Wall Street Journal reveals Social Security cuts being considered by "Deficit Commission"

[Better Believe It]

WSJ Leaks Cat Food Commission’s Social Security Deliberations
By: David Dayen
August 20, 2010

Despite distrusting Mike Allen’s version of events at all times, there’s no question that the Administration resurrected a deficit panel that the Senate killed, and the President staffed it with a number of people who would be open to Social Security benefit cuts. And that set of decisions is bearing fruit on the panel, according to the Wall Street Journal. This one deserves a close reading.

"A White House-created commission is considering proposals to raise the retirement age and take other steps to shore up the finances of Social Security, prompting key players to prepare for a major battle over the program’s future.

The panel is looking for a mix of ideas that could win support from both parties, including concessions from liberals who traditionally oppose benefit cuts and from Republicans who generally oppose higher taxes, according to one member of the commission and several people familiar with its deliberations.

In addition to raising the retirement age, which is now set to reach age 67 in 2027, specific cuts under consideration include lowering benefits for wealthier retires and trimming annual cost-of-living increases, perhaps only for wealthier retirees, people familiar with the talks said.

On the tax side, the leading idea is to increase the share of earned income that is subject to Social Security taxes, officials said. Under current law, income beyond $106,000 is exempt. Another idea is to increase the tax rate itself, said a Democrat on the commission."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476104575439792287255372.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_6

Four of these five ideas hit the middle class and the working poor directly. The retirement age increase is a benefit cut. Means-testing will, as has been said for years, turn the program from social insurance into welfare, subjecting it to more and more cuts as only the vulnerable will be impacted in future years (and I like the “perhaps only for wealthier retirees” regarding the COLA cuts; I’ll believe that when I see it). Increasing the payroll tax rate without increases to the cap would fall squarely on the middle class and below.

The only idea in there that makes any sense is to capture the amount of payroll originally envisioned by the plan. The incredible stratification between rich and poor has dropped the payroll tax well beyond the expected 90% level of income. You could lift it completely – or put a donut hole from $106,000-$250,000 and tax the upper incomes thereafter – and basically solve the entire problem.

But this is a panel requiring consensus, and given its makeup the consensus will fall under cuts. Republicans on the panel are playing it coy, with Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) saying he wouldn’t rule anything out at this stage because then “the thing blows up before it has a chance to work,” but saying expressly that he opposes tax increases. Like that’s not already known. If the commission releases recommendations at all, they’re going to be cuts only. Bank on it.

The story also painted the White House and, horrors, AARP as open to a deal. They back up Allen’s reading that an agreement on Social Security would “build confidence”; I’m not sure to whom.

Interestingly, nobody on the commission is talking about privatization, the soccer ball that Democrats have liked to kick around on the campaign trail. That’s simply not the threat right now.

Read the full article at:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/08/20/wsj-leaks-cat-food-commissions-social-security-deliberations/

[spanone]

1. never forget that the wall street urinal is owned by rupert murdoch of faux news fame

[FiveGoodMen]

2. SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you...

But as long as the Dems screw us, it's okay, right? (Many here seem to think so -- not directing that at the OP)

[DJ13]

3. We obviously must get more Dems into office

That way we get screwed faster.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. LOL!

:evilgrin:

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. Funny how that works, eh?

x(

[dkf]

6. Yet the concept of your deserving funds because you paid them gets all botvhed up

Once you take away that relationship how far away is means testing?

I don't think there is any way around the reality that SS is going to become a welfare vehicle. Irony is that saving more of your own funds makes it less likely you will get paid out on the amounts you put in social security.

[Moostache]

7. We need to be prepared for more and more of this lunacy.

The political process in this country has become completely broken. The mere fact that such leaks are starting to come out only reinforces this in my mind.

This is no "accidental leak"...its a clear trial balloon to see how much further the public needs to be "re-educated" before austerity measures can be implemented in full. The asshats who have bought out the government already are only doing research to see how much more pain needs to be inflicted on the populous before they collectively scream "uncle" and latch on to the next available strong man candidate who will promise to make the pain stop if only we undertake the necessary cuts in spending...yadda, yadda, yadda!

I have said it before and I echo it now, I do not countenance social spending cuts in any way shape or form until we have cut literally through the bones of our bloated Empire USA international military structure first. As long as we freely spend Chinese money (at INTEREST NO LESS) on needless "war" in Afghanistan and on military bases and private military company subcontractors in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, UK, etc., etc., etc. - there should be ZERO spending reductions on programs to help ACTUAL AMERICAN CITIZENS.

If we passively sit back and watch as the Obama administration cravenly hands over the last vestiges of the New Deal to the political donors and the hacks who have spent 75 years attacking it, then we deserve what we get in the end - millions of impoverished seniors dying in the homes of their children (if they are lucky) or dying on the streets of the nation.

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. +1

:thumbsup: Sit back and watch or not, these a$$hat$ will do what is in their best interests and not ours, including fleecing our SS retirement fund. Because they can.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Since its founding, the DLC has targeted New Deal and Great Society social programs

How the DLC Does It

Robert Dreyfuss | April 22, 2001

If From is the DLC's Marx, Will Marshall, the genial and articulate president of the Progressive Policy Institute, is its Engels. From the earliest days of the organization, he has been its co-anchor, with From increasingly handling politics and Marshall the DLC's policy agenda. At PPI Marshall oversees a staff of 15, producing an avalanche of proposals on education, health care, Medicare and Social Security, trade, environment, national security, and more. Marshall points to welfare reform as the turning point. "The end of welfare state paternalism was a momentous policy shift for the Democrats," he says. "This was the most radical change in government since the 1960s. It was a Rubicon, and we've crossed it." (See "Liberal Loss" by Will Marshall on page 12.)

Earlier in the story, Dreyfus says this about DLC's financial owners:

While the DLC will not formally disclose its sources of contributions and dues, the full array of its corporate supporters is contained in the program from its annual fall dinner last October, a gala salute to Lieberman that was held at the National Building Museum in Washington. Five tiers of donors are evident: the Board of Advisers, the Policy Roundtable, the Executive Council, the Board of Trustees, and an ad hoc group called the Event Committee--and companies are placed in each tier depending on the size of their check. For $5,000, 180 companies, lobbying firms, and individuals found themselves on the DLC's board of advisers, including British Petroleum, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coca-Cola, Dell, Eli Lilly, Federal Express, Glaxo Wellcome, Intel, Motorola, U.S. Tobacco, Union Carbide, and Xerox, along with trade associations ranging from the American Association of Health Plans to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. For $10,000, another 85 corporations signed on as the DLC's policy roundtable, including AOL, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Citigroup, Dow, GE, IBM, Oracle, UBS PacifiCare, PaineWebber, Pfizer, Pharmacia and Upjohn, and TRW.

And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC's executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

The DLC board of trustees is an elite body whose membership is reserved for major donors, and many of the trustees are financial wheeler-dealers who run investment companies and capital management firms--though senior executives from a handful of corporations, such as Koch, Aetna, and Coca-Cola, are included. Some donate enormous amounts of money, such as Bernard Schwartz, the chairman and CEO of Loral Space and Communications, who single-handedly finances the entire publication of Blueprint, the DLC's retooled monthly that replaced The New Democrat. "I sought them out, after talking to Michael Steinhardt," says Schwartz. "I like them because the DLC gives resonance to positions on issues that perhaps candidates cannot commit to."

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_the_dlc_does_it

[earth mom]

12. That info should be an OP! Thanks for posting it! nt

[ThomCat]

10. So Obama was being honest when he said that SS wouldn't be Privatized.

Because what he really plans to do is implement ways of keeping Social Security public but implement other ways to make sure we never get any of that Social Security money. Wonderful! :eyes:

We were all warned when created this commission. No good was going to come of this. From the very start they seemed to be looking at every idea EXCEPT making the rich pay into Social Security. :(

Why is it that the right idea, the fair idea is always the one idea D.C. won't ever consider?

And why is it that it's our own part implement ways of screwing poor people beyond even the wildest dreams of the republicans? From NAFTA, to Welfare Reform, to legal mandates to buy expensive insurance policies with co-pays and deductibles so high that the insurance can never actually be used, And now this coming down the pipeline, it's our own party that shoves this shit down our throats. :grr:

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. +1

:applause:

[earth mom]

13. Why won't the powers that be consider anything that's fair to the people?

Because the people are peons to be used only for their tax dollars and votes on election day! :grr:

[ThomCat]

14. So very true.

Our only chances to have a large enough voice to be heard in D.C. were Public Funding of elections, and Unions as major sources of funding for the democratic party.

Public funding, if we could have made it work, would have brought the politicians to us and weaned them off the corporate money addiction. But that has been blocked every step of the way.

Unions have gutted and blocked and fought until they are a shadow of what they once were. They still fight to represent workers and the poor, but they can hardly stand up to the buying power and voice of the corporate world. Especially when our own party has a policy of moving to the right and whoring for corporations, and screwing unions over and over and over again.

Our party believes that union will stick with the Democratic party no matter how bad they have been betrayed because, "Hey, where else are they they gonna go, to the republicans?" Just like they say the same thing to betrayed LGBT folks, and women voters who want equal rights and defense of choice, and financial reformers who want real reform, and main-street reformers who expected real financial reforms, etc.

So our two hopes for having a voice are week. And our own party isn't fighting to strengthen our voice. They don't want "we the people" to speak very loudly. I think the corporate wing of the democratic party is pretty happy with the corporate pay-masters. :(

[damntexdem]

15. Congress must reject any and all cuts to SS recommended by this 'Deficient Commission.'

If Dems go along with such cuts, then screw the Democratic Party.

[Better Believe It]

16. They will try and present the cuts as not really being cuts,they're just enhancements!

[bvar22]

17. Are you going to "let The Perfect be the enemy of The Good?"

Are you going to "Help the Obstructionist Republicans"?
Are you going to "join Grover Norquist"?
Are you going to be a "Traitor to the Democratic Party"?

Are you going to be FOR putting this crushing deficit on our children?
Are you going to block progress?
Are you going to block passage of the whole "Comprehensive Package" over a "tiny sliver"?
The cuts to Social Security will be the most "historic reform" in 50 years, and you would try to stop them?



Just wait.
The spin, marketing, and Message Framing/Control is just getting started.
The blitzkrieg won't start until November.

DU will look like New Orleans after Katrina.

[dflprincess]

18. Pelosi has already promised an up or down vote on the commission's recommendations

during the lame duck sesssion. No debate will be allowed lest the serfs hear about it before the damage is done.

It is no accident that the recommendations aren't due until after the election.

But don't worry, they'll fix it later. :sarcasm: