Congressman Alan Grayson has the petition against cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“We Are Against Any and Every Cut to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever. No way, no how. Not on your life, and certainly not on mine. N-E-V-E-R. Sincerely, The American People”

I might add, “Read my lips.”^*

Here is a video uploaded on Jul 12, 2011 before Grayson was reelected to Congress.

Uploaded on Jul 12, 2011

* We need to find solutions to the cost of medical care that is rising faster than the size of the economy. Depriving people of medical care is not a good solution. Let us get our focus on the correct problem. The affordable care act is the first step. If that is not enough (and nobody ever said it was enough), then we need to keep working at the problem. “Sorry, you just have to die.” is not the solution that I hope we settle on.

McClatchy has the story Sen. Mitch McConnell says Medicare, Social Security must change to fix U.S. debt.

The nation’s debt is its biggest problem, and the only way to fix it is to make changes in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said Friday.

McConnell, speaking to several hundred people during Commerce Lexington’s Public Policy Luncheon at the Hyatt Regency, said those changes should include raising eligibility ages over time.

“Only one thing can save this country, and that’s to get a handle on this deficit and debt issue,” said McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

If there were any doubts in any peoples’ minds before, at least it should be clear to everyone now, that the Republican agenda is to cut Social Security and Medicare.  All other things serve the cutting of Social Security and Medicare.

If rich people can retire and live off their investments – rich peoples’ Social Security and medicare – why do they think it is impossible for our economy to support the eventual retirement of us all as we age to retirement age?

If in fact the economy as a whole can afford to have retirees, then the only question is how is the economy going to pay for it?  It should be entirely possible for the government to be the one to set aside (or manage) the resources to make this  happen.

If the economy cannot afford to have a bunch of retired people, then we need to face that fact and honestly say that a bunch of retirees are going to have to eat dog food, live in tents, and die when they get sick.

At least we would be facing the real issues.  The not so rich people can decide what they want to do about the situation when it is presented to them honestly.  I wonder if they will just agree to sit back and take it so that the rich people can live in comfort.

The American Prospect has the Robert Kuttner article Social Security: Will Obama Cave?.

The premise of the “Chained CPI” is that the standard CPI overstates inflation because people regularly substitute products when they are more expensive. If beef is too pricey, people switch to chicken.

There are two fallacies in this premise as applied to seniors. Most seniors already live so close to the margin of poverty that they have already done all the easy substituting, unless we expect them to further downshift from chicken to cat food, or to choose between filling stomachs and filling prescriptions.

Moreover, the CPI as applied to seniors understates the true impact of inflation, not overstates it. As several studies have shown, the cost of health care has been increasing at more than twice the general rate of inflation, and seniors spend a far larger share of their incomes on medical care than younger Americans do.

This information backs up what I told Representative Richard Neal’s staffer as described in my previous post Cutting Social Security benefits is a cruel, stupid policy.

One other set of enablers are those liberals who say that at least a disguised cut in Social Security is not quite as bad as raising the Medicare eligibility age, a Republican demand that Obama has rejected. This chorus includes the sainted Paul Krugman, another resolute liberal who ordinarily earns nothing but our thanks and appreciation.

But saying that cutting Social Security is not quite as bad as cutting Medicare sets a pretty low bar. Neither should be cut.

The above quote also seems to back up my deviation from Krugman as mentioned in that previous post.

My best hope is that Boehner will pass his Plan B in the House and so anger President Obama, that all negotiations fall through.  Once on the other side of the cliff we can see what kind of a deal can be worked out with the next Congress.  Perhaps with restricted ability to threaten filibuster in the Senate and fewer Tea Party members in the House, the President will finally come to recognize the strength of his position.

This headline is a quote from the Paul Krugman post The Deal Dilemma.

Switching from the regular CPI to the chained CPI doesn’t affect benefits immediately after retirement, which are based on your past earnings.What it does mean is that after retirement your payments grow more slowly, about 0.3 percent each year. So if you retire at 65, your income at 75 would be 3 percent less under this proposal than under current law; at 85 it would be 6 percent less; there’s supposedly a bump-up in benefits for people who make it that far.

This is not good; there’s no good policy reason to be doing this, because the savings won’t have any significant impact on the underlying budget issues. And for many older people it would hurt. Also, the symbolism of a Democratic president cutting Social Security is pretty awful.

I have already called my representative Richard Neal, to tell him that I hope he publicly opposes this cut to Social Security.  His staff person who answered told me that Neal does not consider this to be a cut.  I told him that I did.  From what I have heard, seniors have a faster rising cost of living than other citizens.  As Krugman says, it would be “cruel , stupid policy” to change their formula for cost of living raises to be less than the general population.

I told Congressman Neal’s office that I would prefer that he take us over the cliff than accept this compromise.  The country can get a better deal from the next Congress.  Though the gist of the Krugman article is that he is not so sure which deal would be better.

Tell the President: No Deal That Cuts Benefits.

The Real News Network has the article Drums Beating to Privatize Social Security where you can see the transcript and the following video:

JAY: Okay. I got a question for you. As a financial regulator, how did you feel about the election of Elizabeth Warren? And number two, if Elizabeth Warren lives up to the hopes and expectations that have been placed in her as someone that’s actually serious about financial regulation, what can one senator do? And two, if she does do something, doesn’t that put her at odds with the Obama administration?

BLACK: So I was thrilled. I was certainly a personal supporter. And our family, you know, sent a small contribution to her, in terms of full disclosure during this discussion.

She’s already an opponent, as perceived by the Obama administration. I mean, I don’t think it works the other way around. In other words, I don’t think that Elizabeth Warren ever saw herself as an opponent of the administration, as opposed to a proponent of the American people, but the administration hated Elizabeth Warren at times, or at least important aspects of it did—Timothy Geithner and such in Treasury.

And, you know, we talked about Erskine Bowles. One of the rumors is that Erskine Bowles will replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary. So you may have an immediate conflict there.

What can one senator do? Well, one senator can’t do much, especially a junior senator. The tradition of spending your first year saying nothing in the Senate, which was a very long tradition, is somewhat broken, but it’s still going to be difficult to accomplish much. Look for what committee assignments she’s given. You know, is she put on things like the judiciary committee and such? Will she have an opportunity to engage in her famous intensive questioning of the regulators and the prosecutors who are refusing to prosecute the elite frauds? These are the near-term things that you want to look for especially.

If Scott Brown could become the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committe (at least in his own mind) in two years, imagine what a Senator who is actually intelligent might be able to do in reality.

MassLive.com has the article Liberal groups urge Massachusetts’ congressional delegation to avoid slashing social services while working on fiscal cliff. Thanks to BillM for bringing this article to my attention.

 Liberal organizing groups in Massachusetts are putting pressure on members of Congress to avoid cutting social services and entitlement programs. But at the same time, the members of Congress will face competing pressures from other local and national groups – to avoid sharp cuts to industries such as defense and health care that are vital to Massachusetts’ economy and to look out for taxpayers’ interests.

“We’re saying hold the 1 to 2 percent accountable, increase their taxes, invest in proper jobs and most importantly don’t cut Social Security,” said Steven Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, which delivered petitions making that argument to Massachusetts U.S. Sens. John Kerry, a Democrat, and Scott Brown, a Republican.

This is the kind of activity that I have been saying since the election that we all need to encourage and support.

There will be lots of pressure from lobbyists on our politicians to do the opposite of what we need.  The next election is too far away for it to be on the minds of our politicians.  It is essential that the politicians are constantly reminded that we  can bring pressure to bear too.

With the advent of the internet we all have many more options for making our voices heard.  We need to use these options as individuals and as groups.  This is not the time to think that the election ends your roll in government until the next election.

I thought that Romney/Ryan were scary enough on Social Security/Medicare, but this is almost more scary. Fortunately, Roots Action may be going a little overboard. The date for the citation for what Obama said was the date the article was published. There is no indication in the article of how long ago Obama said it. The date of the citation for Biden’s remarks might actually be the date that Biden made the remarks. Still, there is no harm in taking out a little insurance by letting the President know how you feel.

The Romney-Ryan platform includes big cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But here’s something the New York Times reported this month about President Obama:

“He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security.”

It’s time we asked the President and every member of Congress to commit to not cutting a dime from Medicare or Social Security.

Roots Action has a web page where you can go to send a message to the President and your Congress people about not cutting Social Security or Medicare by one red cent until all other avenues have been tried. When the wealthy are paying theit fair share of taxes again, then and only then will I listen to arguments about cutting Medicare, Social Security, and other investments in the future of this country.

The following video explains some of the problems with Obama’s jobs plan. You have to follow along closely and sort of know what the speaker means. He sometimes gets a little tongue tied and uses words like Fed tax on cash reserves they hold for banks. He clearly means interest paid to those banks as he stated a little earlier. Later he talks about “taxing” the banks, meaning charging them instead of paying them. At that point he really means the words he is using.

Another nice feature is that the interviewee corrects Paul Jay’s incorrect assumptions in some of the questions that Jay asks.

The brief item 72 Percent Disagree With Perry That Social Security Is A ‘Monstrous Lie’ was on the Think Progress web site.  Of course, polls are not real news, but the result taken from the CNN poll:

The Social Security system has been described as a “monstrous lie” and as a failure. Do you think those phrases are an accurate description of the Social Security system, or don’t you think so?

	Sept. 9-11 2011
Accurate	27%
Not accurate	72%
No opinion	1%

is a nice complement to my post, Why a Pay-As-You-Go System (Social Security) is not like a Ponzi scheme.  It shows that the vast majority of those polled believe that what Tea Partiers like to hear is recognizing as a lie filled sack of something.  Of course that does not mean that they will refrain from voting for a politician who says these things.

The other thing I take from this is that if we keep pounding the message that this is pack of lies at least as often as any politician repeats the lie, then there is hope that the voters are listening.  The moment we stop countering the lies, people will start believing them.  The politicians who spout these lies know that  they have a short half-life, so they know they have to keep repeating them.  Unfortunately the truth has just as short if not a shorter half-life as the lies.