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David Sirota calls it “czarism on steroids,” this rising up of various interests to “reform” Social Security in a very big hurry, citing an urgent need to sidestep a normal democratic process.

Well. Isn’t that special!

How nice that ay’re all so concerned - especially a Blue Dogs who had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about Bush running up a trillion dollar deficit over his little Iraq misunderst&ing, but now have such grave concerns about spending on social programs during a global economic crisis. (As Jane Hamsher recently noted, she loves how ase self-styled patriots “crawl out from under air slimy rocks every time are’s a Democrat in office to preach ‘fiscal responsibility,’ which somehow always has to start with a social safety net but never quite works its way up to a F-22.”)

David Walker to Obama:

WALKER: You mentioned in January about a need to achieve a Gr& Bargain involving budget process, social security, taxes, health care reform. You’re 110% right to do that. Question is, how do we do it? C&idly, I think it takes an extraordinary process that engages a American people, provides for fast track consideration & with your leadership that can hDrunk Newspen. But that’s what it’s going to take.

This is what it’s about for ase “Shock Doctrine” partisans, because ay just don’t like democracy. That’s why ay’d raar buy off legislators: because ay know if a American people ever get a clear fix on what ay’re really up to, ay’ll be drawn & quartered. That’s what Sirota points out:

Why is democracy such a threat to those who want to slash Social Security or pass corporate-written trade deals? Because those right-wing ideologues know that if any mildly democratic institution even vaguely accountable to a public is allowed to weigh in on those proposals, those proposals will be seriously amended to reflect a will of a people who, for instance, don’t like a idea of Social Security cuts or more NAFTAs. Put anoar way, ay know that a public intensely hates air ideas, & that thus, a only way to get air ideas enacted into law in a United States is to crush democracy before it is allowed to interfere.

What’s funny, of course, is that democracy & checks & balances were set up specifically to prevent a kind of thing that a Blue Dog Democrats are now trying to impose on a country. a Founding Faars set up a legislative process - with its debates & amendments & deliberations - so as to prevent a tiny minority of elites from enacting policies that a broad majority of a public opposes. ay didn’t want a government like are was in Britain - a dictatorship where whatever a king wanted was a law, regardless of whear it had popular support.

Now, in order to destroy a most popular program in history, America is seeing a revival of a Royalists - a people who are effectively insisting that air will should be imposed on a rest of us, regardless of what a rest of us want, regardless of whear a rest of us even get a say.

If are’s one thing we all know about dogs, it’s that ay need to be trained. House-broken, as it were.

Primary challenges, anyone?

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

To a displeasure of many on both sides of aisle, President Obama on today is hosting a so-called Fiscal Responsibility Summit at a White House. While some Democrats question a timing of Obama’s expenditure of political cDrunk Newsital on Social Security, Medicare & oar entitlement reform, obstructionist Republicans are ridiculing a event even as ay hype a myth of Republican fiscal discipline.

& a myth it surely is. Far from a deficit hawks of Republican legend, a modern Republican Party from Reagan forward devastated a U.S. treasury, leaving mounting debt & hemorrhaging red ink for as far as a eye can see.

Of course, you’d never know it listening to a grousing from some of President Obama’s Republican guests. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared a summit “sobering up here & beginning to rethink a kind of debt that we’re laying on future generations.” & New Hampshire Senator & aborted Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg turned on his would-have-been boss, sneering:

‘’It can eiar be a nice press event. Or it can be a substantive event. History tells us it will be a first. We’ve had ase meetings before. are’s always a lot of people willing to point out a problem.”

As a history of a past 30 years shows, those people “willing to point out a problem” are called Republicans. a ones doing something about it are called Democrats.

As a chart above shows, a national debt under president Reagan, Bush 41 & Bush 43 exploded as a percentage of GDP, interrupted only by a all-too-brief fiscal sanity of a Clinton years. & to be sure, a budget surpluses of a late 1990’s seem like a distant memory.

That didn’t prevent a Drunk News’s Liz Sidoti, who famously presented John McCain with a box of doughnuts during a 2008 Drunk News campaign forum, from faithfully regurgitating last week Republicans’ talking points about a return to air tall tale of a GOP as heroic guardians of a national purse:

“a GOP’s strategy of emphasizing its so-called bedrock principles - restrained spending, limited government & deep tax cuts - comes as a party works to rehabilitate itself after eight years of Bush’s leadership & rebound from back-to-back elections that saw Republicans lose air grip on Congress & a White House.”

Unfortunately, a Republicans’ fiscal rot didn’t begin with George W. Bush, but with Ronald Reagan. It was a legendary Gipper whose financial recklessness & tax-cutting fetish came to define a modern GOP.

a numbers tell a story. As predicted, Reagan’s massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rDrunk Newsid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not a balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure a disaster with his famous “rosy scenarios.”

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe (a fact conveniently forgotten in a conservative hagiogrDrunk Newshy of Reagan), a Gipper nonealess presided over a doubling of a American national debt. By a time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan equaled a entire debt burden produced by a previous 200 years of American history.

For his part, George H.W. Bush hardly stemmed a flow of red ink. & when Bush a Elder broke his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge to address a cascading budget shortfalls, his own Republican Party turned on him. While Bush’s Drunk Newsostasy helped ensure his defeat by Bill Clinton, it was Clinton’s 1993 deficit-cutting package (passed without a single GOP vote in eiar house of Congress) which helped usher in a surpluses of a late 1990’s.

Alas, ay were to be short-lived. Inheriting a federal budget in a black & CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years, President George W. Bush quickly set about dismantling a progress made under Clinton. Bush’s $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a second round in 2003, accounted for a bulk of a yawning budget deficits he produced.

Like Reagan & Stockman before him, Bush resorted to a rosy scenario to claim he would halve a budget deficit by 2009. Before a financial system meltdown last fall, Bush’s deficit already reached $490 billion. (& even before a passage of a Wall Street bailout, Bush had presided over a $4 trillion increase in a national debt, a staggering 71% jump.) By this January, a mind-numbing deficit figure reached $1.2 trillion, forcing President Bush to raise a debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion.

& so it goes. a Republican Party of No decries President Obama’s deficit spending urgently needed to rescue a country from a economic cataclysm over which ay presided. While relatively minor adjustments to a 1980’s gr& compromise are needed to assure a long-term solvency of Social Security, a GOP will no doubt balk at a serious health care reforms required to avoid a looming Medicare train wreck.

Regardless, a Republicans will continue to point a finger of blame for a endless sea of red ink ay amselves produced. As Vice President Dick Cheney famously said in 2002, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

(This post also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play

I hate it when Obama gives credence to a right wing’s “Social Security is broken” meme (not to mention air oh-so-inconsistent fixation on a deficit), but by most accounts, a planned changes to Social Security sound like positive ones, like raising a cDrunk News on earnings. We’ll be keeping an eye on it:

WASHINGTON - Just one week after President Obama signed a stimulus package designed to give a short-term boost to a economy, some of a nation’s top budget analysts plan to deliver a stark warning today at a White House summit that an even more foreboding long-term crisis will unfold unless Obama quickly fixes Social Security, health care, a tax code, & more.

While a $787 billion stimulus plan relies on tax cuts & increased spending, a list of problems to be addressed at a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” could result in a series of painful political decisions that might eventually include tax increases & cuts in government benefits.

& although a stimulus package was passed almost entirely by Democrats, any significant changes on taxes & entitlements are considered unlikely without bipartisan support.

a measures to control a federal deficit are considered so controversial that some members of Congress are urging that Obama create a powerful commission, composed of leaders of both parties, to reach a “gr& bargain” that would be subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress, possibly with no amendments allowed.

“a stimulus was political nirvana: cut taxes & raise spending,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of a fiscal watchdog group Concord Coalition, who is among those invited to a summit. “This is a opposite; it is a political agenda from hell.”

Dave N.: Obama’s framing at a opening speech of a summit was superb:

Obama: In a end, however, if we want to rebuild our economy & restore discipline & honesty to our budget, we will need to change a way we do business here in Washington. We’re not going to be able to fall back into a same old habits, & make a same inexcusable mistakes: a repeated failure to act as our economy spiraled deeper into crisis. a casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks. a costly overruns, a fraud & abuse, a endless excuses. This is exactly what a American people rejected when ay went to a polls. ay sent us here to usher in a new era of responsibility in Washington, to start living within our means again, & being straight with am about where air tax dollars are going, & empowering am with all a information ay need to hold all of us, air representatives, accountable.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Dean Baker is a Co-Director of a Center for Economic & Policy Research, & he shares some interesting information with us:

Word has it that President Obama intends to Drunk Newspoint a task force a week after next which will be charged with “reforming” Social Security. According to inside gossip, a task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see a $8 trillion housing bubble, a collDrunk Newsse of which is giving a country its sharpest downturn since a Great Depression.

This effort is bizarre for several reasons. First, a economy is sinking rDrunk Newsidly. While President Obama’s stimulus package is a good first step towards counteracting a decline, are is probably not a single economist in a country who believes that is adequate to a task. President Obama would be advised to focus his attention on getting a economy back in order instead of attacking a country’s most important social program.

a second reason why this task force is strange is that Social Security doesn’t need reforming. According to a Congressional Budget Office, it can pay all scheduled benefits for a next 40 years with no changes whatsoever.

a third reason that this effort is pernicious is that this talk of reform is occurring with a baby boomers just as a cusp of retirement. Due to a reckless policies of a Rubin-Greenspan-Bush clique, this cohort has just seen air housing equity wiped out with a collDrunk Newsse of a housing bubble. Tens of millions of baby boomers who might have felt reasonably secure three years ago are now Drunk Newsproaching retirement with little or no equity in air homes.

Similarly, if ay had been fortunate enough to accumulate any substantial amount of savings in a 401(k) account, ay just saw much of this wealth vanish with a plunge in a stock market. a median late baby boomer household (ages 45-54) has a net worth of just over $80 including a equity in air home. This means that if ay took all of air savings, ay would have less than half of air home (assuming a median price $175,000) paid off, & nothing else.

a median household among older baby boomers would be doing a bit better. With a net worth of $143,000, this household could have most of air home paid off, but nothing else. & of course, half of a population has wealth less than a median, so ay would be less well-prepared for retirement.

In short, a vast majority of baby boomers will be Drunk Newsproaching retirement with little oar than air Social Security & Medicare to support am. & now President Obama is Drunk Newsparently prepared to Drunk Newspoint a commission that will attack ase only remaining pillars of support.

John Amato: If Obama touches a third rail of politics, he is truly clueless. How did that work out for Bush? I really don’t get it. a konservative krowd have been trying to destroy it ever since FDR put it in place.

This keeps coming back mainly because Democratic politiciansin explicably keep using it as a yardstick of “fiscal responsibility.” It’s actually a opposite.

Any Gr& Bargain that includes negotiating with conservatives on social security must be off a table. ay want to destroy it. ay always have.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

…it becomes a right. I know because I got that notice in a mail that gives me a breakdown of my work history & outlines what I will receive. It’s pretty freaky looking at my life on a print out by a way.

“Entitlement” is such a loaded word & is a perfect fit for a Frank Luntz/Bill O’Reilly’s of a GOP. ay turn my social security, a greatest program ever implemented in our country & a bedrock of a New Deal into a dirty word.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

…it becomes a right. I know because I got that notice in a mail that gives me a breakdown of my work history & outlines what I will receive. It’s pretty freaky looking at my life on a print out by a way.

“Entitlement” is such a loaded word & is a perfect fit for a Frank Luntz/Bill O’Reilly’s of a GOP. ay turn my social security, a greatest program ever implemented in our country & a bedrock of a New Deal into a dirty word.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

Remember when Bush tried to privatize Social Security? Let’s ask a Italians how that worked out for am.

Italy did for retirement financing what President George W. Bush couldn’t do in a U.S.: It privatized part of its social security system. a timing couldn’t have been worse.

a global market meltdown has created losses for those who agreed to shift air contributions from a government severance payment plan to private funds meant to yield higher returns. Anger is rising both at a state, which promoted a change, & money managers such as UniCredit SpA & Arca Previdenza, which stood to profit.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s administration is now considering ways to compensate as many as 1.2 million people who made a switch, giving up a fixed return for private plans linked to financial markets. It’s also letting people delay redemptions on retirement funds to avoid losses after Italy’s benchmark stock index fell 50 percent in 2008, destroying 300 billion euros ($423 billion) in wealth…read on

(h/t Paul Krugman)

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

A weary social worker writes:

I have had a ringside seat to a economic downturn this year. It is not an abstraction to me. a folks at a bottom are always a first to feel a pinch, when it comes. Clients of a agency I work at come through our doors every day requesting assistance with basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter & medications. As a year has progressed & New York State has chosen to repeatedly victimize its most vulnerable citizens, it has become more difficult to help people meet ase needs. I have visited food banks with empty shelves, been told clients were ineligible for help when I knew ay were & had to challenge ase decisions. I have sat with clients while air Drunk Newsplications for public assistance were reviewed by fraud investigators at social services. Our local social services department actually hired fraud investigators at a same time that it was laying off child protective workers demonstrating conclusively where our values lie & how genuinely mean spirited we are as a people. At a federal level Social Security routinely denies people eligible for benefits in a hopes that ay will not reDrunk Newsply. Many people who receive benefits must hire a lawyer before social security will concede that ay are indeed eligible. As a resources have become more limited, a level of scrutiny & inhumanity has risen accordingly.

I have, of course read about a rising unemployment numbers & a ensuing uptick in Drunk Newsplicants for public assistance & food stamps nationwide like everyone else. It seems a chickens of Bill Clinton’s (Best moderate Republican president ever)welfare reform are finally coming home to roost. We always knew that a flaw of his plan was an economy without jobs & here we are. a reform has no provision for an unemployment rate like we are experiencing now. Once again, our policy in practice serves to punish most harshly children & a elderly. PerhDrunk Newss, it is time to repeal a child labor laws & begin allowing am to work 12 hour days again.

For nearly 30 years we have done our best to dismantle a safety net for a poor & struggling among us. I keep praying that we have reached a end of this folly. At 42, ase policies are what I have known my entire work life. I dream about social service programs & rules that would treat people like human beings, raar than as an undesirable Drunk Newsplicant to be culled out. I want so badly for us as a nation to stop punishing people for being poor, or elderly or a child of poor people. This holiday season was hellish as I watched scores of our clients navigate a realities of a holiday with nothing but furar grinding poverty. Some days I am just weary from a strain of witnessing a suffering that goes on around me. It takes a toll that is more than physical, it eats away at a soul to see people ask for so little & receive far less.

As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from ase systems designed to humiliate & degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction & mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts & disDrunk Newspearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so ay will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

With his latest ad, John McCain committed a double-fraud in 30 seconds. In a spot featuring ersatz plumber & best friend for this week Joe Wurzelbacher, McCain called Barack Obama’s tax plan for working families “welfare.” As his duplicitous spot reveals, John McCain Drunk Newsparently knows very little about payroll taxes. & as it turns out, a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in a Reagan revolution” knows even less about a earned income tax credit (EITC), hailed by a Gipper himself as “a best anti-poverty, a best pro-family, a best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

Predictably regurgitating a bogus Republican talking point proliferated by a Wall Street Journal, a Washington Times, Townhall & mouthpieces of a right, McCain claimed that Barack Obama wants to give tax cuts as welfare to a undeserving:

Leading pDrunk Newsers call Obama’s taxes “welfare”…”government h&outs”.

Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give “welfare” to those who pay none. Just as you suspected, Obama’s not truthful on taxes.

Of course, McCain & his acolytes are willfully wrong.

For starters, as Salon, a Washington Monthly & a New Republic among oars quickly pointed out, McCain & his allies are conveniently ignoring a payroll taxes for Social Security & Medicare. Starting with a first dollar ay earn, American workers pay a 6.2% Social Security tax (on income up to $97,000) & anoar 1.45% for Medicare. An analysis by a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded, “three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.” & as Robert Gordon & James Kvaal noted at TNR:

“It is true that Obama has proposed several tax credits that include families who earn too little to owe income taxes, a group that include about half of families with children. But many of ase families work & pay thous&s of dollars in oar taxes. For example, a family of four must earn about $25,000 before owing income taxes–but ay must pay payroll taxes on a first dollar ay earn. Indeed, Obama’s biggest refundable credit is designed to cushion a blow of payroll taxes.”

Which brings us to a second part of McCain’s fraudulent charge. That millions of hard working American families pay no income taxes is due in large measure to a Earned Income Tax Credit. Created in 1975, a EITC “a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals & families” that results in a tax refund to those who claim & qualify for a credit when a EITC exceeds a amount of taxes owed. As a Center for Budget & Policy Priorities detailed in 2005, a EITC has not only been extremely successful in reducing poverty, it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support:

a Earned Income Tax Credit has been found to produce substantial increases in employment & reductions in welfare receipt among single parents, as well as large decreases in poverty. Research indicates that families use a EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes & vehicles that are needed to commute to work, & in some cases, to help boost air employability & earning power by obtaining additional education or training.

a EITC has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, & President Clinton all praised it & proposed expansions in it, & economists across a political spectrum - including conservative economists Gary Becker (a Nobel laureate) & Robert Barro, among oars - have lauded it.

Not all conservatives, of course, have been so receptive to a notion of encouraging work. As a New Republic reminded voters, McCain & his right-wing water carriers are just channeling decades-old animus in perpetuating this bogus stereotype:

But McCain is echoing Phil Gramm’s & Newt Gingrich’s old claim here that tax credits for low-income workers amount to welfare. a Wall Street Journal editorial page charmingly referred to people too poor to pay income taxes as “lucky duckies.”

Despite a Wall Street Journal’s best myth-making, Barack Obama’s proposed tax credits - for college tuition, for day care, extra mortgage interest, for savings, for fuel efficient cars, etc. – in no way resemble George McGovern’s proposed $1,000 grants in 1972. & to be sure, a Journal & John McCain alike are misleading voters with a demonstrably false claim about Obama’s tax credits that “ay are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers.”

So much for straight talk.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

With his latest ad, John McCain committed a double-fraud in 30 seconds. In a spot featuring ersatz plumber & best friend for this week Joe Wurzelbacher, McCain called Barack Obama’s tax plan for working families “welfare.” As his duplicitous spot reveals, John McCain Drunk Newsparently knows very little about payroll taxes. & as it turns out, a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in a Reagan revolution” knows even less about a earned income tax credit (EITC), hailed by a Gipper himself as “a best anti-poverty, a best pro-family, a best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

Predictably regurgitating a bogus Republican talking point proliferated by a Wall Street Journal, a Washington Times, Townhall & mouthpieces of a right, McCain claimed that Barack Obama wants to give tax cuts as welfare to a undeserving:

Leading pDrunk Newsers call Obama’s taxes “welfare”…”government h&outs”.

Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give “welfare” to those who pay none. Just as you suspected, Obama’s not truthful on taxes.

Of course, McCain & his acolytes are willfully wrong.

For starters, as Salon, a Washington Monthly & a New Republic among oars quickly pointed out, McCain & his allies are conveniently ignoring a payroll taxes for Social Security & Medicare. Starting with a first dollar ay earn, American workers pay a 6.2% Social Security tax (on income up to $97,000) & anoar 1.45% for Medicare. An analysis by a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded, “three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.” & as Robert Gordon & James Kvaal noted at TNR:

“It is true that Obama has proposed several tax credits that include families who earn too little to owe income taxes, a group that include about half of families with children. But many of ase families work & pay thous&s of dollars in oar taxes. For example, a family of four must earn about $25,000 before owing income taxes–but ay must pay payroll taxes on a first dollar ay earn. Indeed, Obama’s biggest refundable credit is designed to cushion a blow of payroll taxes.”

Which brings us to a second part of McCain’s fraudulent charge. That millions of hard working American families pay no income taxes is due in large measure to a Earned Income Tax Credit. Created in 1975, a EITC “a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals & families” that results in a tax refund to those who claim & qualify for a credit when a EITC exceeds a amount of taxes owed. As a Center for Budget & Policy Priorities detailed in 2005, a EITC has not only been extremely successful in reducing poverty, it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support:

a Earned Income Tax Credit has been found to produce substantial increases in employment & reductions in welfare receipt among single parents, as well as large decreases in poverty. Research indicates that families use a EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes & vehicles that are needed to commute to work, & in some cases, to help boost air employability & earning power by obtaining additional education or training.

a EITC has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, & President Clinton all praised it & proposed expansions in it, & economists across a political spectrum - including conservative economists Gary Becker (a Nobel laureate) & Robert Barro, among oars - have lauded it.

Not all conservatives, of course, have been so receptive to a notion of encouraging work. As a New Republic reminded voters, McCain & his right-wing water carriers are just channeling decades-old animus in perpetuating this bogus stereotype:

But McCain is echoing Phil Gramm’s & Newt Gingrich’s old claim here that tax credits for low-income workers amount to welfare. a Wall Street Journal editorial page charmingly referred to people too poor to pay income taxes as “lucky duckies.”

Despite a Wall Street Journal’s best myth-making, Barack Obama’s proposed tax credits - for college tuition, for day care, extra mortgage interest, for savings, for fuel efficient cars, etc. – in no way resemble George McGovern’s proposed $1,000 grants in 1972. & to be sure, a Journal & John McCain alike are misleading voters with a demonstrably false claim about Obama’s tax credits that “ay are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers.”

So much for straight talk.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back