Because traditional "inside the beltway" consensus is that President Obama should cut Social Security to be "serious" and appease our bond markets, I would love to mobilize some DUers to start pestering the WH and giving our view on the issue. More than 70% of Americans do not want Social Security cuts. We need to cause a huge stink about this so that the president understands this is a no go. Let's be clear, it's not only conservatives but other Democrats like Steny Hoyer and Dick Durbin who also believe this "we need to cut Social Security" nonsense.
WaPo posts prints stories weekly that are anti-Social Security and chock full of blatant misinformation. Here is an excerpt from a HuffPo piece that addresses a particularly foul article by Gerson.
Huffington Post
Bushwacking Obama: Conservatives Call for "Fixing" Social Security
Beware of conservatives bearing gifts. Today in the Washington Post, former Bush policy advisor Michael Gerson echoes a growing chorus of conservative pundits in offering up "Social Security reform" as "the answer to Obama's problems." The advice is illogical on its face, pernicious in its consequence, and poisoned from its source.
Gerson argues that Obama faces a major strategic decision in his coming State of the Union address, which must take the "first cut at the reelection message he carries to reelection or defeat." Gerson helpfully offers a course virtually guaranteed to increase the chances of the latter.
He predicts the president will focus on a multi-year discretionary spending freeze, and on banning earmarks. But, in a classic Republican negotiating stance, he dismisses this embrace of conservative policies as meaningless, since Republicans will trump anything the president suggests on spending cuts.
So to gain agreement with Republicans, Gerson argues, the president will have to offer up more, choosing between tax reform and entitlement reform. The former is dismissed as too hard. (And is dangerous for Republicans since it is hard to do tax reform without insisting that the wealthy no longer pay an effective tax rate that is lower than their secretaries).
On entitlement reform, Gerson repeats virtually word for word what has become beltway conventional wisdom among conservatives in both parties. The real force behind rising deficit and debt projections is our broken health care system, reflected in the federal budget through Medicare, Medicaid and the VA. But Gerson doesn't even suggest continuing to challenge the drug, hospital and medical complexes that have succeeded in driving US costs per capita almost twice that of other industrial countries. He focuses instead simply on Medicare, but argues that "Medicare reform -- the topic of intense, ideological debate -- is a political nonstarter."
While he admits that Social Security is a "relatively small contributor to future deficits," "reforming it would be a large symbol and logical place to begin." The reforms needed are easy to summarize -- including raising the retirement age, and cutting benefits in the future. Liberals would object, but "Obama's urgent political need is to polish his image among independents on spending and debt." Social Security reform would do that, and "reassure global credit markets that America remains capable of governing itself."
Everything about this argument -- which is gaining ever greater force inside the beltway bubble -- is wrong. Social Security is not broken, and doesn't need to be "reformed." It contributes nothing to the deficit, and reforming it will contribute nothing to deficit reduction in the short or medium term. (In the long term, wars, recessions, future financial crises will have far greater effect than any reform of Social Security). Yes, in nearly three decades, Social Security is projected, if growth remains at Depression-era levels, to be able to pay only 75% of promised benefits (although still more at inflation adjusted levels than those currently offered). But it is bizarre to suggest that the "solution" to a potential cut in benefits is to offer up an immediate guarantee of benefit cuts.
THE REST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/bushwacking-obama-conserv_b_801911.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=122810&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureMore&utm_term=Daily+Brief
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