Did the budget conference open with signs on conciliation or with a clash over taxes. Either way, the House is leaving town until November 13th, so there will be no more budget meetings between now and then. I’m glad that Paul Ryan has such a sense of urgency. The conference must come to an agreement by December 13th or it will be disbanded.
I wonder if Dean Baker is still optimistic.
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said,”No man’s property or savings are safe while the Legislature is in session”?
I think so. Another of his was:
“Suppose I was a congressman. Or suppose I was an idiot. But I repeat myself.”
Ironically, I trust Paul Ryan more than I trust Obama, Durbin and Murray.
Which is to say: I trust Ryan to refuse to raise taxes and to be unable to cut social security and medicare.
Obama campaigned on not cutting soc. sec. and medicare but as soon as the election was over he was all about chained CPI. Durbin, Murray (and Boxer for that matter) are all onboard with gutting the retirement plan I’ve been forced to pay into my whole life. 15% social security tax right off the top if you’re self-employed. I’m violently opposed to soc. sec. privatization, but if Obama gets his way, it’ll turn out that I would’ve been better off if it had been privatized and I’d put that 15% into an IRA that congress couldn’t take away from me.
I’m all for raising taxes, but if not raising them is what it takes to get Ryan to keep the dems away from the social sec. chopping block – hey – I’m ready to sign Grover’s pledge.
The GOP has survived this long by getting their mentally challenged constituents to vote against their own pocketbooks. We on the left are not so gullible. I’m willing to pay more taxes to help poor people but I’m sure as hell not willing to cut my social security to help rich people. If you think the tea party is an angry bunch of old people, just wait for army of lefty baby boomers that just now starting to spit blood.
Let’s look at what the president actually proposed instead of hyperventilating.
Let’s start with his conditions:
When he says “substantial revenue through tax reform, he means cutting tax expenditures that benefit mainly the very wealthy. Here’s what Rep. Tom Cole said about that today at the conference:
When the president talks about “measures to protect the vulnerable and avoid increasing poverty and hardship,” he is referring to his proposal to create two benefit enhancements, and to his refusal to apply chained CPI to means-tested anti-poverty programs like SNAP and SSI.
The benefit enhancement idea looks like this:
What this would mean in practice is that you would receive slightly lower COLAs from 66-75, but then you’d get an a bump to replace your lost money from 76-85. And then you’d get another bump if you lived to be 95. Overall, a 95 year old would get money in the new system than the old one.
You can still hate this idea, and I think it is pretty kludgey and stupid, but it isn’t going to starve anyone. And it won’t happen unless the Republicans agree to cut tax expenditures without associated budget cuts.
Overall, I think benefits for Social Security recipients are probably going to have to be increased because people have not been saving enough, so Chained CPI is a bit of a move in the wrong direction.
But let’s also be clear that it is not a massive hit to people’s checks. And, as proposed, it would be balanced with contributions from the wealthy who would pay more in taxes. It would also create a modest income tax increase on the middle class, which I see as a good thing. Everyone should have some skin in the game.
But, really, all I care about is that people have some alternatives that can really actually happen. Then we can have a real, actual debate about what is the best way to go.
If we could do this while getting rid of some of those crazy sequester cuts, that would be a fair deal.
No way! Stealing from me is something I’ve never tolerated. There is nothing, repeat NOTHING, that is so important that it justifies cheating me of what I’ve been working for for 53 years.
And I don’t care if it’s one damn penny! No one steals from me without paying for it. No one! Not my only child and certainly not the Goddamn President.
In case you missed my point, the president’s proposal would cost you money if you die at 74, be pretty much a wash if you die at 85, and actually be an increase if live past 95.
If you are optimistic about your health, you might consider it a raise.
Also, while I recognize that Social Security is an earned benefit, your attitude that you must get every red cent you were promised no matter what the money is used for is not much different from people who think raising taxes is stealing.
As someone else pointed out, the elimination of the donut hole in Medicare Part D will likely more than compensate you for any money you lose to Chained CPI. And that presupposes that you lose any money at all, when all is said and done.
Boo, read this: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/01/why_is_always_a_white_guy_the_roots_of_modern_violent_rage/
That’s how I feel. Without condoning what those people did when they snapped, Michael Kimmel has captured the essence. Been both white collar and blue collar, seen both sides, felt both rages. Still feel it. It just keeps building with no way out but the route those poor guys took. Still haven’t lost it like them, but please read it, particularly the parts about the Democratic Party and Unions and then tell me it’s no big deal. “No big deal”. You know, that’s what the Vietnam vets said about shooting civilians. Remember?
Your comment doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not like there is some account where “your money” is being stored.
There absolutely is an account where Social Security money is being stored. It’s called the Social Security Trust Fund. The Secretary of the Treasury issues a report every year detailing the account. The balance in that account is in excess of $3 trillion dollars. Check it out at the Dept of Treasury website.
You read this too.
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/01/why_is_always_a_white_guy_the_roots_of_modern_violent_rage/
combine that with the saving from the ACA with the donut hole closing and the savings to Medicare, there might now be any change in seniors’ cash flow
This alone should make you hyperventilate:
As it doesn’t, it means that you don’t know enough about how the Social Security system operates and the financial projections of the plan for the next fifty years. Don’t know enough to recognize that Obama knows nothing beyond the talking points some Pete Peterson lackey handed to him.
Social Security is fine. We just need to collect some cash back from those that “borrowed” the cash we contributed to our Social Security. Technically we don’t have to ask them to begin repaying it until several years from now. But might as well start now so they get used to it.
The folks who borrowed the cash in Social Security are the members of the congressional appropriations committees who have used SS for years to keep (depending on how you look at it):
What’s happening now, and it’s why they are all freaking out, is that SS is no longer running the kind of surpluses that it needs to to subsidize the rest of the budget.
To argue that Soc Sec is fine is to pretty much miss the entire point of this debate.
We have one party that will never agree to a tax hike ever for anything.
And we have another large faction in the other party that insists that nothing can be done to Medicare and Social Security.
As a result, our government is so fucking broken that it is running on autopilot.
Now, maybe that is fine with you. But, as things stand, we’re about to cut another $5 billion from food assistance and kids are being thrown out of Head Start. So, I think it might be prudent to think about priorities a little bit here and stop treating the president’s proposal as something that would starve granny. The status quo is going to starve kids.
I hate the choices we’re facing, but some choices are less painful than others. And I kind of doubt even a Democratic Congress with supermajorities would have the will to raise the amount of money we need to replace what we’re losing from Social Security, so we’re pretty well fucked no matter what unless the economy suddenly go gangbusters.
Overall, I think benefits for Social Security recipients are probably going to have to be increased because people have not been saving enough, so Chained CPI is a bit of a move in the wrong direction.
But let’s also be clear that it is not a massive hit to people’s checks. …
It wouldn’t, huh? $1,000 over a year to someone only getting $12,000/yr or $15,000/yr is a BFD, as Biden said.
Where did you get $1,000 per year, the highest number I saw was still under $100 per year?
He’ll pulling shit out of his ass.
The difference in the annualized inflation calculation between CPI-W and Chained-CPI over the last thirteen years has been 0.29%. Obviously, that compounds, which makes it worse the longer it goes on. But it goes on for ten years before Obama jacks it back up.
If we use this year, that means that instead of getting a 1.7% cost of living adjustment, that Social Security recipients would have gotten a 1.41% cost of living adjustment. If the average benefit in 2012 was $1,230 then here’s the difference.
CPI-W COLA: $20.91/mo.
Chained CPI COLA: $17.34/mo.
In other words, you’d get $6.67 less a month under Chained CPI, or $80.04 less a year. That number would grow slowly for the first ten years before you’d get a big adjustment that would restore you to where you should have been. It saves money because some people die.
It’s not a $1,000, or even close to a $1,000.
Excuse me, I nearly doubled the difference by accident.
It’s isn’t $6.67 less a month, it is $3.67 a month. So, it isn’t $80.04 a year, it’s $40.04 a year.
that’s what I saw about $45, your actual math is better than my recollection
Thanks, Boo. I’ve heard plenty of screams of terror over this, but nobody had managed to properly explain what the President suggested. I’m going to save this to share with my friends, should the need arise.
Digby disagrees: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-grand-bargain-was-not-conceived-as.html?utm_source=twitte
rfeed&utm_medium=twitter
that’s nice, it’s wrong
Talk of a Grand Bargain is 100% a result of the GOP’s insistence that the only way to close the budget deficit was to cut spending and the fact that they controlled an important part of the federal government that’s responsible for appropriations.
Another way of looking at this:
Take a 1,230/mo benefit and apply compound interest for ten years:
Chained CPI (1.41%)= $1,414.86
CPI-W (1.71%)= $1,455.86
So, after ten years of Chained-CPI, the average benefit would be $31 dollars less generous a month.
At that time, Obama would provide a boost of 5% of the average benefit, phased in over ten years. Five percent of $1414.86 is $70.74.
In other words, if you live to be 75, you get 30 bucks/mo less and if you live to be 85, you get 40 bucks/mo more.
That’s $41 less generous per month.
Still a bad deal, but I’d now like to remind everyone for those who opposed the payroll tax cut out of the idea that it was “peanuts” that this is less of a cut than the payroll taxcut put money in people’s pockets.
Sorry, yes it is $41, not $31/mo.
“tax expenditures” being Washington speak for corporate welfare.
regardless what one calls it, congress is not going to stop it. forget it.
the reason congress keeps insisting on cutting “entitlements” is they figure they can get away with it whereas their corporate masters have well paid lobbyists to keep corporate welfare in place.
Spitting blood with you, Brother! (or Sister as the case may be)
Interestingly I’ve now seen 2 polls that suggests the Dems are in trouble. Democracy Corps asked about specific incumbents, Dems are at -3 and Republicans at +6 approval and now WSJ/NBC finds only 29% think their member deserves reelection and Obama’s approval is the lowest of his presidency with a total of -4.
One of those times I wish Nate Silver had not taken a break.
Nate Silver can’t do any magic with statistics without the underlying district-by-district polls. And there’s not that sort of polling history of the House that will create a model of the sort that Nate Silver builds.
I wish that the polling organizations would take more interest in Congressional District level polling. But it is expensive to do 435 polls.
True enough, the Dem Corps poll was taken in the 50 most competitive districts, but I could still use some analysis of whether the methodology of these polls are sound. Drum noticed some odd results in the Democracy corps polls (voters in GOP districts are more eager for their rep to work with Obama than in the Dem), so methodological analysis could be useful for instance.
Dem-incumbent competitive districts are where Blue Dogs remain. That’s not surprising.
Republican-incumbent competitive districts are the likely ones for crossovers in the BooMan-Coup House coalition. Again, not surprising.
My sense is that Dem Corps is just running a standard sampled survey. What Nate did was aggregation over states, and what made his model so accurate was the way he aggregated a long stream of past data that estimated the error of polls for each day prior to election day and estimated polling company bias errors as well. You need broad geographical coverage and a deep time series to do that well.
Dare I think that this recess was mostly determined by the Republican caucus?
I find this very interesting and indicative that the Republicans either want to test the waters at home with some part of their base or they want to try some selling of their constituents prior to making another go at a shutdown. (I’m not completely sure they are housebroken yet.)
But it is this rhetoric from Patty Murray that is driving a lot of progressives and almost all folks on Social Security nuts:
It is unfair an unacceptable to as seniors and families who need assistance to bear this burden at all. Some folks need to get some realism about what it is that we are talking about with the level of Social Security payments. For many seniors, we gave at the office thank you very much.
But my sense is that the GOP will scuttle the conference in an attempt to force a better deal for them. As I have argued for over a month, that deal needs to be a worse deal. And my best candidates for a worse deal that will be popular in Republican Congressional districts are:
Have the CBO estimate those out over one year and over ten years. The economic consequences will make this outperform the austerity budgets as far as closing off the debt.
Then force it through your new House coalition. And a unified Democratic caucus in the Senate, killing the filibuster if need be.
If the GOP blows up the conference, the Grand Bargain nonsense should be over.
Getting frantic this might be their last bite at the apple. If the House goes Dem in 2014, which is scaring the hell out of them, all chance to alter the very basis of SS is over for the foreseeable future. They know they have to get the Dems to put in the knife.
Agree with you Tarheel.
I hope that the two house will both agree on budget so that no another shut down again will happen.