Seven steps to Social Security cuts prophecy
Seven steps to Social Security cuts by Bruce Webb was posted January 2010 this year at Angry Bear and has proven to be prophetic:
‘…is that the strategy to get major slashes to Social Security and Medicare takes an Seven Step and that this technique is not new and in fact mirrors the original plan for Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security (CSSS) in 2001-2002.
Step one. Get consensus on ‘Crisis’. In this case that current debt growth levels are unsustainable.
Step two. Get consensus that there are only three possible paths out: revenue increases (A), cuts in military and other discretionary spending (B1 and B2), or cuts to non-discretionary spending, meaning Medicare and Social Security (C)
Step three: Having agreed that some combination of A, B, and C is needed set up a Commission with a mandate to propose an up or down vote.
Step four. Committee decides it is unwise to increase taxes during a recession and eliminates (A). Commission further decides that it is unwise to cut defense spending in the middle of two wars eliminating (B1) and that eliminating infrastructure spending or farm supports is both unwise or politically impossible in the current climate (B2)
Step five. Recommend a package of cuts to Medicare and Social Security-C on the basis of shared sacrifice, after all every CD and State has a share of the elderly population.
Step Six: Tell Congress that the statute doesn’t allow them to revisit A or B and then that NOT voting for a C based solution means denial of Steps one and two.
Seven: Either get a vote for C or run against opponents as ‘Do Nothing Deficit Deniers”
Bruce is right. Dayum. Dayum. Dayum. NancyO
What makes this truly alarming is there is almost a complete news blackout on the truth, and the politicians aren’t listening.
Radio on drive home about cat food commission, no problem “4 year olds will get 69 YOA as Full Retirement Age” and the SS income cap is taken off. No comment from announcer on News/Traffic radio.
I was doing 70++ in dusky traffic so that is all I got which was more than most would have.
So, SS taxes will continue to cover 23% top rate and ‘lessened loopholes’ for middle class (‘deficits do not matter’ as long as congress has SS special treasuries to raise cash and renege on in the future).
And SS is no longer the third rail………..
And no one talks about the fact that war machine outlays equal SS outlays!
i don’t make prophesies, except gloomy ones.
It is tragic that the people don’t know their kids could still have a humane retirement if they were willing to raise their payroll tax twenty cents per week each year.
Bruce’s prophesy above also shows something else. Folks are told they can’t raisie taxes. Most of them are glad to hear that. But none of them, not one, ever stops to think “what taxes” “how much” “on who?” and is the payroll tax really a tax if you get your money back with interest when you need it most?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ’em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!
Nicholson perfected that look in “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest”.
MG
it took me a while to realize your movie review was a reply to my alarm that the media were not telling the truth about Social Security. Are you sure the people “cannot handle the truth.” That the brave media are defending freedom by lying about the Social Security “crisis”?
ilsm
“and SS is no longer the third rail”
correct. and the important lesson here.
it makes me sick that people who don’t need to retire, because they can take a vacation whenever they want to, and can make a lot of money just by giving their opinion
can decide to condemn the people who have to work for a living to keep working until they are ready for the nursing home
just so “the economy” can squeeze a few more dollars out of their aging bodies.
Y’all–I don’t think that Bowles and Simpson have invented a way to turn off the juice in the third rail of politics. I think they have spent their whole lives talking to other people like themselves and think that their proposals are a brilliant solution to a spreadsheet problem. All you have to do is ignore defense spending and all that other justifiable tax breaks that support the upper 2%’s lifestyle, and get right to work whacking the hell out of the ONLY problem the government has–Social Security.
It’s right there in front of your eyes. All those greedy geezers just laying around, sucking up the public’s taxes while moaning and complaining that their checks don’t cover the greens fees down at the club. I’ll bet Simpson knows a lot of these geezers himself, and plays golf with them every day. Me, I only met one greedy geezer the whole time I worked in SSA and he acted like he owned the office. He didn’t. I knew the guy who did and he was grateful as hell for the lease. Nice guy.
I think that the show is far from over and Simpson and Bowles will wish they never signed up for this detail. As for the President, too bad he blew it. But, live and learn. Or not, as seems the case increasingly for this administration. NancyO
Nancy
i keep hoping the President is going to come out and say, “Well I gave these guys a chance to show how they would cut the deficit. And the best they could come up with is taking money away from the people who paid for their own Social Security. Now that we know what their real game is we can ignore them and get back to the business of running the country.” First thing to do is let all the bush tax cuts expire.
Nancy,
I have been thinking about SS and third rail.
The arguments are that SS is welfare are wrong but are being made by the propagandists working up the tea partiers and “welfare” is that terrible thing, no real Merikan would accept foisted by the immoral lefties. Seen under that propaganda even folks who need SS are going to say “gut it”.
Amerika is a giving society, the exploited working poor giving to the accumulating and war making classes of its own seed corn.
Orwell’s 1984 was less subtle but is the same.
ilsm I think yours is a misread.
Hard as it is to believe tea partiers don’t see Social Security as being governmental in nature at all, hence “Keep the governments hands off my Social Security!” They see it as something earned and paid for although they resent the hell out of the ‘fact’ that immigrants can bring their parents in and immediately sign them up for Social Security. Which is a total myth but compelling. And parallel to the way they think of unemployment, up in the Northwest many seasonal workers, particularly fishermen but formerly loggers as well, collect unemployment every year between fishing seasons. For them it is simply a benefit they have earned, the equivalent of paid vacation. Which doesn’t prevent them from believing that other people, and particular ‘other’ people are simply lazy ass layabouts sucking at the governmental teat.
Yeah it is all a little schizophrenic but still powerful. I run across some powerful anti-government folk but have yet to find one that refused to take and cash his Social Security check. If the tea partiers were actually dominated by twenty something glibertarians you might have a point, but as it is these people are going to scream when they realize the Catfooders want to cut their Social Security and charge co-pays at the VA.
Bruce
we can hope. but my guess is they will find a way to vote for cuts in Social Security at the same time they are saying “keep your hands off my social security.”
These people are beyond dumb. They are insane.
Not that some of them aren’t perfectly nice people in their own world. But human beings at the best don’t think too good, and these folk have had all their primitive fears aroused and can’t think at all.
Uh…they’ll find nursing homes beyond their budget. It’s a “Hurry Up and Die” plan for the lower economic classes.
What’s going to happen when those Tea Partiers who held up those signs, “Keep your government hands off my SocSec” and Medicare, figure out what the defict hawk, stalking horses for the MOTUs (master of the universe) Uberwealthy are going to do to them and their children and grandchildren?
How will the Repubs keep these TPers from going ballistic or having their heads explode? (Well, the second thing might be part of the Hurry Up and Die, you non-uberwealthy scum and greedy geezers plan….)
The beauty of Obama’s ensuring that Peterson’s Cat Food Commission was put in place (over the no vote of Congress, btw) is that this is now a Democratic attack on the lower classes and elderly. It is the Democrats who will be responsible for cutting and undercutting SocSec and, most likely, Medicare.
It is squarely on the backs of the Dems, because of that DINO prez who is making it happen. And, I fear, will claim the mantle of courageous leader as he signs the damnable Cat Food Commission recommendations into law.
If Obama is a Repub or MOTUs/Wall Streeters’ Trojan Horse who will destroy the Democrats (or at least the Democratic Wing of the Democratic (Corporatist) Party, then he will have accomplished an amazing objective the R’s have lusted after since FDR established SocSec and since LBJ enacted Medicare.
Looking at how DINO Prez took care of the big health industry players in his health insurance “reform,” I’d have to say he will do something similar to the great social safety nets.
And, when SocSec is gutted, with defined pensions going away, what will be left for those who are not big earners??