Barack and Boehner Sittin' in a Tree...

“It’s really hard to fathom why the president is working so hard to preemptively cave on these core issues.”

~ CREDO Action

“Chained CPI is another example of how Washington creates fancy sounding phrases to mask stupid policies that only work for the rich.”

~ Richard Trumka

This is another of those times when I doubt I can write something about the issue that’s new or insightful but I’d be remiss if I didn’t write about it anyway.

I’m talking about President Obama’s willingness to again betray his supporters on the left by capitulating to the evil right even before negotiations begin, this time by hinting that his new budget – to be released this week – will include Social Security and Medicare cuts that are strongly opposed by progressives like me.

According to the Huffington Post, the POTUS proposes to reduce the federal deficit in part through $1.2 trillion in spending reductions and “entitlement reform.” He intends to change the benefit structure of Social Security (“chained-CPI”), means test additional Medicare programs, and cut $200 billion in farm subsidies, the Postal Service, federal employee retirement programs and unemployment compensation.

Some of what he wants to do makes sense to me – like stopping people from “double dipping” by collecting full disability and unemployment benefits at the same time, cutting farm subsidies and raising revenue by increasing the tobacco tax – but I assumed he’d negotiate with the GOP differently in his second term that he did in his first; he seemed like a naïve negotiating novice who cared more about being liked by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his cronies than by those in his own corner.

A Mini Cooper

Of course, Boehner has already dismissed the president’s latest proposal (which isn’t being released until Wednesday), calling it “unbalanced” and insisting that both sides just skip to entitlement cuts. I’m pretty sure you could fit the number of folks who believed Boehner would suddenly start compromising and negotiating in good faith in the back seat of a Mini Cooper.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein wrote, “Instead of staking out a progressive plank and starting negotiations from there, the White House is trying to lay claim to the middle ground.” This means, of course, that we’ve already lost ground if we’re starting out in the middle. I could understand why this was the president’s negotiating tactic in his first term but I was hoping he’d be more aggressive and resolute in a second term once he was free of re-election considerations. If I had a dollar for every time I was wrong about Barack Obama, I could probably buy a Mini Cooper for every member of my immediate family.

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes the chained CPI not as the “reasonable cost of living adjustment” that some say it is but rather as a cut that would hurt seniors. He claims that if the president really wants to “reform” Social Security, he should make the wealthy pay their fair share by increasing the payroll tax and lifting the cap on income that’s subject to Social Security taxes from $113,700 to at least $200,000.

Makes sense to me.

Of course, I’m not an economist, a politician or an employer. I’m just a taxpayer and constituent who knows that Republicans have never liked Social Security and have been jonesin’ to kill it practically since it was implemented by a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, back in the 1930s when poverty rates among seniors exceeded 50 percent.

It should be noted that when FDR took office in 1933, 13 million Americans were unemployed and hundreds of banks were closed. By 1936, gross national product was up 34 percent and unemployment had dropped from 25 to 14 percent due to his policies – yet he too was attacked for increasing government spending and moving the country toward socialism. (He somehow managed to serve for an unprecedented three terms.) If Obama wants to go down in history as one of the presidents who left the country in better shape than when he was elected, he needs to emulate our 32nd president a little more and our 61st Speaker of the House a little less.

Social Security isn’t driving the deficit, so why the president is so quick to put it on the negotiating table is a mystery to me. Dude must still be hanging out on the links with his buddy Boehner.

To sign a petition urging the president to oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security, click here.


Sources: Huffington Post, Signon.org, biography.com, CREDO Action.