that he chose to answer). I mean, neither of them will make an affirmative statement that they’ll allow no increase in the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security. In fact, Obama has suggested the opposite.
I was happy with most of what Biden said. Didn’t like the Social Security answers though. The grand bargain BS is still floating out there. No commitment about not reducing benifits. All it takes is remove the income cap and the thing pays for itself like forever. Even with 2 trillion in US bond IOU’s
you can raise the cap, but removing the cap doesn’t make any sense. Social Security is an insurance program. If wealthy people are going to be compelled to pay for insurance that they are unlikely to need, you can’t make them pay an absurd amount for it.
It’s a social compact, too. It shouldn’t be just another way to have progressive taxation. That should be on salary, capital gains, and other investment income.
And you don’t need to lift the cap to pay for Social Security. All you need to do is raise it a bit.
Screw the rich. And while your at it, screw the argument that its “Insurance”. Lift the damn cap and let the rich greedy bastards pay back some of what was given to them by the elderly that built this country.
My wife hits the cap at end of August and I think its rediculous that Social Security tax stops then. So does my wife. A little extra isn’t going to hurt us or anyone else in this bracket, and will go long way to shutting up the reactionaries, and keeping the system as it is.
It’s not just YOU who is going to benefit. It’s your KIDS who don’t have to worry about providing you every damn month for the rest of your life the low end necessities.
Without Social Security, my wife and I would be paying a shitpot more in support for our surviving parents. My idiot brother doesn’t see this, but since the SOB wouldn’t even support his kids into college (I did that) his position is untenable to say the least.
I hope you understand that the cap actually serve as a way to protect Social Security by vastly reducing the resistance to it from rich people who have most of the power in this country. Raising the cap is politically almost impossible. Eliminating it would invite a backlash that would threaten the existence of the program.
How did this notion that “raise the cap on Social Security contributions” get such widespread acceptance on the left? It betrays both an ignorance of the program and the current actuarial robustness of it. Would like just once for the advocates of “raising the cap” to tell us what the federal government would do with even more surplus Social Security revenues until that day in the future (should it ever arrive) when the existing SS trust fund is exhausted and annual revenues are insufficient to pay the benefits. If history is any guide, those surpluses would be used to reduce further the taxes on income paid by the wealthy and that in turn would further increase the wealth inequality in this country.
Along these lines, Bruce Webb has posted a series of articles on the rabbit hole of Social Security accounting at AngryBear and elsewhere: http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/04/social-security-debt-limit.html
IOW, having more net money can increase (some categories) of the national debt.
This is yet another illustration that too many thing get conflated when different parts of the budget talked about. I agree that only small changes to the program are needed to make it “fully solvent” for whatever time horizon one wants to address (and I think that raising but not eliminating the cap makes the most sense), but one has to be careful when talking about SS in terms of the overall budget and especially when talking about it in relation to total liabilities (as Republican scare monsters like to do).
As long as the US is the exclusive creator of dollars, then it can pay any dollar debt. There is no issue there. What really matters is maintaining the consensus that Social Security remain as a system and that it have sufficient revenue to pay meaningful levels of benefits. That’s why the accounting issues eventually need to be addressed in a sensible way.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Excellent comment and link.
However, you too lapsed into endorsing a solution for a potential future problem:
A living minimum wage and other public policies that reduce the income and wealth gap would accomplish more for the program and economic and social stability than raising the cap. The major bipartisan overhaul of the program three decades ago — so seemingly reasonable and rational — was a very bad deal for ordinary workers.
Hey Marie,
Just to clarify my position:
Not really, IMHO.
Eventually some tweaks to Social Security will have to be made if it is to pay scheduled benefits. I thought I made that clear, but perhaps not.
And if we had Medicare for All then many problems with access to medical care would go away. But that’s not really on-topic, either, is it? There’s even less of a chance in the foreseeable future for a “living minimum wage” than sensible tweaks to Social Security funding. (The minimum wage doesn’t usually apply to retirees 😉
If your position is that no changes need to be made to Social Security to have it meet its actuarial obligations, well, that’s fine, but that is a position that has very little support AFAIK.
If your position is that any changes to Social Security don’t need to be made for a decade or two and that increasing the trust fund balances prematurely is counter-productive, well, we probably agree.
Given the realities of the political environment in the early 1980s and the problems with the demographics and SS funding, the solution worked out pretty well (a 30 year fix by the federal government is nothing to sneeze at). Yes, it wasn’t ideal, but politics never is. Check Pete Davis’s post and Marc Goldwein’s reply here – http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/pete-davis/1236/deficit-reduction-commission-coming (via Kevin Drum).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Agree:
Even Sen Moynihan, one of the architects of the SS fix said before he died that nothing would have been better. How stupid was it to increase the payroll tax rate to create a surplus that wouldn’t be needed for decades and use that surplus cash to fund income tax cuts that principally benefited those with higher incomes? How about we get that back through the income tax door that it went out from instead of mucking up social security with any tweaks until such time as all other options have been tried and failed?
Exactly WHICH rich people would this invite a backlash to?
Paul Ryan perhaps?
It would be a giant step forward in converting Social Security from an earned benefit program to a welfare program for senior citizens. And we know what happens to welfare programs in this country.
I don’t doubt the basic truth you mention about the cap. What gives me the creeps is the lack of outright defense of SS from the main cohort of Dems. This would be Durbin, Kerry, Obama, and now Biden. The idea that they won’t lower SS benifits to pay for a tax cut is admirable, but the flip side argument of doing it for a grand bargin minimal tax increase on the wealthy ( that David Kock has signed off on ) fills me with despair. The Ed Rendells of the world really replulsive with their desire to fuck us all over for their retirments.
I and a lot of other people need to here a basic statement that indicates belief in the need for a strong SS that doesn’t make people work till they are 70 plus, etc.
Joe did exactly what needed to be done: for himself, for Obama, and for the Democrats. He shut Ryan down completely, and anyone who says differently is lying.
My heart was pounding the entire time, and I was hollering for Biden so much that I’m hoarse today. The last bit about not imposing one’s religious beliefs on others and women having control of their own bodies had me on my feet, cheering.
Biden owned it. He owned Ryan.
It was AWESOME.
Yes, it was! I was laughing out loud and cheering.
Not to detract from VP Biden, who really did an awesome job, but what I don’t understand is this, that answer is so fucking obvious, you mean no prominent Democrat has ever said that in public before? I am asking in all sincerity.
I often find myself puzzled by such things. The world of political discourse in this country has distanced itself so far from reality, that in many cases I have long since lost track of what is considered acceptable, or what is considered received wisdom or common knowledge.
All of my shouting was at Ryan to “ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!” Gawd, what an infuriating little weasel.
But yeah, Uncle Joe was great.
I hate to keep harping on CNN coverage here, but it’s all I get here and Wolf Blitzer needs to see the underside of a tank.
Right after announcing at the close of the debate that the whole thing was “a draw,” he then went on to note that as the Bidens and Ryans mingled onstage directly afterward that “we didn’t see this last week” at the Romney/Obama debate, completely ignoring the several minutes the Obamas spent schmoozing with Romney’s family onstage following the debate.
It’d be nice to see stupid little things like this called out, but it almost never happens.
Ok, this will be an acquired taste, but on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, one of Tom’s longtime “sidekicks” is J Anthony Brown a long time comedian and comedy club owner in LA I believe. Anyway, J has this bit called “J Anthony Brown Murders The Hit”, in which he takes a popular song and changes the lyrics to reflect a newsworthy story in urban media and elsewhere.
This morning song, was based on Alicia Keyes new single “This Girl Is On Fire”. J Anthony Brown’s version, “Mitt Romney’s A Liar”. Give it a listen!
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/content/j-anthony-brown-murders-another-hit-mitt-romneys-liar
ummmmmm….yeah. It’s an acquired taste allright. Kinda like acquiring a taste for really bad bourbon.
you kidding?
Hey, whaddaya want? I listen to Mel Torme.
Sue me.
well, ok, THIS TIME!! but watch out
Absolutely LOVE it!! thanks
As only J can – pitch perfect!
I liked how Biden let Ryan have it when Ryan was whining about the mandatory defense “cuts” (which might be simply reductions in planned spending increases for all I know). He just insisted as bluntly as possible that Ryan had not only voted for the package but had given a speech praising it.
I don’t think Obama will be like Biden, but one thing Biden did which I hope Obama recognizes is he absolutely refused to abide the staggering hypocrisy and dishonesty of his opponent.
One point I’d like to hear from Obama: Romney is asking us to trust us on his tax plan. He’s saying, trust me, I’ll rationalize the tax code. He’s asking us to trust him but he can’t even release his tax returns from the last 10 years. He can’t even prove to us that he didn’t evade taxes, and he wants us to trust him on taxes. Do you believe it? I don’t believe it.
it’s a terrible tightrope for obama, the symbology is so charged, a clever, somewhat socially aware african-american pitted against a rampant white alpha male in full triumph mode, (though lying like a rug.)
if obama moves out of the deferential style, and actually addresses romney as an equal, the slumbering racist monster gets tweaked, heads explode… how dare he?
if he remains detached and above meeting mitt at his own frothy level, then he perpetuates the meme that he’s a quisling milquetoast, afraid to call out the mittster on his BS, too polite for the fray.
a fire-breather on the campaign trail, surrounded by hopeful fans and grateful-for-change supporters, he lets his passion rip, but mano a mano with republicans muzzles himself, as if long experience had taught him that strategy and wile worked better, lose a little to get a lot, rather than headbutting his opponent skull to skull, when your opponent has such a dense one!
it would be tragic if politeness and good manners were trumped by huckster barnstorming, but there is a horrible possibility, unless he shows more edge -even humourously- next time.
he needs to worry less about the Angry Black Man, imo, and let indignation light his fire more, but it is a minefield and one foot over the line could cost him -and us- a lot. hard to admit as it is, debate is not his forte, at least the kind of ruff’n’tumble mitt works with. americans don’t want to see distinguished professorial political duels, they want the WWF.
biden was a bit OTT imo, but maybe he takes that role on purpose because he understands how obama has to underplay his alpha stuff to keep winning, even as his base howls for him to go all joe louis on mittens.