Obama can't wriggle out of this one. (4.00 / 4)

He set up the commission by executive order; if he wanted to, he could modify that executive order right now, today, to take SS off the table.

---

by: Steve LaBonne @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 15:03:16 PM UTC

Contradiction 3 (4.00 / 5)

Bob Shrum:

There's plenty of evidence to justify reprising O'Neill's tack this fall: The Social Security-privatizing, Medicare-shredding "road map" of GOP Rep. Paul Ryan; the barely disguised complicity of the GOP congressional leadership; and, in a party where extreme has become mainstream, the blatant animus of candidates who see Social Security as "socialism"-and yearn to eviscerate it.

An Early Bird campaign should put the debate on Social Security's future before the voters.

So why not campaign all-out, in O'Neill's plainspoken way, against a GOP that is disloyal to the most successful-and most popular-social program in American history?  

Because Democrats have been disarmed by the president's deficit reduction commission, which plainly intends to propose Social Security cuts.  

And then:

What is needed-urgently-is a counterforce. If the politicians won't summon and lead it, the grass roots can and should. There is a coalition, Strengthen Social Security, composed of dozens of organizations from the AFL-CIO to the AARP. But there is no mass movement visible and vocal in congressional districts around the nation-and Norquist shouldn't be the only one with a pledge. It's late in the 2010 campaign, but an "Early Bird" movement of seniors, progressives, and working Americans should organize campaign events to demonstrate, demand answers, and hold candidates to account. They could pin Republicans as anti-Social Security. They could make Democrats do what they haven't yet done for themselves-run as champions of Social Security.

http://theweek.com/bullpen/col...

---

by: david mizner @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 15:06:37 PM UTC

Jane Hamsher was right about this ... (4.00 / 2)

who transplanted David Sirota into Bob Shrum?

---

by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 15:39:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well (4.00 / 1)

you need not be a raging populist to care about Social Security. And remember, Shrum, for all his Villageness and failure, is the man who drafted Kennedy's The Dream Shall Never Die's speech.  

---

by: david mizner @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 15:44:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Once again . . . (0.00 / 0)

What is needed-urgently-is a counterforce. If the politicians won't summon and lead it, the grass roots can and should. There is a coalition, Strengthen Social Security, composed of dozens of organizations from the AFL-CIO to the AARP. But there is no mass movement visible and vocal in congressional districts around the nation . . .

Who's big enough and prepared to take on the President, Wall Street, and the Democratic and Republican establishments all at the same time?

---

by: NC 11 CD @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 19:16:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

When you add up all the money (4.00 / 4)

War funding; Pharma without import or government purchase; Health Care with no public option; Financial reform that institutionalizes "too big to fail", and now cutting Social Security in order to keep Bush's millionaire tax cuts . . .

The Obama administration has presided over the largest transfer of wealth in the U.S. since WWII. Now that's saying something.  

---

by: Michael Harold @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 15:35:22 PM UTC

What social contract? (4.00 / 6)

Clearly the serious people have decided that our experiment with democracy is at an end, and needs to be interred quietly, with a minimum of histrionics from those who think they'll miss it.

They have a point, but not the one which interests them the most, which -- as always -- is their own political and economic advantage. If our fellow Democrats were the dedicated students of history that they pretend to be, they'd understand that politics in a democracy isn't a luxury, it's a necessity -- more like potatoes than a jewel in the crown of Harvard graduates with liberal pretensions.

People at the beginning of the American experiment understood very well, I think, that in order for a representative democracy to work at all, the first, and arguably the most important social contract had to be a political one. People who worked for a living could only be secure if, and for as long as, those who represented them could be trusted to act in the public interest, or, failing that, could be replaced frequently, before their talons could close on more than their share of the public patrimony.

Once institutions get to be a certain size, and there's more to steal, that doesn't work out so well, just as many of the early observers of our political system had predicted. Over time, bread and circuses have worked about as well for our patricians as they did for their Roman predecessors, but times change. We've now reached a point where even our betters can see that their profligacy has come at a price to their own futures as well as ours. Predictably, they've decided that bread and circuses are now too high a price to pay for a quiescent public, just as happened every now and again in Rome itself.

This, folks, is the moment of truth. If we want an equitable social contract, we're going to have to persuade our fellow Americans to get up off the couch and go about securing one after decades of imagining that there was no need for such exertions. Otherwise fuck the UAW is likely the last mantram we'll hear on our way to the cattle pens.

---

by: William Timberman @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 16:05:30 PM UTC

Going broke? (0.00 / 0)

The primary reason that the window has shortened on Social Security is that a lot fewer people are employed. The quickest and best way to fix both the deficit and Social Security is to get America working again.  

---

by: David Kowalski @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 16:13:02 PM UTC

Grandkids (4.00 / 2)

What amused me most in Digby's piece was Petersen's appeal to his grand kids having a decent retirement. With estate taxes, I think his great great great great grand kids will still do fine. It's the rest of us, the 99.5% of us who are not wealthy, that I worry about.

---

by: TSlavin @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 18:26:40 PM UTC

He Doesn't Want His Grandkids Paying Social Security Taxes (4.00 / 2)

Because it could deprive them of an extra yacht or two, should a highly-leveraged investment not pan out for lack of funds they lost to the greedy geezers.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 19:07:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

THIS should be the crux of the argument: (4.00 / 1)

"By law, Social Security cannot add to the debt.  It's separately funded.  So why is it even up for discussion?"

Keep it simple - that statement is and says much more than those few words probably intended.

Stupid - and I mean both the Republicans and the Obama Democrats.

---

by: Shainzona @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 18:34:57 PM UTC

public debt vs debt held by the public (4.00 / 2)

"By law, Social Security cannot add to the debt."

Well I know this is the message of the day and is being officially pushed by Roger Hickey and Dave Johnson of CAF among others but it relies on a confusion between the concepts of 'debt' 'deficit' and 'unfunded liability'

The Peterson folk like to push the 'unfunded liability' number for Social Security as if it were actual debt. It isn't, there is no legal obligation for Congress to fund the projected gap between future income and future cost, and while the Commissioner of Social Security has no authority to change benefits equally he has no authority to borrow from the public, nor does the Managing Trustee even though by law he wears a second hat as Treasury Secretary. So by law Social Security cannot add to 'Debt Held by the Public'.

But some genius unknown decided that we needed a separate measure of debt under the title 'Public Debt' that would include 'Debt Held by the Public' as its biggest, but not only component. Which decision launched a thousand conceptual misunderstandings. The Special Treasuries in the Trust Fund are real honest to God assets backed by Full Faith and Credit of the U.S. Those who insist otherwise are asking the government to break that faith and perhaps wreck that credit. Well that is not going to happen, the plan is not to abrogate those Treasuries, just drag out their redemption to the 14th of Never.

That said the Special Treasuries are carried on the books of the Bureau of Public Debt as such and make up the largest proportion of Intragovernmental Holdings which with Debt Held by the Public make up what is officially known as 'Public Debt'.

No it is not intuitive that Social Security cash surpluses and interest on the Trust Fund are transformed into both Asset and Debt simultaneously. But it is a big government and the Fed and the Treasury and CBO and OMB and SSA score some of the same dollars in very different ways. And yes it gets confusing as hell.

---

by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 18:36:10 PM UTC

It gets worse (4.00 / 2)

While neither the Commissioner or the Managing Trustee can borrow from the public the former can ask the latter to put on his other hat and pay interest and principal as needed from the Trust Fund accounts and reducing their balances by that same amount. And in point of fact the Disability Insurance Trust Fund (the smaller of the two SS Trust Funds) has been taking some of its interest in cash since 2006 and starting last year drawing down its principal and this year is projected to cash in $23 billion worth of Special Treasuries. The ultimate source of those cash dollars could be from any number of places: income tax receipts, cash surpluses from the OAS Trust Fund or borrowing from the public. Now because of the way we calculate annual surplus/deficits it is convenient to imagine those dollars are first coming from OAS surpluses, that allows a convenient measure of overall cash flow between Treasury and the combined Trust Funds, but the obligation itself is legally separate, that the combined Trust Funds were cash flow positive in 2008 and will be cash flow negative in 2009 with a cross over point early last year makes no real world difference either in theory or practice, those Treasuries are legal obligations that will be funded on demand and logically in the same proportions between income and other taxes vs borrowing from the public as any other check issued by Treasury.

Now since the Special Treasuries score as Public Debt to start with, any redemption of them with borrowing from the public is a net wash with regular Treasuries being issued one for one as existing Specials are redeemed, so that part of the payback doesn't add to total Public Debt, rather just rearranges it. But the cash used to pay interest is a different story, its origins would seem to be at least in part in borrowing from the public, to say that it doesn't add to the debt because Social Security can't borrow kind of glides around the dollar flow involved.  

---

by: Bruce Webb @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 19:05:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Isn't it obvious? (4.00 / 1)

I tried to point this out on dKos, but it got lost in the comment noise:

Social Security owns $2.5T of Treasury debt, that's what the Trust Fund is.  Social Security only cashes those bonds when it can't pay out benefits from payroll tax receipts.  If Social Security benefits are cut and receipts are sufficient to pay them, those bonds never get cashed.

Poof, $2.5T in national debt becomes irrelevant, because the government has promised itself it will never ask itself to pay it.

---

by: APoxOnBoth @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 21:56:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

We need to change the conversation into (4.00 / 2)

how best to pay for a major expansion of Social Security. No more defense - we need to go on offense.  

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

---

by: David Kaib @ Sat Sep 04, 2010 at 23:23:05 PM UTC

url (4.00 / 1)

use this:

http://www.openleft.com/showQu...

this doesn't work once the QH drops off the main QH page:

http://www.openleft.com/viewQu...

to get the correct link copy the link in the last line of a QH while in the outer QH page, the line that says [view comments] in Comments: x [view comments]

:p

---

by: The Big Hurt @ Mon Sep 06, 2010 at 07:36:14 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

but yes we need to go on offense (0.00 / 0)

we want to DOUBLE SS, not wars in iraq and afghanistan, nor tax cuts to bp and donald trump

---

by: The Big Hurt @ Mon Sep 06, 2010 at 07:40:36 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Another useless tax cut (4.00 / 1)

At the same time that the deficit commission is swooping down on social security, Obama is proposing more business tax cuts.  Ian Welsh is going apoplectic.  We are no, repeat not, increasing taxes when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Bush planned that as a con job but it was effectively a long tax holiday.  Now gone.  

Looks like the cavalry came in the form of restored revenue and there is no frigging budget need to sell out social security.  Obama and friends may try to create this need but we don't have to fall into the trap.

BTW, it takes five votes to kill anything on the commission level.  If we have to picket and harass the social security sell outs who are Democrats we should.  Andy Stern is at the top of the list.  Erskine Bowles is later because he's hopel;ess.  

---

by: David Kowalski @ Sun Sep 05, 2010 at 15:42:15 PM UTC