The McClatchy newspaper chain's Washington bureau reports that "chained CPI is on the table" in budget negotiations. Sure, it's on the table, as long as Republicans allow tax increases to be "on the table" which means chained CPI isn't on the table and won't be on the table.
There's a lot of silly huffing and puffing about chained CPI that I don't understand. Current political conditions make any agreement by political leaders to adopt chained CPI impossible. Even if political leaders agreed to chained CPI, it's hard for me to believe it would pass Congress. There's zero public support for cutting Social Security and chained CPI is a cut.
There are two real threats to Social Security at the moment, the probability that the Disability Trust Fund will run out of money in 2016 or 2017 and the immediate problem of the lack of administrative funding making it difficult for the Social Security Administration to operate. These are vastly more urgent than chained CPI yet Social Security advocacy groups seem obsessed with chained CPI while remaining almost oblivious to the threats to the Disability Trust Fund and the continued operation of the Social Security Administration. Oh yes, they put out press releases on these subjects but they don't spend their time collecting 700,000 signatures on a petition to address the real issues affecting Social Security.
7 comments:
disclaimer...I am NOT a paid commenter. I am an attorney.
I support cutting social security benefits. I am part of the "public."
Please retract the following statement:
"there's zero public support for cutting Social Security"
It is wrong. Almost everyone I know, including people who are retired and collecting SS, supporting cutting SS v. raising taxes.
@ anon 11:19
i don't know what "polls" you've been looking at but you're out of your mind. The public overwhelmingly supports raising taxed to keep SS solvent. This crosses party lines. Check your facts.
Obama hasn't retracked Chained CPI that I'm aware of, so I assume it is still a threat.
Several weeks ago Reid and Ryan both indicated that a grand bargain wasn't a possibility and that they would concentrate on sequester replacement instead. It was then that I "smelled a rat(s)". The grand bargain required Obama's "balanced approach" revenue. And revenue wasn't happening. So they changed the context, trying to get cuts to Social Security to provide sequester relief.
A cut for cut exchange, which wasn't the deal Obama promised on almost countless occasions.
I don't think they will be able to cut S.S. to reduce sequester cuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happens.
With a continued meltdown of Obamacare, Democrats would be wise to be unified against any cuts with 2014 looming. I'm beginning to worry about a possible loss of the Senate which could lead to privatized S.S. under republican control.
Too many in Washington are still in the "We need to cut entitlements" mode. They aren't even thinking about the 2016 date for disability S.S. With the ACA failing and some democrats breaking with the president, it's complete chaos now. I'm not one to usually support conspiracy theories, but I can envision Obama dragging down the entire party as a witting or unwitting "saboteur",
I am finally beginning to see what's really going on here.
Democrats want to replace, not repeal, the harmful sequester cuts. But it was the president who THREATENED TO VETO any attempt to repeal it previously. So he wanted the sequester, now he doesn't want the sequester.
The president along with most republicans and many democrats, want to get Social Security cuts before growth takes over. That's why there is no jobs push at all. Obama was the one that dragged Social Security into debt negotiations- and nobody else. I suspect that by the time we're finally rid of this scurge in early 2017, there'll be a whole lot of very unhappy Americans, even more than there are now.
I've said before that Obama represents the greatest single threat to Social Security since the program's start in 1935. We will have to continue to fight hard till he's gone for sure and probably beyond.
@ 1:42
read my comment, I am not referring to any polls. The original post by Charles says that there is "zero" public support for chained CPI.
I was pointing out that there is some public support. Zero is an absolute and is wrong.
If the Chained CPI were to be applied to everything, including the indexing of income tax brackets, if would actually raise more taxes in the first 10 years than it would cut Social Security benefits. So see if the Republicans who support the Chained CPI will try to exclude it from tax bracket indexing.
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