Dean Baker: The Washington Consensus Wants To Cut Social Security Benefits With A Chained CPI

[woo me with science]

6. And Obama proposed the chained CPI in April of last year.

Spin, spin, spin.

He put 650 billion in cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the table and then publicly bemoaned the fact that the Republicans did not accept his "big deal." And we learned afterward that the "big deal" absolutely DID include benefit cuts including a proposed chained CPI. By reports from multiple sources (including Nancy Pelosi, btw), the deal, which was agreed upon except for the revenue component, included the following:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/what-obama-was-willing-to-give-away/?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/92539/obama-boehner-debt-ceiling-press-conference-concessions-revenue


"Medicare: Raising the eligibility age, imposing higher premiums for upper income beneficiaries, changing the cost-sharing structure, and shifting Medigap insurance in ways that would likely reduce first-dollar coverage. This was to generate about $250 billion in ten-year savings. This was virtually identical to what Boehner offered.

Medicaid: Significant reductions in the federal contribution along with changes in taxes on providers, resulting in lower spending that would likely curb eligibility or benefits. This was to yield about $110 billion in savings. Boehner had sought more: About $140 billion. But that’s the kind of gap ongoing negotiation could close.

Social Security: Changing the formula for calculating cost-of-living increases in order to reduce future payouts. The idea was to close the long-term solvency gap by one-third, although it likely would have taken more than just this one reform to produce enough savings for that.

Discretionary spending: A cut in discretionary spending equal to $1.2 trillion over ten years, some of them coming in fiscal year 2012. The remaining differences here, over the timing of such cuts, were tiny."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/www/:/www.youtube.com/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=439&topic_id=1660734&mesg_id=1661130

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1660734&mesg_id=1668364



The theft is bipartisan. Occupy.