They ain’t dead yet
Digby is right, it’s time to stop throwing entitlements under the bus. They are not “nice to haves” they are must haves. Social Security is a must have because our government and our people already committed to them, and people already paid into them. They are must haves because we agreed to them as a societal need after lengthy decades of long push and shove and give and take. They can’t be disappeared or magically diminished just because they are inconvenient. They certainly aren’t entitlements in the Royal sense, but watch as the GOP tries to make them that way - how long before we start seeing tales of “Social Security Queens” or the equivalent? It’s just wrong that our President is floating this regardless of why (e.g. some of the villagers would have you believe that it’s just a political ploy to give the admin cover or to draw the recalcitrant GOP to the table, but we’ve all seen supposed ploys become reality in our lifetime.)
progressive groups, unions and AARP and others are ramping up their efforts to get the Prsident to remove his proposal to cut Social Security from his budget. They’re hearing stuff like this and they don’t trust that the president isn’t listening. For good reason:
Deficit hawks say walking back the entitlement cuts would damage Obama’s credibility on fiscal issues, perhaps fatally.
“It just looks like caving to special interest groups. This is something he can cite as a hard choice and as standing up to his own base,” said Bob Bixby, the head of the Concord Coalition.
He said the Sanders letter is “all the more reason to keep it in” because Obama’s needs to distance himself from a “tax the rich” solution to the debt in order to foster centrist support for Democrats.
More: Hullabaloo