"You can't call yourself a Democrat and support Social Security benefit cuts"

[limpyhobbler]

Lawmakers, progressives blast Obama's expected proposal to cut entitlements

DFA spokesman Neil Sroka said outright that the group will launch primary challenges against Democrats who support the president's plan.

"Any Democrat that votes to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits is at risk at facing a primary challenge. These are bedrock principles for the millions of progressives who are the backbone of the Democratic Party and have been organizing to protect this for years," he told The Hill.

...

Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, warned that "progressives will do everything possible" to prevent the cuts.

"You can't call yourself a Democrat and support Social Security benefit cuts. The president is proposing to steal thousands of dollars from grandparents and veterans by cutting cost of living adjustments, and any congressional Democrat who votes for such a plan should be ready for a primary challenge. Social Security is the core of the progressive and Democratic legacy. The President has no mandate to cut these benefits, and progressives will do everything possible to stop him," she said in a statement.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/292089-progressives-blast-obamas-proposal-to-cut-entitlements


=====

An interesting article with quotes from good groups like DFA, PCCC, Credo Action, all weighing in on the issue.

[barryboomer]

1. HARD TIMES ON MAINSTREET(Original Song and Video)

It is very hard out here for the lower middle class. My wife and I are on Social Security with no pensions and having a hard time. WHY would Obama let these bastards change cpi and then we will lose more money.
Check out my Song and Video!
Where are all the Musical Protest Songs???
UGH!
Barry David Butler
bdbutler@centurylink
barrydbutler channel on youtube

[limpyhobbler]

3. cool Welcome to DU

[ZombieHorde]

6. Good song.

Welcome to DU.

[JDPriestly]

13. Great. Good voice. Good singing. Musical. Stirring.

Just wonderful. Can't think of enough superlatives.

[Zoonart]

2. NEW CHEER!!

Cut the crap... raise the cap!
Everybody!

[WillyT]

4. I Like...

& Rec !!!

[DesertFlower]

7. i agree or take it away completely.

that being said, my late husband hit the CAP every year around september. it was nice having an extra $700 or so bucks a month, but not at the cost of hurting the future of social security.

[Downwinder]

5. "You can't call yourself an American and

support Social Security benefit cuts"

[Skittles]

8. CORRECT

[Teamster Jeff]

9. K&R

[BlueCaliDem]

10. So are The Center for Budget Policy Priorities and the Center for American Progress

no longer Democrats? Or Progressives?

Because they endorse chained CPI. Yep.

Unlike DFA Stoka's (and other progressive PACs') misinformed insinuation, I still consider myself very much a Democrat.

The Chained CPI would create a minimum baseline for Social Security benefits so that no one who works their whole life has to live in poverty in their retirement. Now pay attention here: the minimum benefit would be above the poverty line, for the first time fulfilling the promise of Social Security to end elderly poverty and actually boosting benefits for the lowest wage workers, which the protectors of the Entitlement Status Quo {like Stoka} are effectively against.

Lo and behold, President Obama's proposal has received the endorsement by The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, one of most well-respected liberal think tanks on policy analysis, and the Center for American Progress, Washington’s most powerful liberal think tank, the latter having recommended the chained CPI in its comprehensive Social Security reform plan.

Together with the chained CPI, President Obama's proposal will include savings {propagated as "cuts" by corporate media to frighten the masses} to Medicare (he's already expanded Medicaid through the Left and Rightwing fringes most hated program, ObamaCare}, and the package will do the following:


1: Add life to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
2: Wipe out poverty forever for the poorest when they retire after a lifetime of backbreaking, minimum wage work.
3: Force pharmaceutical companies to stop raiding our treasury for seniors' medications.
4: Ask the wealthiest seniors {you know? Like McCain} to pay a higher Medicare premium.
5: Close tax loopholes for the rich.
6: Institute universal preschool.

To do nothing, we are looking at a projected 25% cut in benefits in 2033, according to the SSA Trustee Report of 2012.

The president's proposal would also boost benefits at age 85. It would ensure that the people most at risk of running out of their savings are taken care of. Those in the greatest need would see their benefits increase under the president's proposal while closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, strengthen Medicare through savings. It will also institute universal Pre-K that, studies have shown {RAND Corporation and the Academy of Pediatrics studies} that for every dollar invested in early-childhood intervention, society reaps $7 in benefits in the form of reduced dropout rates, delayed pregnancy, reduced anti-social (criminal) behavior, etc.

[L0oniX]

11. What's it like living in bizzaro world? n/t

[BlueCaliDem]

14. You tell me. You appear to be a permanent resident of. eom

[limpyhobbler]

15. Wow you're going to wipe out poverty for ever by cutting social security? Awesome, sign me up.

Last edited Sat Apr 6, 2013, 05:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Universal preschool too? Wow that's awesome. Here have my mom's social security check. Do whatever you want with it. Start a couple wars in Africa while you're at it. What the hell you only live once.

[BlueCaliDem]

17. That's not even remotely funny, and I take exception to that.

Reread my post and then get back to me when you're off your pedestal.

[JDPriestly]

16. There is only one way to change Social Security.

Raise the cap and benefits across the board especially for those who receive below the average benefit, lower the eligibility age for full benefits, and forget the rest of it.

Improve the economy overall and raise the cap so that everybody pays on all income including bonuses and capital gains a percentage that is a bit smaller than what we now pay.

Once we have full or very close to full employment, then talk about changing Social Security and Medicare.

You are cutting the rug out from under older people.

See this thread I started:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022626420

[BlueCaliDem]

18. There are actually TWO. The one you propose

and the one where we create jobs with the help of the U.S. Government. Unfortunately, the Republicans said NO. And for better or worse, they rule Congress despite our majorities in the Senate. The House is securely within their power, and the votes for raising the cap and lower the eligibility age are as dead in the water as passing another jobs bill that doesn't kill jobs and lines the pockets of the already insane wealthy.

Did you miss this part in my post:

The Chained CPI would create a minimum baseline for Social Security benefits so that no one who works their whole life has to live in poverty in their retirement.

Now pay attention here: the minimum benefit would be above the poverty line, for the first time fulfilling the promise of Social Security to end elderly poverty and actually boosting benefits for the lowest wage workers, which the protectors of the Entitlement Status Quo {like Stoka} are effectively against.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, one of most well-respected liberal think tanks on policy analysis, and the Center for American Progress, Washington’s most powerful liberal think tank, have both recommended the chained CPI in its comprehensive Social Security reform plan.

[JDPriestly]

19. Read my post.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022626420

If you think Obama is right on this, then you should tell him how to explain it in simple, reassuring terms that assuage the fears of seniors. We are quaking in our boots. My very elderly mother, a Democrat all her life, is very afraid.

I disagree with you. I doubt seriously that these changes will help any seniors at all. The government, even under Obama, and Wall Street under all presidents do not serve the people.

Wall Street serves its own greed, and the government, especially since 1980, serve Wall Street.

There are a lot of things that Obama has suggested that I support:

universal pre-school education. (My children had it in Austria and it made their post pre-school education so successful; my grandson has it in a university preschool and he is developing wonderfully. I can only wish that for every American child. It prepares them for school.)

raising the minimum wage to a livable wage. (Let's shift the burden of paying for health care from Medicaid to the private sector employers. Same fort the burden of providing food stamps to the part-timers and underemployed. Shift the cost of food stamps to employers. The employers will claim they can't afford it, but certainly Walmart can. Its owners are multi-billionaires. The taxpayers should not be supplementing the salaries of Walmart and other major employers' employees.)

And don't change Social Security.

"Chained CPI" sounds like the galleons, like slavery. We don't want it. We don't want cuts to Social Security. That is the only income for many seniors. Those who saved money feel like they were hoodwinked because the banks (thanks to Obama's Fed) are paying no interest on their life savings).

[unrepentant progress]

28. Disabled people are scared as hell of this too

Despite the recent week long hatchet job that NPR did on disability recipients, those of us receiving Social Security Disability Insurance worked hard paying to the Social Security insurance system and we paid with our health. Now we're afraid we won't even get that meager pittance.

[JDPriestly]

30. Yes. They are saying that the Obama proposal would increase

the benefits for those who paid less into the system and lower them for others. That's another strike at the middle class.

But more importantly, it seems to me that with that turn of hand, paying more to the lowest paid recipients and less to the higher paid recipients of Social Security they are achieving two wrongs.

First, they are changing the nature of Social Security to make it means-tested. Someone like you who paid into the system will not receive quite as much as you would otherwise, and someone who did not pay in very much will receive more. That's fine, except basing the benefits according to the need is not Social Security.

Second, what they would be doing eliminating the need for things like food stamps, subsidized meals, etc. for seniors. I'm all for that. I think that is great. But I do not like the way they would do that. Currently, the funds for things like food stamps for the poor are paid out of general funds. If they raise the lowest Social Security benefits that is great for the country and for the poor recipients of Social Security, but it will deplete the Social Security Trust Fund faster. That is because at this time the money for the food stamps, etc. comes from the general fund. They are pulling a fast one by transferring the cost of providing for poor seniors totally to Social Security and not paying the costs out of the general fund.

The goal is a Wall Street goal and that is to get the middle class savers to spend all their money to fund their retirement and end up penniless at the end of their lives.

Also, this system will mean that very elderly people will receive more means-tested services such as for nursing homes, etc.

And middle-class seniors, especially lower middle-class seniors, who have saved will be forced to fill out all sorts of papers and demonstrate their indigence at a time in their lives when they cannot do those things.

We should continue the system as it is.

[unrepentant progress]

31. But it's worse than that

The poverty line for a single person is currently $931 per month. If the Obama proposal goes through, then many of the poorest beneficiaries may well lose access to SNAP and supplemental Medicaid. That puts them right back below the poverty line, except this time there's no help to buy food or pay their Medicare premium or the 20% of medical bills Medicare doesn't pay for.

[JDPriestly]

32. Wow! Thanks for that comment. I hadn't thought of that.

That would affect a lot of people. That's how they plan to "save money." By cutting the benefits all the way around.

[unrepentant progress]

33. Honestly, I don't know if that's the intended effect...

...or if Obama and his gang have not thought through the intricate web of programs that the elderly and disabled use to survive. Either way, these pleas to calm down, and revel in the brilliance of the White House's 11th dimensional chess, fall flat on my ears.

By the way, I just read your other post on this topic. I think you've got it exactly right.

[FogerRox]

23. Robert Riech, Center for Economic Policy Research & AARP say #noChainedCPI

And since chained CPI would be used for adjusting income tax brackets, and wages grow more than Chained CPI, its a income tax increase.

[FogerRox]

24. But real inflation will overtake chainedCPI

And if Chained CPI is used to adjust Federal poverty levels, yes of course, chained CPI would provide a minimum baseline for SS benefits. Only if Chained CPI is used to adjust Fed poverty levels. Otherwise more and more seniors will fall below the poverty line after chained CPI takes effect.


And fewer people would qualify for EITC.

And if Chained CPI is used for Federal poverty guidelines, then fewer people will qualify for CHIP & WIC.

the proceeds from applying the chained CPI to the tax code should go entirely for deficit reduction. Using some or all of those proceeds to finance a reduction in tax rates should not be acceptable.

right, most families income taxes would go up, thru btacket creep. Wage growth increases more than Chained CPI increases, & C_CPI would be used for adjusting tax brackets.

The CPI appears in hundreds of places in the U.S. Code and other laws, affecting not just annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) but also caps, eligibility thresholds, reporting requirements, fines or penalties, and payment rates for various programs. Only about a dozen such provisions dominate the budgetary effects of switching to the chained CPI.


http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3690

benefits provided under programs like
the EITC, CHIP, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, WIC,
the school meals programs, and LIHEAP are often
essential to helping people with disabilities and
their families meet their basic needs. Reductions
in eligibility or benefits could mean that some go
without necessary food, utilities, or health care



chained CPI would limit eligibility and
lower the maximum benefit for the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC
http://www.thearc.org/document.doc?id=4131

[Babel_17]

25. Link?

Do you have a link to the administration's budget proposal that has that language?

"the minimum benefit would be above the poverty line"

I looked at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/budget.pdf

Not seeing it, so far.

[BlueCaliDem]

29. It's part of the chained CPI in the Center for American Progress report.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fissues%2F2010%2F12%2Fpdf%2Fsocial_security.pdf

Page 3 at the top of the second column.

President Obama has made no changes in this proposal to the Chained CPI as outlined by the Center for American Progress.

[Babel_17]

34. Thank you but

it looks like a proposal from The Center for American Progress. And it's from December, 2010.

How did it become the administration's? Have they linked to it and said "this is ours"? Or were they less specific? I don't know how to take "President Obama has made no changes in this proposal to the Chained CPI as outlined by the Center for American Progress."

I was hoping for a link that leads back to the executive branch.

[unrepentant progress]

27. "The Chained CPI would create a minimum baseline for Social Security benefits..."

Since the poverty line is currently $931 monthly for a single person, you can forgive me for thinking it's too little that would hurt too much as that little extra bit of money would knock many people off SNAP and supplemental Medicaid, thus putting them right back into poverty. Plus while Obama has promised this protection, we haven't actually seen it detailed as far as I know. I've grown very suspicious of the President's promises.

[eridani]

35. Please stop insulting us by confusing "poverty" with actual poverty in real life

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/22/947061/-Poverty-101-The-Official-Poverty-Statistics-are-a-Fraud

Federal poverty levels are so far out of line with actual basic living costs, that rent alone would consume the annual salary of anyone living below the poverty threshold. You simply cannot afford to rent an apartment anywhere in America , if your income is below the poverty level, never mind also pay for food, health care, transportation, heat and electricity.

When governments under-report poverty, they also underfund social programs meant to address and mediate issues around poverty. Even when you advocate on their behalf, using the federal poverty line undermines political support to address the problems of the poor and popular understanding of a socio-economic crisis. Particularly one as severe as the bottom half of our economy is experiencing right now.

It leads policy makers to ignore economic reality for up to half of America and produce ‘solutions’ that either make problems worse or leave too many out in the cold. By under-reporting poverty, we have blinded ourselves to the depth of our economic problems.

[nineteen50]

12. IT is a militant organized working class

that will force, as in the 30’s, a closing of the inequality gap by redistribution of wealth and challenge capitalism that polarizes wealth into the hands of the few. It was the fear of that organized working class that forced the 1% in the 30s into a “New Deal” that lead to American prosperity. That New Deal has been gutted over the last 30 years deregulation, down sizing, privatizing, trickle down, outsourcing and tax breaks for the corporate 1% and now Social Securityis under attack.

[whathehell]

36. +1 n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. "Obama Unleased!!!" was the horror of the Right Wing prior to the election...

Ever notice there never is a "radical left wing agenda" guy in office?

You know,...proposing silly stuff like ending world hunger and universal free college?

[cantbeserious]

21. Obama's Position Is Untenable -This Will Be The Last Straw For Many

eom

[classof56]

22. I kinda don't like anyone telling me what I can and can't call myself.

Given I'm a long-time member of DU, perhaps it's easy to figure out what I doubtless call myself, and I have in fact given time and money to voice my opposition to cuts to Social Security, which I've been receiving for some time now. But just a word from this old gray-haired lady to Stephanie Taylor--refrain from telling me what I can't call myself. Not your place! Oh, and while you're at it, get off my lawn!

[99th_Monkey]

26. I've said this before, and say it again: if EVER there was a time & place to draw line in sand

THIS is it.

Social Security & Medicare preserved intact, and/or expanded with no cuts,
the ONLY SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE BEING to RAISE THE CAP, to make up for
any "short-falls" down the road.

WHY ISN'T DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND GOING ON RECORD AS OPPOSED TO
THESE CUTS?