Explaining the Pure Cruelty of Obama's Gimmick, "Chained CPI" in Simple Language [View all]

[limpyhobbler]

By Thom Hartmann

...It’s nice to be thought of as an insider. It’s cool to get invited to the right parties. And it’s an adrenalin rush to be invited to the White House for an off-the-record briefing or conference call. I can tell you all those things from personal experience. But all those things said, it’s crazy for a Democratic president to shoot the Democrats’ number one Santa Claus program, and it’s crazy for progressives to try to pretend it’s something else.

If Obama goes along with a “chained CPI,” he will be the first Democratic President in the history of the Party to have actually cut Social Security. Even though it doesn’t do a thing – nothing! – to reduce the budget deficit. And, as we saw with Bill Clinton “reforming” welfare, once the Republicans can corner a Democratic president into shooting a Democratic Santa Claus, the Republicans can finish the job through the death of a thousand paper cuts over the next decade and in the states, and everybody just remembers that it was a Democratic President who started it.

President Obama has brought into his negotiations with Republicans an offer to cut more out of Social Security than he would cut out of the bloated Pentagon budget. So he’s supporting the Republican’s Santa Claus and shooting the Democrat’s Santa Claus. And, like with Clinton and welfare, this will just be the beginning, once the first cut is made. Eventually, the bloody carcass of Social Security will be swept up by right-wing cons like Peterson, Simpson, and Bowles, and handed over with a bow and a ribbon to the billionaires on Wall Street.

If President Obama is still pushing a “chained CPI” on December 21st, then maybe the Mayans were right. It is the end of the world as we know it. Or at least the end of the Democratic Party as we knew it.

via http://www.alternet.org/economy/explaining-pure-cruelty-obamas-gimmick-chained-cpi-simple-language