I pooh-poohed that shitty piece in the WaPo for anonymous sourcing, but I’m not sure how you deny this came straight from the man’s mouth:
And it is possible for us to construct a package that would be balanced, would share sacrifice, would involve both parties taking on their sacred cows, would involved some meaningful changes to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid that would preserve the integrity of the programs and keep our sacred trust with our seniors, but make sure those programs were there for not just this generation but for the next generation; that it is possible for us to bring in revenues in a way that does not impede our current recovery, but is fair and balanced.
We have agreed to a series of spending cuts that will make the government leaner, meaner, more effective, more efficient, and give taxpayers a greater bang for their buck. That includes defense spending. That includes health spending. It includes some programs that I like very much, and we — be nice to have, but that we can’t afford right now.
And if you look at this overall package, we could achieve a situation in which our deficits were at a manageable level and our debt levels were stabilized, and the economy as a whole I think would benefit from that. Moreover, I think it would give the American people enormous confidence that this town can actually do something once in a while; that we can defy the expectations that we’re always thinking in terms of short-term politics and the next election, and every once in a while we break out of that and we do what’s right for the country.
I suppose you could make the argument he is just posturing for street cred with the beltway deficit concern trolls, because he knows the Republicans aren’t going to accept any balanced program or “shared pain,” but you can not argue that he is not stating precisely what it has been rumored- cuts to social security and medicare. Excuse me- “strengthening” them.
I maintain that any changes to those programs under a Democratic administration would be disastrous politics.
brantl
Has anybody got any actual details? Because otherwise, everyone is just shitting their pants, and complaining about the shit.
schrodinger's cat
I think Obama believes the Milton Friedman version of economics. After all he used to teach at the University of Chicago, so it is not all that surprising. Also, it is the accepted conventional wisdom after all.
John Puma
“Disastrous politics” or suicidal politics?
Soon I’ll need proof that it is not actually inside-job assassination politics.
Laertes
Don’t get freaked out when he talks about cutting “health spending.” Everyone wants to cut health spending. The difference is that Republicans want to cut health spending by shirking the government’s responsibilities altogether and leaving people at the mercy of insurers, while Democrats want to cut health spending by using the bargaining power of the government to hold prices down.
I’m also not frightened of a meaningless phrase like “meaningful changes” to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Imagine that you’re a Republican, and you have to face your constituents and tell them that you’re working with the President, but you’re confident that you’ll get “meaningful changes” to these programs. Does that feel like you’re winning?
Sloegin
Whenever I read stuff like this I can’t help but wonder how much the Chicago school of Econ influenced Obama’s thinking while he was across the lawn at the law school.
Edit: yar, Schrodinger beat me to it.
hrprogressive
Disastrous politics huh?
The real question is what is anyone on the Not Republican side of the aisle going to do about it if it comes to pass?
If your answer is “I hate the Republicans, but I’m still putting all the Democratic lawn signs in my yard, sending them money, and going to the polls for them”, then you might as well just give up on politics and hope the Republicans don’t destroy you completely before you die of your own accord.
I’ll be the first to admit how wrong I’ve been the nanosecond that Obama/Democrats in General actually stand up and tell every single Republican that they can reap every benefit of attempting to destroy the country from the electorate instead of whipping out their Stockholm Syndrome card and protecting their abusers yet again.
I’ll eat all the humble pie in the world from every single Non Republican who actually believed in the President every second of the way, unflinchingly.
But I really, really would like to see at the very least some damn contingency plan for what happens when pissed off and angry progressives who think the President is just one more grand bargain away from really, legitimately losing his base turn out to be correct.
Just sayin, you know.
steve
“concern trolls”
god, that phrase is so stupid you might as well be a creationist. Intelligent people use the word ‘disingenuous’. ‘Concern troll’ is about as smart as ‘conversate’.
Another Bob
Bad politics? It’s a fricking debacle in the making. They had Ryan and the Republicans under their foot after Ryan’s stupid Medicare voucher plan was rolled out. Now they’re prepared to let the Republicans off the hook, take the blame themselves, and in the end it won’t do a damn bit of good because it’s a phony issue. I can’t imagine how it could get much worse. Do Congressional Dems have the spine to resist this insanity and at least try to save themselves and the rest of the party from Obama’s ship of fools?
Culture of Truth
If it’s posturing or genuine, the Beltway lurves it. Matt Bai, Dana Milbank, & Fred Hiatt all have Odes to Obama this morning.
Derf
Speaking of concern trolls John Galt Cole. I’m sure you were just itching to add your 2 cents.
I’ll bet Johnson would have never caved into re-enstating child labour and civil rights laws if he were prez eh?
bystander
John Provocative-Troll-My-Own-Blog-Curmudgeon Cole, in some ways you’re like my favorite political cartoonist. You can alternately prompt me to yank my hair out by the roots in frustration, and/or leave me just open-mouthed in jaw-dropped, near wordless, agreement. Carry on, Sir.
Culture of Truth
Also you won’t have Ron Paul to kick around anymore.
[ sobs ]
Liberal Sandlapper
Well, you are right about one thing. Greenwald is, has always been and will always be an asshole. That is all…
harokin
I guess dismantling the social welfare programs of the last 100 years would make the government “meaner.”
Villago Delenda Est
Most “health spending” has nothing at all to do with delivering health care, after all. It has to do with parasitical entities who have latched onto a host and, with no concern at all for their own long term survival, are slowly killing that host. The short term mentality, the hallmark of the MBA, rules.
Dave
1. Obama is no idiot and he knows that actual cuts in Medicare/Medicaid/SS would be disastrous for the Democratic Party. Call him what you will, but he ain’t stupid.
2. “meaningful changes” could be allowing the government to negotiate drug prices. That alone would lower costs and be of more benefit to recipients. And it would be a “spending cut”.
3. I think he made these offers knowing damn well the GOP would turn them down because they can’t countenance one dime in new taxes.
eastriver
I’m not sure it’s the disaster you think it is, JC. I believe that Obama has utterly and thoroughly defeated the other side. And it will be worth it in the end. (2012 re-election.)
Let’s all just wait and see. And stop complaining about the amount of shit in brantl’s pantls.
MaximusNYC
I have pretty much tuned out all the agita in blogworld over the last few weeks. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. This is all posturing.
Captain Haddock
Sista Souljah, bitches!
I guess his grand strategy relies on David Brooks’ vote counting 1 million times.
Culture of Truth
CLOWNS
ira-NY
Factoring out the politics, would a grand bargain be the right thing to do?
ira-NY
Factoring out the politics, would a grand bargain be the right thing to do?
mk387
When do political bloggers ever think that politicians need to actually compromise or do what they & their advisors feel is the best thing for the country?
Never?
Cole:
Because apparently the role of president is to do what is politically expedient for him & his party at all times.
Welcome to blogger fantasy land …
General Stuck
Anything that diminishes actual benefits and their promised delivery would be disastrous politics. As far as I know, Obama has offered nothing but what would enhance the bennies of SS and medicare, or at least neutral in that regard. People don’t give a fuck how they get their entitlements, and how much can be saved from changing the delivery infrastructure, just so long as the checks arrive in the amount and time agreed upon.
You should have stopped this post with the part about Obama making an offer the wingers could not accept, even though it was all and more of what they were asking for, albeit with the poison pill of tax or revenue raising. Obama correctly noted that that on that issue Grover Norquist runs that particular department of Planet Wingnut, and nary a sniveling soul in the republican party will cross that line.
O’Donnell was precisely correct, that this was a very competent example of Politics played well by Obama
Nobody with half a brain, gives a shit what Glenn Greenwald thinks, or any of the other fools that listen to his Obama Hatecult bullshit.
cleek
“any” changes.
well, kiss those programs goodbye, then. because the only changes a GOP President will ever make will be to dismantle them: piece by piece or in one fell swoop.
if Dems are forbidden from doing what’s necessary to keep them solvent and stable and funded, then those programs are truly fucked.
when did it become Proper Progressive Thinking that SS and Medi* are absolutely untouchable?
arguingwithsignposts
@Culture of Truth: Just out of curiosity, what would that mean, exactly, since 40 Republicans can’t pass shit in the senate?
General Stuck
Clowns indeed. And flailing helplessly and lashing out at Obama who drank their milkshakes and made them out publicly to be fools, hypocrites, and crybaby quitters.
maye
You know, he hired that woman from the outset who is an expert on what happened and why during the 1930s. Then he proceeded to ignore all the lessons from that period and let the Republicans take control of the message. I honestly just don’t understand. Someone’s gonna have to explain it to me. I don’t see how this politically helps the President or his party.
Quiddity
The notion that Obama is engaging in “an extremely smart example of offering a sacrifice you know the other side won’t take to get some credibility and to put Boehner in a box” (mistermix) or “just posturing for street cred with the beltway deficit concern trolls” (ABL via Cole) is bizarre. When has that worked in the past? Is getting a thumbs-up from David Brooks or Mark Halperin (or any other pundit) going to make a difference?
Guess who else got big kudos for being patient and a good steward during negotiations. Jimmy Carter with the Israel-Egypt peace accords. A lot of good that did him in November 1980.
jwest
Obama needs to balance the spending cuts with tax increases.
Of course, the tax increases should be on people who can afford it and the taxes should be imposed on items that are totally non-necessities. Corporate jets are arguably a useful business tool, so they should be exempt. However, more revenues could be raised by taxing superfluous items.
Movie, play and concert tickets could be taxed 50%. As no one actually “needs” to attend these activities, no one will miss the money. Trial lawyers should have a “windfall profits tax” imposed on any settlement that exceeds the reasonable hourly rate in their area. There are a number of other taxes that could be levied to help relieve the budget crisis.
Beta Magellan
@schrodingers cat
I can assure (from experience, albeit on the student side) you that teaching at the University of Chicago does not mean you necessarily share any of Milton Friedman’s views–from what I’ve read the only U. of C. figure who had any real influence on Obama was Cass Sunstein.
And Milton Friedman’s ideas are definitely not conventional wisdom–Friedman favored a strong, independent 1937-type disaster-averting Fed, not the reflexive anti-inflationism we see today. And I think if anyone in Washington advocated a negative income tax today they’d be laughed out of the city.
Tata
(via Glenn “OMG HE HATES AMERICA AND IS A FIREBAGGER AND PROBABLY BEATS DOGS AND HE LIVES IN BRAZIL AND WROTE TWO ARTICLES FOR CATO AND OH BTW HIS POSTS ARE TOO LONG AND HAVE TOO MANY UPDATES” Greenwald)
So even when you think he’s right you absolutely have to take a shot at him? That’s mature.
Dude, you came to the conclusion that you were wrong all those years about the Republicans – and good for you. How about you beat the Christmas rush and realize you’re wrong now about Greenwald and Hamsher?
4tehlulz
At this point, the parties are jockeying to force who walks out first.
Assuming the ratings agencies don’t pull the trigger and make the point moot, the only outcomes I see now are default or a clean bill on 8/2. Everything else is just talk.
chopper
@cleek:
tell me about it. medicare is a good program but as it currently stands it needs a bit of help. dunno why positive change is a bad thing.
the president has not himself elucidated any specific change here, so running around screaming that he’s going to burn medicare and SS to the ground is premature.
chopper
@Tata:
fuckin’ reading comprehension, how does it work?
Carol from CO
Obama balloon {{{popped}}}} JC?
foosion
It’s terrible politics, but it’s much worse policy.
These programs are the only reason to support Democrats, other than that the Repubs are batshit crazy.
Nellcote
Wasn’t that Ben Bernake?
numbskull
Regardless of all the wanking, there is nothing wrong with writing your elected representatives, including the President, and telling them your thoughts on various issues of the day.
For instance, let’s say you really think that the President is willing to cut SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and stomp kittens. Clearly you should let him know that you think any of these are bad ideas.
Conversely, let’s say that you are firmly convinced that the President is playing some 11 dimensional chess. Let him know that you think it’s great to toy with the opposition, but that you know he wouldn’t be stupid enough to actually cut these program or stomp kittens.
Or let’s say you _think_ he’s playing 11 dimensional chess, but you’re not sure. There’s no downside to letting him know that you think cutting these programs or stomping kittens are very bad ideas and that you don’t support them. If he’s fooled you with his chess prowess, what’ the worst that will happen? He’s going to read your letter on live TV and laugh at you?
No, there’s no downside to letting him or any other elected pol know your stance on issues. So do it. The White House fax number is 202-456-2461.
It’s a lot better than responding to Cole’s self-trolling (which is getting up to at least four dimensions…)
maye
@37: No, but I hear he looks good in a skirt.
J.W. Hamner
I think mistermix already went over this… either it’s kabuki or he’s a sellout, take your pick. There’s simply no way to know, and opinions will predictably fall in their traditional places along the Firebagger-Obot axis.
Wake me when there’s some legislation pending.
Maxwell James
Leaving politics aside, this just doesn’t sound that bad to me. Means-testing Medicare or raising the eligibility age wouldn’t kick seniors to the curb – it would simply put them on Obamacare. The closer we get to _one_ health care system the better IMO.
As for Social Security, I agree that it needs at most mild tinkering. But it is cashflow negative this year, and given that robust economic growth does not look likely over the next decade, we can expect that situation to continue. Again, I don’t see the harm in means-testing it if that can be done in a way that does not exclude any who actually need the payments.
evinfuilt
My big worry is even if Obama is playing Rope a Dope, in a few years time Republicans can go on TV and say they’re just doing what Obama wanted as they make SS and Medicare available only for people 75+ and in poverty.
Baud
You can’t say it’s bad politics until you know who this whole debt ceiling thing will play out. If the U.S. defaults or if they all give up and pass a clean debt ceiling increase, Obama wins, and likely wins big with independents.
Thymezone
Well this post tells me several things. The first is that you have no fucking idea on earth what you are talking about, unless you can list, and argue a position on, the actual “cuts” you think you are talking about, and those will be on people, you know, like me … who are actually receiving SS and Medicare benefits as we speak. I don’t think you have goddammed clue what they are or what they mean in actual dollars in any column on the spreadsheet and that you are talking out of your ass. But go ahead and prove me wrong and post what you do know and let’s see.
Second, and B, yes, this is about negotiating, and posturing. What the flying fuck did you think was going on here, a church baked goods auction?
Third, changes to these entitlement programs are and have been constant and ongoing since the day the original acts were signed. There are two sets of variables that drive their books, one set fairly predictable via actuarial tables, and the other set fairly unpredictable and grounded in employment and salary figures that change with the winds. It isn’t possible to keep such programs solvent without continuous adjustment and tinkering, any eighth grader with a computer and a spreadsheet can figure that out. So who the hell cares if some of that tinkering and “strenghening” becomes part of a baragaining mix? Are you going to sit there and propose that Democrats’ answer to the intransigent symbolic rigidity of Republicans is to counter with their own foolish and stupid rigidity, in a situation like this? Seriously, what the fuck?
Last but not least, even though I am smart enough not to waste my time with this shithole blog any more, I am still six and a half years and counting into my posting history at this page, and I can tell you this: In all that time, and over all those many thousands of posts, there has never been a single moment when I thought that any person who posts here, including me, would make a better president than the one we have in the White House right now, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s left undescended testicle for the aptitude of any Balloon Juice poster to do even half the job that we elected Obama to do. Nobody here is good enough to wipe his ass, and I mean that in the most sincere and nurturing way you can possibly imagine.
Nemesis
The signals from WH/Capital Hill should be interpreted as this:
The social safety net will be weakened. Absolutely.
Taxes raised on the wealthy and corporations? Well…. maaaaybe.
The trial balloons have floated regarding the safety net. All clear seems appropriate. No protests. No guns waived. No pitchforks.
Any honest astute observer of political theatre can come to no other conclusion. Unless the entire clusterfuck blows up and no “big deal” occurs.
Culture of Truth
They’re going to pass another resolution say they can too pass what they want.
kay
God, that’s just perfect. Did conservatives just make that up? I see them using that A LOT, in all kinds of situations. There’s one with your name on it! They won’t do anything else. Slippery slope :)
TK-421
Clearly, this is all Jane Hamsher’s fault*. Clearly, the problem is we haven’t clapped loudly enough. Clearly, all us “Manic Progressives” are having an “emo freakout” and we should just “CTFO because President Obama has got this.”
On a more serious note, at this point I’m just crossing my fingers this is all theatrics and nothing substantive is going to happen. That’s much more hope than makes me comfortable, however- these negotiations are making me tug at my collar in a Dave Letterman way.
And BTW, when are these asshats going to look at a calendar? They’re going to rewrite the tax code, overhaul/slash/cut/strengthen/whatever entitlements, vote in the House, vote in the Senate, go to conference committee, vote on the negotiated bill, and have the President sign it…all in 20 days or less? Seriously, when is someone going to notice that there is no longer enough time to attach strings to the debt ceiling vote? Just go vote already.
*yeah, she’s annoying, but she also seems to be an all-too-convenient scapegoat for when things go wrong with “Team” Democrat, especially on this blog.
Tata
dchopper:
Groups of people develop their own exciting vernaculars, which is happening here, now.
Quiddity
@Dave: Talking about “meaningful changes” to Social Security and other entitlement programs, without saying what they will be, is political insanity. If it’s having the government negotiate drug prices, then say so. Otherwise all you end up doing is giving the opposition the chance to define what those changes will be (even if false), and scare the hell out of a lot of citizens.
Obama is panicking. He’s in desperation mode since he bungled by not getting a debt-limit deal in December 2010.
Dennis SGMM
If Obama’s strategy is to make Republicans look bad for refusing a reasonable compromise deal then why hasn’t he shared the specifics of some of the things that he’s already put on the table? We are otherwise left with vaguely worded reassurances, statements from anonymous sources and a shitpile of speculation.
Samuel Knight
Disastrous politics is right – weclome to the club.
He wants to be “reasonable” – remember “prudent”? Bush 1 – he lost.
Does he really think most people know the ins and outs? They don’t – they just sense what works and what doesn’t – health care really isn’t working – so they hate it. And this deal would be an economic disaster – so they’ll hate it too. Whether anyone was reasonable won’t have anything to do with it.
catclub
chopper @ 34
I think there was a Marine motto: ‘When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.’
Or was it Burma shave?
kay
I like this one, too. What a sad, pathetic way to look at the world. Money is supposed to work for you, chump, it’s not supposed to be your master.
I give that a resolution of disapproval.
Trurl
Thanks for letting us know you’re not here.
DonkeyKong
You guys really can’t see the forest for the trees. No matter what the outcome is, Obama has given the republicans a nail spiked bat to beat medicare and social security every fuckin time a debt ceiling vote comes up.
Every democratic president will have to deal with this bullshit in the future.
This was NEVER an issue in the past, NOW it is.
Obama keeps bringing his 11th dimensional chess set to a head butting contest.
General Stuck
Any of you delicate flowers need to reconnect with your inner Obama on entitlements, then a rereading of his State of the Union address this year, might untangle you knickers. Not to mention that every time I have recently heard Obama speak of changes to SS and Medicare, it is qualified with the controlling caveat that benefits won’t be affected and any changes would either boost those benefits, or would be to extend them and the program into the future.
People hear what they want to hear, and too many want to hear Obama fail, understandedly from the right, but less clear from the left.
Rick Taylor
__
For progressives, the system of health care we passed that consisted entirely of propping up private insurance was, to say the least, a compromise. If we now use that to move people off of Medicare, which works and is more along progressive principles, would be a betrayal.
__
If in the future it turns out that health care reform serves people as well as Medicare and as cost effectively, then I’d have no problem with what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s the case yet.
Beta Magellan
@Samuel Knight
Are we taking our cues from the Republican base now?
Dave
WHO’S EMO NOW
Culture of Truth
Because before putting specifics on the table he made it clear a deal would include some small tax loophole closings in the future and they walked out of the room.
The strategy seems to be working. Over at Fred Hiatt’s web site an online poll is running 75-25 in Obama’s favor, as is my unscientific reading of the Beltway pundits. Bai, Milbank, Hiatt and even Bobo Brooks think the GOP are losing the image war.
Elie
I am reminded of what it is like for a woman in the “transition” phase of labor. The pain is excruciating, she is frequently nauseated, screaming at her loved ones and has feelings of impending doom. Her body at that point is completing the incredible transformation and actual physical changes/distortion to pass several pounds of human being through her pelvis at the end of a monumental effort — hopefully and usually, thankfully alive.
We are in transition to birthing this thing — whether it is alive and can survive, or stillborn, the screaming, the sense of doom and complete horror of those witnessing (who are not actually assisting the woman) – is similar.
You will note, the midwife/doctor/critical assistants to the birth process — know what is happening. Though concerned, they are focused and acting. They are in the middle of it. Obama and his team are in the middle of it and need our prayers and best wishes. Only fools would wish them/him anything but the best with so much at stake. Who and what kind of person would want different or weigh their cynicism against success for someting so valuable and important?
Quiddity
@maye: Here’s how it happened according to Obotipedia: The president was brainwashed by economics professors from the University of Chicago and is therefore absolved of any blame for his current stance. See comments (above) for confirmation of this.
Lawnguylander
The paragraphs you quoted do not support the conclusion you stated up there.
Clearly Obama’s only intention here is to get some defense spending cuts, look after the oldsters and do what’s right for the country. I have upended the entire premise of your post by using the bold tags.
Thoughtcrime
JC must have a new sponsor:
http://www.depend.com/
General Stuck
linky to Obama SOTU speech in 2011
lacp
After reading Thymezone’s post, all I am left with is this:
Hey, man, you don’t talk to the President. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean, sometimes he’ll, uh, well, you’ll say “Hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you, and he won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you’…” – I mean, I’m no, I can’t – I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s, he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas – I mean –…(
DonkeyKong
Obama said good things about SS and Medicare 7 months ago. Good to know Stuck, good to know.
terraformer
Thymezone:
Well, that deserves a golf clap at the least.
Martin
What’s so hard to understand here? Obama is putting out a buffet of things he’s willing to back. What’s never detailed, but we know is out there, is what must be delivered by the GOP in order to get to that buffet. That’s fine. It makes for pissy liberals, but they’ll get over it when they see what the final resolution is. But it looks like a mighty attractive buffet to the right and to moderates, and they want to know why the GOP won’t pay the price to get to it. We know why – because the price is steep, and the buffet is deceptive.
I figure there’s $2.2T in spending cuts over 10 years that liberals would love to see in the package (Obama actually teased his plan over 12 years in order to get to the $4T number – but nobody noticed that). That’s $120B per year in savings by getting out of Iraq/Afghan, and another $100B per year in savings by cutting procurement. Of course Obama will cut health spending – that was the whole fucking point of PPACA, and both Dems and the GOP blocked quite a few of the big cost reduction opportunities there. Meaningful changes to SS, as everyone who’s terrified to touch SS will point out can be quite small. Small changes have meaningful effect there on OASI, but for Disability Insurance fairly big changes are needed (it’s been spending more than it’s taking in since 2005, and will have totally exhausted it’s trust in 7 years). Nobody thinks of DI as SS, but it is, and is separate from retirement benefits, and Obama can talk about ‘meaningful changes’ to SS and be completely truthful if the big stuff is all on the DI side.
As I said last night – Obama is very careful with his language, and he’s pretty good at negotiating all of this stuff. Remember in the budget fight in March/April when the left peed the floor over Obama supposedly embracing Simpson-Bowles and supposedly offering to raise SS to 70? None of that happened, but it he used it to actually get a small spending increase out of the House, who were insisting on massive spending cuts.
Phil Perspective
Culture of Truth @ 20:
How would Reid even let them vote on it? And wouldn’t it go down to defeat since the Pukes are still in the minority?
Rick Taylor
@Tata
__
I’m going to go out and a limb here, and say that the line you’re criticizing was sarcasm on John Cole’s part.
Citizen Alan
jwest @ 30
You simply have to be a Republican troll to make this argument with a straight face. Telling plaintiffs’ attorneys that they can’t expect anything more out of a contingency fee case than they could have gotten for an hourly rate is essentially abolishing contingency fee cases, and with it, any hope for justice via the courts for plaintiffs who are not wealthy enough to pay $10k+ out of pocket in order to litigate even the simplest cases. It would certainly mean the end of medical malpractice cases which require possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of litigation costs, often from plaintiffs who are no longer able to work. Which, of course, is what the corporate whores of the GOP want — anything to keep us dirty peasants in line.
Pillsy
What, since when is it news that Obama is critically interested in reducing health care spending, and is willing to tinker with Medicare to do it?
It may be bad politics, but it’s sure as hell not new politics.
tweez
Thymezone is leaving?!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!1!!11!
NR
Means-testing = Welfare = Programs gone.
The reason that Social Security and Medicare have lasted so long is that they were specifically designed NOT to be welfare programs.
Thymezone
Does anybody here even bother to spend 5 minutes looking up facts before posting this bullshit? Unspecific? I can make a google search and get, in 2 seconds, and ENTIRE PAGE of returns datelined within the last week which contain the key detail of the proposed SS cuts being suggested by the White House. One very visible site had a large dual article dustup about the subject complete with deep number rubbing to illuminate the most important points. Yet nobody here seems to have a fucking clue about this, despite having the time to sit at keyboards and whack off in faux outrage over something they haven’t taken the time to learn anything about.
In other words, nothing has changed here. What a waste of pixels you fuckers are.
I just ran into Rome Again here in the Thymezone Towers International Headquarters, and she says that John Cole has become a Firebagger. Apparently he is now sleeping with Jane Hamsher, finally, after all these years of us telling him to get ‘er done.
jman
What about Obama offering to increase medicare retirement eligibility age to 67? Is that an entitlement cut or is there some way to paper that over? How about the 200 billion in cuts to Social Security through Chained-CPI concession? How about this concession, offering to make the Bush tax cuts permanent? See Esra Klein’s post, “Why Liberals should thank Eric Cantor.”
Elie
Thymezone@ 44 —
You got that right…sing it brother (or sister)!
Han's Solo
And I maintain that any changes would have to go through Congress and that Obama can’t make law just by wishing it.
Cat Lady
@Thymezone:
Bravo!
And now Glenn’s minions haz a big sad. Glenn’s the bestest smartest rightest person evah! and could do preznit’in circles around Dear Leader and get those mean Republicans and Blue Dogs marching forward together arm in arm just with the force of his logic, with frequent updates, because shut up that’s why.
tBone
Heh. You may not have been around much lately, but you’ve still got some trolling chops.
NamelessGenXer
@Thymezone
This. If this blog had emoticons, I’d choose the clapping hands smiley.
I’ve been paying FICA taxes for 34 years and, after witnessing what has passed for leadership during that time, I have never, ever believed I would see a dime of it again. So, meh. Why start now?
I write my quarterly SE checks, close my eyes and pretend like I’m writing them directly to my 70-something parents. It helps.
Re: HC in my twilight years – again, I have always assumed it will be a handful of blackmarket Tranxene and a fifth of Jack, and that is still prefereble to ever handing the keys back to the Treasonous Republican Criminals.
Also too, “lean and mean” is how I’ve run my business for 16 years and the reason I can undercut the competition. There is something to be said for it.
Edited for more bad HTML.
pika
Again, let your reps and Pres know how you feel/what you think. Phone calls ok, emails less so. Petition-signing not at all. Handwritten letter preferable to typewritten.
sixers
Brietbart is behind all of this!
13th Generation
@ Thymezone
I think you’d better get on home now, I’m sure your loved ones are worried about you.
Thymezone
I notice that Cole has entered into another period of Who Am I, I Don’t Know Myself Any More by showing the same kind of vaporous loyalty he showed to his former mates in the Republican Party when he dumped them just at the time they needed him most.
Just another political turncoat. Benedict Arnold Cole.
stormhit
The entire point of ACA was to cut heath care spending. This is very much yet another insane freakout over nothing.
aimai
I’ve come down on the side of thinking that Obama and his team are simply aiming at re-election and they think they have “the math” to determine that whatever is getting through to the great unwashed US voter is good enough to put Obama over the top.
That’s part of the argument progressives/liberals are having with the Obama team. Some of us don’t think that appealing to imaginary centrist/independent voters is a good short term *or* long term strategy. But we could be wrong. I think that all Obama’s capitulation on terms (the deficit hawkery, the insistence on joining the pain caucus) hurts us long term because I’ve had people say to me “Obama agrees that we have to cut spending!” and this slips very fast into “Obama agrees that SS and Medicare are destroying our country and we need to cut them entirely!” Its hard for us as Democratic doorknockers and grassroots activists to find ways to talk up the Democrats as defending SS and Medicare at the same time that we are finding voters using Obama’s move to the right as a proof that the republicans were really right all along.
But we could be wrong–maybe when we get out there and start trying to get out the vote we will find that Obama’s strategy is playing better in peoria than we thought. But I think, given the coverage and the response that I’m seeing, that its a high risk strategy for the Dems as a party. If Obama and the Dems win big–win back the house, hold the Senate,and win the Presidency then I think the sky is the limit (or the blue dogs are the limit) for what can be done. But if we lose either one of the three branches? Well, I suppose then it won’t matter what Obama promised or didn’t promise to cut.
aimai
Phil Perspective
Thymezone @ 44:
You are the one with no idea. Raising the Medicare age to 67? Why? It’s not going to save any money. It’s just another one of those things that hurts the average person but makes David Brooks get a woody.
Dennis SGMM
@Culture of Truth
You know that for a fact? “Some small tax loophole closings in the future…” for what, exactly? Small tax loopholes closings in the future will neither do much to address the deficit nor do they seem worth, say, raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 – as has been bruited about by those anonymous sources.
jwest
Citizen Alan @73
Do you mean that removing trial lawyer’s incentive would affect their actions?
I find it hard to believe that the noble members of the legal profession would alter their quest for justice simply because the risk/reward ratio changes somewhat.
Where is your faith in humanity?
Han's Solo
@Thymezone: Spot on!
Suffern ACE
Yep. Middle class targeted tax expenditures for mortgage interest and corporate sponsored health insurance policies as well as their own income tax breaks under the bush years have been very costly to the treasury. I’m certain that they will step up, along with the wealthy, to fund our schools and healthcare going forward.
Thymezone
@tbone: You are damned right, steakman.
Just remember one thing. God led us to eating steaks like you, by making your species easy to catch.
Oh, and AngusTheGodOfMeat said hello.
Jim C.
YES. THANK YOU John.
This is what I’ve been trying to argue. Those of us who are expressing concern that President Obama will cut entitlement programs and/or do some sort of 85/15 split of cuts/taxes with the Republicans are NOT just concern trolling.
We’re concerned because of WHO is saying that cuts are being proposed not just quoting some anonymous sourced stuff.
Now, obviously the devil is in the details and maybe the cuts are things like (for example) Drug Reimportation from Canada that would technically make Medicare less expensive without sacrificing benefits, but that Obama has floated cuts repeatedly is unfortunately, factual not speculative.
I hope he realizes just how much he’s playing with fire here.
Martin
Uh oh. Obama has activated the Teabagger Federation Droid Army!
Who will be the first to defeat the GOP menace? Retirees terrified of losing their SS checks, or Wall Street terrified of losing their billions in gains from the bond market?
John Cole
I suppose that means I should end my monthly donations to the DNC and the Obama campaign and peel the Obama 2012 sticker off my car window.
Christ, you people are tedious.
Martin
Given that Obama certainly realizes the same thing, why do you think it’s going to happen, and not just bait for the GOP? He spent a year fighting for a bill to expand health care and reduce costs to seniors, and you think in a week he’s going to undo all of that? Put your man-pants on.
srv
The Chamber of Commerce has finally wet their pants:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/congress-hears-outcry-from-business-lobby-on-debt-ceiling-and-deficit/2011/07/12/gIQAiVGpAI_story.html
Thymezone
@Dr Phil Perplexive:
WTF is the matter with you? Actuarial tables show changes in life expectancy. You either move the cursor, or else you have to get more revenue. Since revenue is not looking that available right now, since all the host organisms are out of work, you adjust the entry age. But remember, if you can spare a brain cell: None of this is binding on future governments. None. Get it? That’s the dirty little secret of all this deficit bullshit. The future will be the future, and we aren’t deciding it now. I saw some asshole yelling about how compounded SS cuts in 30 years would amount to a hard hit on benefits. Really? What we do now is binding on the government 30 years from now? Just like the actions of the government 30-40 years ago are binding on us now, forcing us to calculate using the same forumulas and variables they did? Really? Huh, really? Seriously? For reals?
No, they aren’t.
catpal
Well we couldn’t afford the Bush War for Oil in Iraq — but they voted to increase the Debt Ceiling for more War without any arguments.
Let’s have a separate Vote on that War to raise the debt ceiling now.
Obama is caving too much on this issue – and Raising Medicare eligibility – when we Should be Lowering the Medicare eligibility age to about 55 – because the 50+ population lost jobs and their health benefits.
I don’t think Voters are going to want to vote for someone who is raising the Medicare age. What a really stupid idea from Obama.
Zach
I read The Corner so you don’t have to… big news from Rich Lowry:
All I can say is… yes! I figured the GOP would figure out some Catch-22 to raise the debt ceiling yet blame Obama for it; this is a pretty clever way to do that. Democrats should let them do it. The GOP’s salivating over using the debt as a campaign issue — no one gives a hoot about the debt, though, and it’s a horrible topic to build a campaign around. I can’t think of a compelling script for a campaign ad focused on the debt ceiling — can anyone?
Phil Perspective
aimai @ 89:
Look what happened last year? HCR tried to dump Bush’s Medicare disaster and the Republicans ran on it from the left that the Democrats were trying to kill grandma and gramps. I’ll guarantee you the GOP will do it again. That’s why raising the Medicare age is stupid(it’s not the only reason why it’s stupid). Medicare and Social Security are very popular for a reason. The only people the President is impressing with this crap are David Brooks and the ghost of David Broder.
Thymezone
@cole #98. Of course we are tedious. That’s why we hang around here.
General Stuck
We have seen this sort of thing before. Triangulating from GOP presidents using our Blue Dog problem against us to get more conservative legislation passed, or more importantly, blocking liberal leg from a dem president. Now the wingers got their own version of dissident ideologues to the right fringe, who are true believers and dance only with the insane tea tards that brung em. Which by my take. our blue dogs seem like Choir boys and girls, compared with the winger tea party problem.
The senate still has more old bull Goopers, who are on board with a lot of the radical agenda of the tea party, but not so much fucking around with the debt ceiling law as a pol battlefield.
They are closer to the plutocrats and are statewide elected officials, and I suspect they will go along with a clean debt ceiling increase at crunch time, that House liberals can vote for to make up the diff of intransigent House right wingers that rode in on the tea tard wave in 2010.
That would be my guess how it turns out. Or, if not, then Obama will use the 14th amendment, and can claim pol cover from trying to negotiate with republicans who couldn’t even agree with themselves, and his adult presnit self acted to save the day, or some such nonsense/
cleek
@Thoughtcrime:
the GOP already has the valuable Depend sponsorship.
jman
Obama offered the medicare retirement increase to get a deal. It isn’t rocket surgery. I think Obama is genuine.
Davis X. Machina
@aimai:
I don’t think they’re thinking short-term at all, but rather the opposite. Yglesias had an interesting piece on the possibility of an Obama administration not so much chasing debt-and-deficit-fixated independents for 2012, as playing a long — very long — game in all of this, which has been my suspicion all along:
The hunt for the technocratic Holy Grail — to fix the country once and for all, and get the politics out of politics — has always had a gravitational pull for a certain kind of Democratic politician — I’m thinking in the recent past of the likes of Hart, Bradley and Tsongas.
Han's Solo
@Thymezone: You are owning this discussion thread.
Bravo.
What laws Congress can set for the future the future Congress can undo.
Not only that, but I’d say again that before Obama’s proclamations become law they have to pass through Congress. Also too, Democratic Congresscritters don’t walk in lock step; they never have.
Phil Perspective
Thymezone @ 101:
Yes, the rich are living longer. The rest of us rif-raf aren’t. Can you compute that? We aren’t all rich like your stupid butt are. Do you know of people in their mid-50’s who have lost jobs in this recession? How many of them have found new ones? And of those that have, how many at pay close to what they were making before? Did Ian Anderson write one of his most famous songs about you?
Judas Escargot
Probably. But could it be good policy? No one knows until more details come out.
I for one won’t freak out about a 2-year raising of the Medicare age until I know how soon it happens, and what ACA provisions are expected to be in place by that time. As long as folks 50, 55+ get grandfathered in properly (a delicate matter– otherwise they get screwed), and affordable insurance is in place by the time slightly younger folks like myself get there in 15-20 years… well, that could be a good thing. My retirement age is already 67 (thank you, Reagan-Greenspan), so no real harm done.
Also note that raising the Medicare age increases the number of people who can be convinced to vote for any of the “Medicare buy-in” and “Medicare for Everyone” suggestions that were floating around during the ACA debate.
I remember that early in his Presidency, Obama basically said that if “doing the right things” made him a one-term President, then so be it.
I’m starting to wonder if he actually meant it?
Dennis SGMM
@Martin
The SS Trust Fund is currently solvent. It will remain so for years. If Obama is talking about defaulting on the government bonds held by the Trust Fund then he may as well start packing now. Those Seniors who get put in shit up to their necks by such a move are not going to think “I understand that Obama is a brilliant negotiator and that this is all for the best.” They’re going to think “I can’t buy groceries or medicine because I didn’t get my check and Obama is the goddamned President!”
Trurl
He’s panicked and desperate because even Geithner is admitting the economy is going nowhere for the foreseeable future. And he ain’t getting re-elected the official unemployment rate over 8%.
Got that, ‘bots? It’s the economy, stupid. And on that score, your man is an unqualified failure.
It’s not Jane Hamsher. It’s not his blackety-black-blackness. It’s the failure of his econic policies. Deal with it.
Citizen Alan
jwest – July 12, 2011 | 1:12 pm · Link
In the sense that forcing trial lawyers into a business model that will lead to their bankruptcy would affect their actions, yes.
I find it hard to believe that you’re not mentally deficient. Every contingency fee case that wins pays for the three or four that lose — despite seeming meritorious when the case was brought — because the judge ruled against the plaintiff on a dispositive point, because the jury for whatever reason thought the plaintiffs were not sympathetic, because the (much better funded) defense lawyers did a better job, because of whatever. The contingency fee arrangement provides an economic incentive for a lawyer to risk taking a case without billing the client anything up front and with the understanding that the lawyer will take nothing and probably incur substantial losses if the case turns out to be a loser. Very few plaintiffs who are not independently wealthy would ever be able to file any sort of civil litigation without the availability of a contingency fee arrangement.
Shattered by the realization that it could produce drooling halfwits such as yourself.
Phil Perspective
Davis X. Machina @ 109:
You mean the DLC types? And guess how long that “fix” will last? Until the GOP controls Congress and the WH next time.
Yutsano
@NamelessGenXer:
Really? There’s an easier way you know. Unless you’re just being metaphorical. In which case I’ll shut up now. :)
cleek
@Quiddity:
panicking ? what evidence is there that he’s panicking ? he seems as calm and controlled as ever.
Davis X. Machina
@Phil Perspective: What’s the difference between a duck?
With rare exceptions, the Democratic Party are DLC types. When you elect Democrats you get DLC types, with the odd colorful exception. Mrs. Clinton was in the room when the DLC was created, for chrissakes.
We are all sure there’s this untapped silent army of social democrat Democrats out there that would sweep these posers off the electoral map if it were just unleashed.
What if they’re not there?
Dennis SGMM
@cleek
So was the captain of the Titanic.
4tehlulz
NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED:
Thymezone
@catpal: With reformed health insurance and affordability, raising the Medicare age actually makes pretty good sense. Being able to move the furniture around and keep the programs solvent and functional, while keeping (as close as possible to) everyone hooked up to access, makes administration a lot easier. If I could have kept my excellent coverage without being stuck at a certain job that was toxic to me, I wouldn’t care if my Medicare was delayed. I don’t figure that the world owes me a bed of roses. I am willing to work for a crust as long as I can still steer the Hoveround(tm) with my chin on the joystick. The one thing that is sure to kill the progressive goose is dogma. If I wanted dogma, I would go to Tea Party rallies and carry a badly misspelled sign that was an embarrassment to my ethnicity.
tBone
@thymezone
During negotiations with PETA, AngusTheGodOfMeat conceded that moderating diets to lower meat intake slightly might be OK. Fuck that sellout corporatist whore!
Also, lol @JohnCole for taking the bait.
Martin
Yes, but not as it would affect SS. The increase in life expectancy is because more kids and teenagers make it to adulthood, not because 65 year-olds live longer. Once you get past your stupid years, life expectancy goes up very slowly, and so there isn’t a big change in disbursements from SS relative to contributions.
However, as I showed a few days ago, SS payments relative to inflation have been going up slowly over time. It worked out to about 10-20 percentage points per decade, or about 5-10 percentage points per decade after out-of-pocket health care was deducted (because that has been increasing faster than inflation). Since contributions are indexed to inflation (being a fixed % of income), if payments are indexed even slightly higher than inflation, and assuming we aren’t killing off seniors before they can collect, we either need to adjust the COLA index slightly downward, or we need to set the contribution rate to slowly increase as a % of income over time. Raising the contribution cap gets you a one-time fix, but inflation will eventually catch up to you. Another one-time fix would be immigration reform – there’s a metric fuckton of relatively young undocumented workers in this country – vastly larger than the number who are approaching retirement age. If we could get payroll contributions for all of them, it’d offset some of the boomer crunch that SS/Medicare is facing. Again, it’s a one-time fix, though.
Phil Perspective
Judas Escargot @ 112:
And if what he thinks is good policy actually isn’t?
Ash Can
Bad politics? Only if “meaningful changes” and “spending cuts” translate into “noticeable and painful benefit decreases to which I agreed, if not gave my blessing, in return for little more than the Republicans agreeing not to blow up our economy.” That would be catastrophic politics. As it stands, however, these statements amount to bad appearances — and even then, only to such as us — rather than bad politics, if the poll cited by Culture of Truth @ #61 is any indication. Once again, who’s the audience for these remarks? Hint: It ain’t eighteen cranks in the blogosphere.
Thymezone raises an excellent point: How does it help Obama if he presents a picture of intransigence in the face of the GOP’s intransigence? The howls of “both sides do it” would be deafening, and for once they’d be right. As it is, the meme of Obama being the sensible one is actually taking hold. The GOP has lost the The Economist. The Chicago Tribune painted a less-than-flattering portrait of Eric Cantor this morning, suggesting his personal ambition was messing up the debt talks. The great unwashed are starting to take notice.
Obama has said time and again that cleaning up the fiscal mess can’t be dumped in the laps of the poor and middle class, and that tax revenues from those best able to afford them have to be part of a budget deal. To then seize upon a couple of vague phrases in the wake of this pattern of behavior as evidence that Obama is going to sign off on extensive cuts in benefits to the poor and elderly is a considerable stretch.
jwest
Citizen Alan @115
You do realize that the free-market, capitalistic rhetoric you are using to defend the windfall profits of trial lawyers is same type of argument oil companies use to defend their outrageous income? They say that the profit from one winning well pays for the four dry holes they drilled.
Why would a lawyer need to collect enough money to pay for a yacht or private jet? If the government allows lawyers to keep this money that rightfully belongs to the people, how can they justify taxing any business?
At least you appear to agree with me that all entertainment should be heavily taxed. There is no reason Hollywood and Broadway should be raking in unreasonable profits while people are suffering.
Thymezone
@Dr Pill #111:
Give it up. I am so poor I can’t afford to pay attention, thanks to the George W. Bush Memorial Housing Market and Stock Market Albatross that wiped out my misbegotten nest egg. As it is now I have to sit outside Safeway and pretend to have a palsy and be on the verge of starvation in order to con people into giving me money for cheap whisky.
gogol's wife
Enjoying Thymezone’s comments here. Just saying.
Martin
Actually, past evidence seems to suggest that they’ll blame Congress as a whole for it. Americans may be stupid about a lot of this stuff, but they at least seem to understand in broad strokes that we have 3 branches and that they’re responsible for different stuff. President does wars and gas prices. Congress does money. Supreme court does black people and lady bits.
Obama isn’t so stupid as to threaten SS checks (which I agree, should not be at risk if they treat these pools separately, so clearly this is a conscious decision) unless it would favor him. Congress left it to him to decide how to pay the bills, and he’s going straight for whoever will put the most pressure on the GOP.
Obama is doing pressers now, but before long he’ll be doing national addresses, and there will be no question where he puts the blame for this.
Thymezone
@Martin 124:
Please don’t waste my time with this treacle. The SS system looks at the retiree and calculates how long he will live from that point on, not on whether the population of pimply teenagers will live longer despite the diseases they will get with all that stupid jewelry stuck into their nostrils and gonads. In fact, according to an article I read recently, the SS actuarial predictions about the life spans of retirees has been disturbingly accurate for 70 plus years now. So accurate, we wonder, is the government controlling our lifespans? Is that why the airlines are always spraying those white death trails as they go over Leisure World? I am sure you get my subtle meaning.
Brachiator
@hrprogressive:
It’s 2011. Progressives still labor under the delusion that they are the base.
Progressives may be “right” about a lot of stuff. Problem is, you can’t get elected and are close to being tossed onto the dustbin of history. The Tea Party, about as ignorant and dangerous a bunch of yahoos that ever was, have popped up out of nowhere and done what the religious fundamentalists could never do, i.e., become serious power brokers at the national level.
Meanwhile, progressives keep whining that if you don’t get what you want, you are going to stamp your feet and go home and cry.
It’s just not enough that you expect the president to be your magical unicorn. It’s not even enough that you give money. If you can’t get people elected who agree with you, to either help the president or to pressure him to move in a progressive direction, it doesn’t matter that you view yourself as the self-righteous base. You’re just a memory. And you used to mean so much to me.
TK-421
I would like for this to be true. I’ve been wishing that the Obama Administration (not necessarily the President himself but at least his staff) would start FREAKING OUT about the economy because, you know, then maybe they’d try to do something about it.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any sign of panic here. I see a President and an Administration that genuinely believe deficit-cutting will spur an economic recovery. It is mindblowingly wrong, and there will be political consequences for this mistake.
How consequential? Eh, I still believe President Obama will get reelected, which will (probably) be the first time in my lifetime that the economy didn’t play a crucial role in the incumbent’s reelection. I still can’t believe the economy’s not going to doom President Obama, but OTOH…Mitt? Bachmann? I can’t wrap my brain around that.
Nevertheless, it appears to me the Administration is taking the ‘whatever, fuck Krugman and those hippies because they all smell and shut up clap louder shut up clap louder shut up clap louder’ approach to economic policy here. I worry that’s not going to work, but whatever it’s not up to me. Good luck with that.
Rome Again
Ash Can @126
“Obama has said time and again that cleaning up the fiscal mess can’t be dumped in the laps of the poor and middle class, and that tax revenues from those best able to afford them have to be part of a budget deal. To then seize upon a couple of vague phrases in the wake of this pattern of behavior as evidence that Obama is going to sign off on extensive cuts in benefits to the poor and elderly is a considerable stretch.”
Exactly, but you know… people say he’s the Anti-Christ and the Anti-Christ is supposed to do a complete 180 in the middle of his reign. I’m not one who believes this, of course, but it seems a lot of people are buying into it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Heh. “are we really that small a sliver of the party?”
Dennis SGMM
@Martin
Because blaming the Republicans for the bad economy worked out so well in 2010?
NamelessGenXer
Yutsano
Metaphorical. Do my State’s online too :-) And for the faint-hearted who are swooning over unsubstantiated rumors of a 2-year age increase for bennies, they should try watching their income tax being paid directly to that Fat Fucking Jesus’ Cronies. Thinking of moving down the road to Delawhere…
@srv
Whoever had July 12 in the pool on when Boehner’s
WhorePuppetmasters would start yanking his strings, please report to the front desk to claim your prize.Phil Perspective
Davis X. Machina @ 119:
They aren’t there because state and local parties have been taken over by corporate lackeys. That’s what the DLC is. Corporate control of the Democratic Party. We have to educate our fellow Democrats who those people are and stop them before they do more harm. Because DLC Democrats are what’s killing this country, every bit as much as the Teahadists.
Ash Can
@aimai: I sure as hell hope they’re focusing on re-election. If they don’t get re-elected, this nation is in seriously deep kimchee.
They should do whatever it takes to get re-elected. Then, with the re-election issue out of the way, they can proceed to revisit 2008-9 — provided enough of the vast, squishy center agree that they need to vote for Dems as their legislative representatives as well.
Thymezone
@tbone 123: Cole saw that I was fucking with him. What he didn’t see is that I unleased a quart of fresh flea eggs on his front lawn yesterday and within ten days or so he will be raw and bleeding from the crazed scratching he will be doing down around his legs and his junk area. The animals are out there now taking those little messengers into their fur as we speak.
Maxwell James
@Rick Taylor
Perhaps I’m just sick of reading stories like this, which suggest that those cohorts with the most antipathy towards expanding the safety net are those who currently benefit the most from it. But I’m not so sure I’d call Medicare the more progressive approach.
The PPACA is a flawed, corporatist system, but unlike Medicare it establishes _universal_ healthcare as a standard, and shows the potential to benefit all citizens regardless of age. Ideally I’d like to see the best parts of each system inform the other.
Davis X. Machina
@Phil Perspective: I’m on the Cumberland Co. Maine Democratic county committee. Which one are you on?
Phil Perspective
Brachiator @ 132:
Teahadists didn’t pop up out of nowhere. They are astroturf funded Birchers. They aren’t grassroots anything.
brantl
“Just another political turncoat. Benedict Arnold Cole.” And so Thymezone goes from Asshole to Flaming asshole, to a walking talking Preparation H ad, in one sentence. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, buttface.
Another Bob
@General Stuck
Reports say that he offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age by 2 years, from 65 to 67. That’s not an “enhancement” except in the most tortured Orwellian sense. How many personal disasters would those two years amount to, how many bankruptcies due to unaffordable medical bills or a total lack of insurance? That’s a really significant cut, no matter how you define it.
chopper
@Quiddity:
panicking? i don’t think obama has panicked over anything in his life.
Phil Perspective
Davis X. Machina @ 142:
I haven’t been involved for long enough to get on any board. But I do go to meetings in the Philadelphia area. The county parties that aren’t weak are controlled by corporatist types.
Judas Escargot
@Phil Perspective:
Then there’s a problem. But since we currently have no visibility into what that policy might be, none can judge.
BTW, if you have a viable plan that stops the ticking time bomb of Medicare that (1) doesn’t screw over people who don’t have time to adapt; (2) doesn’t rape Medicare into some horrible third-world “voucher program” and (3) can pass Congress in our lifetimes, I’m all ears, bro.
TK-421
And now I’m officially breathing a sigh of relief. The 1-2 punch of yesterday making it publicly clear who’s being intransigent/insane, while today making it publicly clear the consequences of that intransigence will doom Republicans. They can’t keep this going for much longer.
I’m starting to smell a Clean Vote coming, which for Progressives (and honestly everyone) would be AWESOME. It’s almost too much to hope for, but the probability of it IMO is increasing. Fantastic.
Anyone want to speculate on whether President Obama intended to run out the clock on negotiations, just so he could get the best outcome of all, a Clean Vote?
Kane
I’m somewhat surprised that some don’t see the brilliant strategy behind President Obama’s approach. President Obama isn’t about to alter Medicare and Social Security. I’ll repeat that; President Obama isn’t about to alter Medicare and Social Security.
President Obama understands that he can offer up just about anything and Republicans will still be unwilling and unable to accept the deal if it includes tax revenues. They simply don’t have the votes. But by putting the proposal out there, even though he knows full well that Republicans will back away from the proposal, Obama is showing that he is much more reasonable and flexible in addressing the debt negotiations than Republicans are.
Independent and swing voters are watching. While they see Republicans clinging to no taxes increases for the wealthy and some threatening a default, Obama comes out looking like the responsible and reasonable adult for making tough proposals. Tough proposals that ultimately will never be part of the final bill.
Cain
@cleek:
I agree completely. You can’t say never touch those programs.. that doesn’t make sense. You need to do some cuts to keep them solvent as cleek says.
FlipYrWhig
Jesus Christ this is stupid. There is one very simple question, John: WHAT is being cut? “Cuts to Medicare” doesn’t mean shit. Cuts to MEDICARE BENEFITS are a different matter. Cuts to MEDICARE SERVICES are a different matter. Cuts to Medicare grift, like free scooters and all the fraud and malfeasance Rick Scott parlayed into an evil empire, would be an unalloyed good. Bring it. Cut it off. The sooner the better.
At least complain about the right fucking things.
And stop listening to bad-faith spin merchant Greenwald. On anything.
chopper
@Thymezone:
shit, you know the situation’s tenuous when you come out of the woodwork. i haven’t heard from you in a dog’s age.
Pangloss
Michelle ate the hamburger, and Barack drank the milkshake.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I agree with Thymezone. You’re wrong here. There are more 65 year olds and they live longer. Life expectancy of teenagers is not directly relevant.
This assumes incorrectly that every illegal immigrant wants to become an American citizen. This is simply not true. A lot of immigrants treat the US the way businesses do, as a kind of NAFTA Zone in which they come to the country to work, but maintain their connections to their home countries (this is more true of immigrants from Mexico than other countries). Also, a lot of illegal immigrants already pay into the system because of bogus ID, but will never get anything out of the system.
And even if it politically feasible to turn every illegal immigrant into a citizen or resident (which it isn’t), the economy cannot absorb them. Employers use illegal immigrants because it keeps their wage costs down. Many of them would immediately be fired when they became legal.
While there are obviously long term benefits to immigration reform, the short term shock would do nothing for Social Security.
FlipYrWhig
If you paint something on your glasses, you’ll have a tendency to see it everywhere you look.
chopper
@FlipYrWig:
right. getting rid of medicare advantage could be construed as a ‘medicare cut’, as putting all those fossils on regular MC would mean less money spent on the service, even though it would be way better. getting the gummint the ability to negotiate drug prices would do the same. raising the retirement age and putting the alter cockers what aint old enough on ‘obamacare’ would do the same.
i aint saying i’m not going to freak out, i’m just reserving it until i know what services are actually being, you know, cut.
Linnaeus
Just to throw it out there, here’s a take on the situation that argues the audience for Obama’s remarks consists of congressional Democrats:
chopper
@Thymezone:
exactly. i don’t mind the medicare retirement age being raised, if private health insurance is high-quality, well-regulated and coverage is guaranteed by subsidy and law to people under retirement age. it lowers medicare spending and raises spending under the ACA, it’s all the same to me.
Brachiator
@Phil Perspective, 143
That’s funny. I never claimed that the Tea Party People were grassroots anything. But too many of them got elected to Congress, and they are moving the GOP further to the right. I never claimed that the Tea Party People have any particular authenticity or legitimacy.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, how many progressives got elected to Congress?
Chuck Butcher
Good to see you TZ
I won’t engage in the mind reading that is going on here, I do think the Democrats will give us a pretty good definition of themselves this month – then we’ll do with that what we will.
Given that the debt is legally engaged in debt and this is not a budget issue I find the whole thing … BS. Congress is supposed to engage in passing a budget.
Bruce S
“The PPACA is a flawed, corporatist system, but unlike Medicare it establishes universal healthcare as a standard”
Medicare is a single payer system for seniors – in effect, “universal” for anyone over 65. It’s a more cost-effective – by far – system than the private markets.
Nobody knows yet how well ACA will work. We know how well Medicare works. It’s a money saver, compared to private insurers. Established fact (although it’s not as cost-effective as the socialized VA system – which is the cheapest, while top-rated in its overall excellence, health care delivery system we’ve got.)
Raising the Medicare eligibility age is a terrible idea from any angle – would increase aggregate costs in the same way Ryan’s plan did (at least for that 65-67 window) according to the CBO figures. And throw a lot of people who are desperate for good coverage under the bus.
Trying to paint this as a good idea doesn’t work. Sorry. There’s no more evidence that this is a good idea – or would save money in health care costs – than Ryan’s scheme to move all seniors into the private market. It’s nuts.
But foremost, the very notion of putting Medicare – whatever your plan for it might be – in the context of debt ceiling negotiations is, at best, a wild bargaining gambit. If the GOP had any sense, they’d take everything Obama has put on the table and we’d be fucked. Dangerous game…and it reinforces almost every stupid idea about deficits, Medicare, etc. that’s floating out there among the FOX News crowd. And apparently too many liberals who can’t do math and don’t know anything about the implications of policy.
j
I don’t see where he says the word “cuts” in regard to Medicare or SS at all. And to use the Firebagger “strengthening means cutting” line is disingenuous at best.
What I DID see was “…it is possible for us to bring in revenues in a way that does not impede our current recovery, but is fair and balanced.”
Ahem, is he hinting at eliminating the SS cap which is currently at around 108K, and having everyone with an income keep paying into the SS Trust Fund, irrespective of annual salary?
IF so, I can get aboard that ship in a New York minute. It would “save” SS for eternity.
Thymezone
@chopper #153: I don’t live in the woodwork. Those are termites. I am a figment of your troubled conscience.
Martin
Actually, they completely blew it with females for the last 30 years. The predictions are a fairly straightforward set of data extrapolations (on a quite large data set). Life expectancy for women age 65 was about 18.5 years in 1980. Today, it’s about 19 years. Life expectancy for men has crept up more along the lines of what SS predicted, from about 14.5 to about 16.5 years now, mainly based on occupational changes, but there is believed to be a plateau right around the 19-20 year mark that will be very difficult to push beyond. Basically, aside from cancer, we’ve worked out treatments or lifestyles to address most of the big stuff that gets you. The last big uptick for women was in the 70s when we really started to dial in how to deal with cardiovascular problems, but now that’s all baked in and it’s not getting vastly better (cheaper, fewer complications, etc. sure, but now you either make it to the ER or you don’t, and faster ambulances likely isn’t going to happen.). Life expectancy for men is expected to continue to climb to eventually match women, and then flatten out for everyone. There’s absolutely no data in the SS dataset to suggest that female life expectancy will go up notably at this point. They’ve planned for it to go up in the future, but then they’ve been overpredicting that for 30 years now.
Cain
@Thymezone:
Hey TZ, glad to see you around again :)
General Stuck
Reports? Look, the media and entire political diet we have been fed the past few weeks on the wingnut contrived “debt ceiling” issue, has prompted all sorts of “reports” of this or that. And Obama has hardly been quiet on his take of things with several news pressers and the like, and not once have I heard him utter a single word that would cut benefits in any way for any entitlement program or social one, including raising the retirement age, and this goes back to his SOTU speech. And I agree, and suspect Obama agrees with common sense that this would be changing bennies some, if he was proposing it, which he isn’t.
SS is solvent for at leasxt the next 25 years, and you can rest assured that SS will not be touched until the last possible second then, and with all the pol critters left and right holding hands to make it bipartisan.
Medicare is the problem in the near term, and is much more volatile being tied to overall rising health care costs. But you will not see, at least the dem party changing the basic fee for service structure that is so beloved by recipients. The only way that will happen is if wingnuts control everything with a filibuster proof senate. And probly not even then, unless they could get some dems to jump off that cliff with them. These programs are so tightly wound into the fabric of American life now, that you would as soon abolish the military as SS or medicare. I just wish people could grasp that.
chopper
@Thymezone:
i do think figs are tasty.
seriously tho, it’s good to hear from you. i thought all those years of slinging Old Grand-dad had taken the ultimate toll.
Rome Again
brantl@144
I’ll be sure to yell into the dining room so he can come and give you kudos himself. He’ll be very grateful, I’m sure.
FlipYrWhig
Incidentally, who _doesn’t_ want to cut health spending? If the government has ways to cut health spending _while protecting the health of end users_ of the health care system, it should do so. No? Is that a controversial proposition?
Can it be done? I dunno, I’m no expert. Should it be tried? Yes, please, and faster.
Binky the perspicacious bear
Does this make Balloon Juice a “firebagger” blog?
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@Brachiator/132:
From our Man in Havana, Nate Silver:
It never fails to baffle me why Progressives think they have the weight of votes in the Party. Activism, sure, but not rank-and-file voting. Decades of “card-carrying ACLU” bollicks fixed that.
PreservedKillick
Yup, think so.
And I bet it’s a clean vote which funds the government past the 2012 election. The republicans do *not* want this again, given their crop of candidates. Imagine, this happening during a presidential election and the republican saying “Absolutely not I would default.” Way to go.
FlipYrWhig
And it might in fact _be_ “bad politics” to do anything that can be tagged as “Medicare cuts.” But by that standard, it was bad politics to push HCR, and it was bad politics to push cap and trade, and bad politics to attempt to do something about immigration, because they will all gore someone’s ox. And yet it might be good policy to commit bad politics; and, contrariwise, it was probably “good politics” to waste a summer talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
I’m totally fine with railing against the _optics_ of taking on the structure of Medicare. But if we get moving in that direction, we’re going to start to rule out all kinds of things it would probably be nice to actually do, for fear of the backlash among people who don’t follow politics all that closely.
Rome Again
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill @172
I wish this blog had Like buttons, I’d uprate that. :)
Thymezone
Preparation H? I am the soul of Witch Hazel, and I take it quite seriously. I mean, topically. So to speak.
@chopper: You are right about Obama panicking. Have you seen the pics of him in the last couple weeks, especially around the Republicans in the debt talks? He is absolutely the most relaxed person in the room. Boehner looks like he is having a colonoscopy done by a Roto Rooter operator, and McConnell, looks like … well, like McConnell, the guy who sells the caskets down at the Bluegrass Funeral Home. Obama knows that he is the only guy in the game who can call the contest at any time with his special 14th Amendment Whistle. The congress can’t get standing to take him to court over it, there is nothing they can do to stop him from ordering the Treasurer to just keep paying the bills. There is nothing to panic over.
Elie
Thymezone, I am wetting my pants and thoroughly enjoying your commentary and observations. Where have you been?!! Don’t remember seeing your handle before, but then I have periodic enforced absences from BJ to go get my electroshock therapy.
You ROCK!!!!
Rome Again
PreservedKillick@173:
Michele Bachmann already did.
FlipYrWhig
@ Woodrow:
I’m not even sure about activism. A lot of loyal, committed Democrats, who staff the polls and knock on doors, aren’t liberals. My local Democratic party organization had as a top priority after the next election a resolution against Pelosi’s continued leadership. The Democratic party and the country would both be better off if there were more progressives… which is why we need to find ways to make more. But at the present moment, no, they don’t have the weight of votes, at least not across the board.
Thymezone
Martin, life expectancy for women has gone up thanks to Oil of Olay, everyone knows that.
Thymezone
@Elie #177: No, actually I am the most despised commenter in BJ history. I’m the a*8hole they love to hate. OJ Simpson has more friends in the LAPD than I do around here. I mean it.
However, what I lack in talent I make up for with deficiencies in enthusiasm.
Brachiator
Martin:
I grabbed a random chart from the Social Security Administration site on life expectancy.
In 1970, a man age 65 would be expected to live an additional 13.8 years; a woman age 65 would be expected to live an additional 18.6 years.
By 1990, the additional expected years for a man was 15.3 years, and for a woman, an additional 19.6 years. A modest increase.
But lets look at the total number of people age 65 or older:
1970 20.9 million
1990 31.9 million
2000 34.9 million
So, while for men there has been a 10.9% increase in life expectancy between 1970 and 1990 (and a more modest 5.38% increase in life expectancy for women), there has been a whopping 52.63% increase in the total number of persons age 65 and older during this time period.
A lot more people living relatively longer.
By the way, I don’t think that there is a big a crisis in either Social Security or Medicare as some want to claim, but it is not just about raw life expectancy.
NamelessGenXer
@Thymezone
Clinique’s the good stuff. Think it might be underminded (undermound?) by all that blow I did in the 80s, though.
Cain
@gogol’s wife:
Yeah, he was missed.. we had other very strong personalities here also back 3-4 years ago. We’d fight wtih one another until and outside threat would come into the comment and then the entire blog would go into attack mode. hah. Good times.
Rome Again
TZ@181
You will always have a #1 fan, so long as you’ve eaten within the last three hours. :P
Thymezone
@Rome Again #185: You have made me blush. And tingly.
JWL
Obama has stated on numerous occasions that his beau ideal of a president is Ronald Reagan. Very few people gave that much thought in 2008, even those who had him pegged as a very conservative guy.
Let’s face it. The democratic party has been lurching rightward for decades. Obama’s decision making, and his willingness to knock the props out from beneath social constructs, is in keeping with that drift. The rank and file may not like it, but those who now claim to have been caught flat-footed by the recent White House proposals simply haven’t been paying attention.
signifyingmnky
It’s incredibly ironic that when President Obama makes a statement recommending popular progressive policy, like say the suggestion to create an infrastructure bank, unless it’s chock full of details, folks write it off as “just words” or a “nice speech”.
But let him suggest we take a look at some key programs in the same manner, short of any actual details, and people act as if he’s just killed SS by executive order.
This is ridiculous.
We cut fat (in Medicare Advantage subsidies/overpayments) from Medicare in the ACA. That wasn’t a bad thing. I haven’t seen anything that convinces me that President Obama would take any different approach to Social Security.
You want to know what he means by “strengthening”. Look at Medicare Advantage. He’s already demonstrated exactly what he’s talking about.
And that’s exactly why Republicans, who just voted to eliminated Medicare just 4-5 months ago won’t agree to discuss either Medicare or Social Security in these negotiations. They know that’s the game President Obama’s playing here:
Republicans come to negotiations with plans to privatize Social Security and Medicare.
President Obama shoots down privatizing anything, and puts forward targeted cuts areas where we’re overspending that provides no benefit to actual beneficiaries.
Republicans refuse to cut in those areas, and walk out of the talks.
President Obama brings up in a press conference the Republicans’ willingness to kill SS and Medicare wholesale but buck at the idea of actual spending cuts that save us money yet leave the safety net intact for beneficiaries. Or worse, he adds it to his stump speech material.
The end result is Republicans are exposed as complete liars on their desire to reign in spending.
It’s the exact same strategy he deployed on the ACA when he publicized final talks between Democrats and Republicans at the White House. Republicans were completely exposed as corporate owned obstructionists. On television.
The only reason they weren’t beat over the head with that in 2010 is because the far left, in chorus with the right, made it impossible for Democrats to run on the accomplishment of passing Health Care reform.
I guess everyone wants change until you actually try to change something.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He hasn’t, actually. He has said that Reagan was enormously effective at persuading people to view things his way. I think the old fool was an old fool, but American politics in the post-Reagan “the era of big government is over/get government out of my Medicare” years make Obama’s observation pretty hard to argue with.
Lawnguylander
@JWL
No he hasn’t. You’re a liar.
Observer
@General Stuck:
Unless you’re a psychic, nobody knows what’s in someone else’s heart.
Now I remember, albeit less vividly than I should, some BJ thread a few years ago where I made the case that Obama was a blue dog. I also remember during the healthcare debate when I and many other commentators expressed a desire for Obama to get more directly involved in the negotiations amd shove the single payer/public option up the Republicans ass and you folks accused them and me of going all emo and that “we need 60 votes”, the POTUS isn’t a dictator and he has no power blah, blah, blah.
Those explanations went out the window when Obama directly negotiated the Deal and told the Senate and House Dems to STFU and pass it. Which is what we said he should do during the healthcare debate.
If you roll this tape back and look at the two theories of Obama, there’s one that has basically predicted everything (he’s a wall street loving blue dog and he’s just faking you lib dems out) and there’s one that has been slowly debunked over time (he’s a liberal but the Repubs are holding him back against his true wishes).
But over time the scope of your explanations for Obama is getting narrower and narrower as events unfold like a slow striptease.
It turns out the POTUS is powerful after all, he can negotiate deals and he does have power and the bully pulpit. it’s just he’s using them to cut taxes for the rich and negotiate spending cuts rather than for single payer and raising taxes on the rich.
Now your side’s theorists are reduced to “yes I know he just offered up SS and Medicare but it’s just negotiating tactics and it’s not a benefit cut”.
As some point – and it doesn’t have to be right now at this moment – you probably won’t have that argument too as an explanation.
Everything he has done so far is straight out of the “if a Blue Dog were POTUS, what would he do?” playbook.
I’d rather be proved way, way wrong about this than be right but unfortunately that’s not the way the trend lines are moving.
Thymezone
@JWL: I have been away for a while, but … DougJ, is that you doing your 2005 Patented Spooftroll again? Either that or somebody is channeling you.
PreservedKillick
So, now it’s a clean vote they want. But they are going to say it’s all Obama’s fault. Most excellent.
Yeah, OK. My kids make the same argument all the time. “Mom, he BREATHED ON ME.”
I wonder where they think this is going to play well?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/07/mcconnell_opens_the_escape_hatch.php
General Stuck
Teehee, Obama tightens the thumb screws a little more on the wingnuts. This is called bully pulpitting by Zen.
Defaulting on the debt, would in practical effect, be congress abdicating their power of the purse to the executive branch, who could then use it as a club to play about any type politics he wants by choosing what gets paid for, and what doesn’t, and being able to blame it all on the wingers/
I doubt he would make seniors and the disabled take the medicine first, but the wingnuts don’t know that. A little presidential mind fucking with the dumbasses that got trapped by their own bullshyt.
Wag
signifyingmnky @189
Wow. I am very impressed. you just encapulated the entire Obama stratagy in a concise and readable way that throws clarity over the past few weeks. thank yo!
John-can we have a new front pager?? I nominate signifyingmnky.
General Stuck
I’m fairly certain there is magic in a young girls heart, the rest of it would just be a wild guess on my part.
Tonal Crow
This is what you get when you begin the bargaining by pre-conceding half the field.
We need WPA-2 to get people working, not this contractionary mania to “reduce” a deficit that, BTW, Republicans “care” about only when a Democrat occupies the White House.
Oh, but it’s shrill and unrealistic to begin the bargaining so far left.
geg6
So, you’re asking him to lose all those IQ points he gained when he switched parties?
If there any two more venal and stupid people in the so-called “progressive” (actually, one sucks Grover’s dick and the other is a pedantic libertarian–I know, same thing) blogosphere, I haven’t heard of them.
j
He used the term “transformative” in an interview once:
(bold in original)
[[There are more links w/in the posted link to times Obama mentioned Reagan’s “transformative” prowess, and in none of them is he saying how much he lurves the Gipper. Quite the opposite, really.]].
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/01/obama_reagan_changed_direction_of_country_in_way_bill_clinton_didnt.php
…and Obama did mention that Reagan changed the “arc” of politics during his term, but Reagan did. So what? He changed the country for the worse, but he still did change it.
phil
@189
When you can’t even explain your accomplishments, it’s kind of hard to run on them.
chopper
@TZ:
sadly, the 14th amendment aint gonna fly, at least according to the treasury’s own council. it’s a great argument towards congressional intent, but it doesn’t appear to have any real binding legal standing.
that being said, obama’s still the only calm dude in the room.
tBone
@Cain:
I feel like this blog has kind of come full circle. There’s a fair chunk of so-called “progressives” posting here these days that are just as hysterical, reactionary and untethered from reality as the drooling righties that infested this place when I first started hanging around. But fighting with them isn’t nearly as much fun.
chopper
@Stuck:
dunno about that.
JWL
Thymezone:
Nope, no one here by the name of Doug. It’s just me, JWL.
I don’t think I want to know what ‘spooftroll’ refers to, either. I might be insulted.
FlipYrWhig
Agreed. How are you going to get it? Ah, there’s the rub.
Rome Again
@tBone: Where’s Darrell when you need him?
Another Bob
@General Stuck
But a preponderance of evidence from multiple sources is saying pretty much the same thing:
All of the indications from Democratic (and Republican) Party insiders on this seems to largely agree on the details. I don’t see how you can keep absolutely denying these reports, especially without equally compelling insider accounts that say otherwise. And by the way, Obama’s own artfully crafted weasel words are only adding to the credence of these reports.
Tonal Crow
@Flip 205: In politics, you cannot get what you do not demand.
PIGL
Hi, Steve@7.
Disingenuous concern trolls say “disingenuous” when the appropriate term is “corrupt lying bastard”, or “lying sack of shit”, neither of which we can say on TV. So we use “concern troll” instead. “Disingenuous” is a euphemism which has no longer any legitimate use in political discourse because its function is to disguise the practice of deceit under a polite veil of further deceit.
It is not a question of “intelligence.” It is a question of which side you are on, as opposed to which side you are pretending to be on.
Toodles,
PIGL
j
@199 geg6
YAAAAAAYYYY!!!
I was waiting to see if there would be a mass exodus from Jane Norquist’s Hill-bot site, and today it was announced that Marcy Wheeler and others are bolting for “other opportunities”.. I wonder how long TBogg will continue to be associated with that GOP front group?
That place is like Agent Flobie’s screech dump, only with better graphics.
FlipYrWhig
@ Tonal Crow : But if you demand and do not get, your next demand may meet with a similar fate.
Heliopause
Whatever else you think of him, nobody convenes meetings, panels, and study groups like Barack Obama. So it’s not terribly surprising that he’d like for us all to spend another couple of our golden years immersed in dense stacks of private insurers’ deductibles, co-pays, and exclusions. To him that stuff must be like Harry Potter.
I’m starting to hope that Ryancare happens. At least with a voucher there’s bound to be a thriving black market somewhere, so I can trade it for beer and cigarettes. That way I simultaneously help the government’s balance sheet with my premature demise and spare myself several years of pointless existence in somebody else’s idea of bureaucratic utopia.
Tonal Crow
@Flip 211: That’s just incorrect. It’s rare for anyone to get everything she wants in any negotiation, political or otherwise. While pre-compromising may help good-faith parties meet in the middle, Republicans are not a good-faith party. They will take all they can get, demand more, then say that they made all the concessions. You can only lose by pre-conceding to such a party unless you’re willing to yank the entire proposal after they move the goalposts enough times.
General Stuck
I followed the links and couldn’t find a single named source, and Huffpo isn’t exactly my go to on what is real or made up. I like Ezra, but he can be totally full of shit when he swims around in the Village cesspool too long with the other sewer trout.
Obama didn’t say, and I couldn’t find a single named source that said he did. Don’t waste my time with this bullshit. And besides, I don’t really have a big problem increasing the retirement age if done in the future under an otherwise sound SS into the lengthened future. But I doubt Obama would agree to something he has been telling us precisely that he would not do right now. No weasel words, not to me and what I heard.
I am sorry, but the GOP has all but surrendered now with Mcconnell pretty much calling the whole thing off. Obama won, big time. If that gives you a sad, all the better.
TK-421
This made me laugh. Um, you can’t really tout the benefits of something that has not come to pass. I’m sure ACA will be a net good thing eventually, the problem is that the major aspects of it still have not taken effect. If people can’t see/hear/feel the benefits of something, then those benefits will not be easily or readily understood, or even supported.
tBone
@RomeAgain:
I like to think he found a nice Boy Scout Troop Leader to shack up with and spends his days plagiarizing speeches from wingnut Senators.
@JWL:
I’d consider being compared to DougJ in his spoofing prime to be high praise, myself.
Bill Murray
No you don’t. The solution to any problems in medicare and SS do not have to lie within the programs because the main problems themselves lie outside the programs — Medicare’s problems are the increasing cost of medical treatment and the high unemployment rate, both of which can be dealt with without cutting Medicare benefits. Social Securities problem is basically unemployment. Of course it is easier to get a bunch of rich people to agree to make other people poorer than their friends.
Tonal Crow
@TK-421:
True that. Which is reason #8745987345 why you need good rhetoric. I’m reminded of this every time I see one of those “supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” signs along the road. Not 1% of the population knows what the hell the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” is. But many (most?) have at least some idea of what “The Stimulus Act” is.
Once again, the question is, is our Democrats learning yet?
Another Bob
@General Stuck
Hey, I’m always happy to see Republicans lose. What this development appears to mean is that now Obama and the Dems can get exactly what they want. It will be very telling what they come up with now. I still wouldn’t be surprised to see Obama continue to push the “deficit reduction” line — since he seems to have been the main driving force behind it all along — but it’ll be very interesting to see how the rest of the Dems react to that.
NobodySpecial
I could care less about the practical effects of what happens to the legislation; those details will be forgotten by the general public five minutes after the bill is passed.
What I care about is that it’s really really bad politics.
When you’re the outsider in an election, it’s to your advantage to paint the system as not working. That’s why Republicans always always ALWAYS paint themselves as fighting against ‘big government’ and describing ‘big government’ as full of waste, fraud, and lost dollars.
It does not help Obama as an incumbent to talk like his opponents are correct. Now they will hammer him for the next year about Medicare and Social Security and he will have no effective way to counter. MAY be good policy in the end (and that presupposes that Reps don’t just take what they can get and hope to weather the Tea Party bugout), but stupid politics.
General Stuck
Yes he will push the deficit, as long as it is a concern for swing voters. My wish is that his supposed supporters know that he does so not as capitulation to the right, but as a competition for the voters who will likely decide the next election, The True Indie Swing Voter.
The deficit will remain an important issue to those people so long as the overall economy is in poor shape, or not enough jobs. I also wish for his supporters to watch what he actually does, rather than hanging on every word spoken by him to deign his “true intent”. He is a politician, and by nature partly full of shit, which our system demands for consumption by apathetic voters, or a lot of them.
I have no concerns of what is in Obama’s heart as far as what or who he cares for most, that being the poor and middle class. He is a president in a divided government system we have, and just spouting pretty words for the true believers on his side will not move many dreams to fruition of law. Look what it’s gotten the wingnuts on this debt issue. They look like fools and liars, and just really fucking stupid. And that isn’t even considering the mountain of his race he wakes up to every day and has to scale again, of presidenting in a racist country with a racist past
The Overton Window cannot be moved from a soap box. IMO
NR
Oh really? From Roll Call:
First, a $700 billion increase offset by cuts. Then, two $900 billion increases offset by cuts. That’s $2.5 trillion in cuts in one year. The Republicans can vote yes and accept the cuts if they want to, or, if it would be politically advantageous, they can vote no with no consequences.
McConnell isn’t surrendering, he’s proposing that Obama and the Democrats give him everything he wants, all cuts and no revenue, and take all the responsibility for it.
Thymezone
@tbone #216: Hot Darrell-on-Scout-Leader action? Man, what I wouldn’t pay not to have to ever see that. I’d rather watch a snake swallow a chihuahua and then wash it down with a venom mojito.
General Stuck
My wish for you NR, is that you someday read your own links and use your brain for some useful purpose. What Mcconnell is proposing is that legislative business on spending and budgets be returned to the regular order of governance, and not playing with the fire of the debt ceiling. Or, Congress can pass laws, and the president can veto them, and Congress can over ride that veto with a 2/3 majority. or, BAU.
edit – and yes, it is a surrender with a fig leaf for the wingnut to maybe save some face, after Obama et it off.
NR
No, he’s not. He’s saying that if Obama wants the debt ceiling raised, he has to propose spending cuts to offset the amount of the increase. Cuts that the Republicans can then either accept, or refuse and beat him over the head with in the election next year, as they choose.
Brachiator
@Observer:
Where was this magic prediction? We need a way to verify your claim.
I recall a lot of hazy whining about Obama because he didn’t line Wall Street execs up against a wall and didn’t install a “true progressive” as Treasury Secretary, but no detailed predictions about how he would govern. And since he always offered himself as a moderate, the “liberal held back by Repubs” won’t fly either.
The odd fantasy that Obama is a stealth Blue Dog won’t fly either.
FlipYrWhig
@ Bill Murray:
You’re mostly saying the same thing that cleek is, IMHO. There are things that can be “cut” in Medicare (for example, how reimbursements to providers are handled) without cutting _benefits_. We should be rallying against _benefit cuts_, not “Medicare cuts” of an unspecified nature. To their credit, at least from what I have seen, that’s a distiction the House Democrats have been careful to make in their public statements. Obama is at times less careful than that, but I think it’s probably because he wants to be able to get credit for bucking his party’s conventional wisdom (which he talks about a lot, irking a lot of the blogosphere).
IOW, Obama likes to hold open the possibility that he’s willing to cut even benefits, because that earns brownie points with deficit hawks and big media; but the real issue is cutting things other than benefits. It’s a dangerous game because it can be misinterpreted, but I think it captures the way he talks about the interlocking aspects of long-term budget deficits and the sustainability of social programs.
tBone
@Thymezone:
All I know is, if Darrell isn’t using Venom Mojito as his gay Scout Leader porn name, he should.
General Stuck
It does look like all that Mcconnell is wanting here is to keep this as part of their election strategy to be debated and voted on several more times before the election.
But it is, or has divorced the budgetary stuff from the the act of raising the debt ceiling through the election so long as Mitch gets his votes. Which is a major victory for Obama and the country.
And I’m not so sure Obama would not want the wingnuts clamoring to gut SS and medicare in the election runup, so long as the raising the debt ceiling is something he can do unilaterally . It is doubtful much wingnut law would make it out of the senate to where Obama would have to veto it. So it looks like Mcconnell trying to usurp Harry Reid’s control of the Senate floor forcing votes on spending cuts for pol theater before the election.
I can live with that, and have no problem with debating the fiscal and ideological diffs with the wingnuts in such a sustained way. It would make it easy for dems to campaign on the GOP wants to gut medicare, especially in the House, where that is a religion with the goopers. They won’t be able to resist it. I think Pelosi would love it, but Reid? not so much.
And who knows if such a scheme by Mconnell would even pass the senate of house. It is too complicated as opposed to a straight up clean bill, and the wingers will still be on the hook if Obama or Reid ditch it.
rickstersherpa
I think we should take the President at his word on this, and his actions since being President. I think his uncomfortableness and lack of belief in a Keynsian stimulus package was signled from the get go in his rather hands off atitude about it and the lack of defense given for it after it was passed. As I stated in another thread, the President is our Grover Cleveland for the 21st Century, a socially liberal, “Fiscally” conservative, bank friendly, Rubinite, Democrat, and has consistently been so in speeches and policy.
Observer
@Brachiator
I don’t think Obama is a “stealth” Blue Dog.
And, if you wish, you can drop the “liberal” from “held back by Republicans” if you want to get lawyerly. I believe you understood what I meant quite clearly.
Here’s a link but I’m sure it’s too recent for your tastes:
Maybe if I have time I’ll go back and find the original claim from a few years ago.
Cain
@tBone:
Right, and I think we actually discussed real things with facts or so I recall.. (easy to check) Things would get pretty heated but todays commentators spend more time swiping at themselves… and random trolls can derail a thread easily. Trolls who came in years back would get a united chastisement of epic proportion. It was what made BJ so much fun to read!
If anybody remember the kind of crap myiq2xu would get here.. entertainment like no other. :)
les
@JWL:
Citation needed. This may be the most ridiculous thread in BJ history, which is saying something. Fuck, Thymezone reappears out of the ether to be the fucking Adult in the Room, ffs. And welcome back, to add to the chorus.
les
@NR:
Jesus h. christ. He has to propose cuts, if congress overrides his veto of their expression of disapproval. Call me back when the repubs have 2/3 of both houses. Fucking reading–how does it work?
chopper
@les:
exactly. bert the turtle is throwing up his hands and saying ‘fuck it, let the president deal with the debt ceiling, we goopers are going to propose an assload of cuts on our own’. which would totes work for them if they had a veto-proof majority, which they don’t. NR and his ilk are always going to play into this ‘the republicans win!’ shit, but obama has won the staring contest here.
stinkdaddy
@ Les, 235 — No. At each point where the debt ceiling would go up under McConnell’s plan, the President must submit offsetting cuts. If the cuts play well for the GOP, they can vote Yes on the Resolution of (Dis)Approval or whatever they’re calling it. If not, they can vote No and make the President own both the cuts and the debt limit increase.
You really should practice a bit of what you preach.
General Stuck
Obama has complete control, of not only raising the debt limit at his command alone, and also submitting spending cuts of his choosing, that would likely be ones that would embarrass the wingers to vote against, like wingnut welfare and the like.
Things dems would love to put the GOP on record opposing. If this is some diabolical scheme to get Obama some other way, these fuckers are dumber than they seem.
stinkdaddy
Yeah it could play out either way. If I’m Obama and someone hands me this, I go “Sweet!” and cut the shit outta defense. But Obama isn’t me, and the deal is setup for 100% cuts and no revenue increases. It could also go very badly.
The politics of the deal were not what I was getting at there though, namely someone who didn’t understand the proposed deal shitting on someone who did for failing to share in the confusion.
Thymezone
@les #234: In my world being damned with faint praise is called “Praise,” and I thank you from the bottom of the granite cockles of my artifical heart.
But all seriousness aside, I think John was drunk when he started this thread. I have no opinion on all the other threads today :)
Thymezone
@stuck #238 — you are correct sir. Obama has totally outplayed the fractured and incoherent GOP on this deal. He has the chips, the cards, the ace in the hole, and he is about to get McConnell to go all in on a hand he already lost before the flop.
Thymezone
@rickstersherpa #238 — I am not sure about that. I think Obama is exactly what is needed in a completely dysfunctional Capitol town that is more interested in posturing than governing. He knows how to get the posers to pose, he takes their pictures, and puts the pictures on his wall and then fucks them in ass while they are admiring the photos of themselves. And then boy are they pissed. He is so good right now he can snooker his own party and watch them come back and love him for it later when they see that he used them as lawn gnomes in his garden party games, to fool the idiot Republicans. Two weeks ago everybody was going “Where is the President? Why doesn’t he lead? Blah blah blah.” Today, they are wondering how the hell he outplayed them on every card of every hand and ended up having to get a voucher because the house didn’t have enough chips for his pile.