I have been struggling with what topic I was going to write about today. Glen Beck hawking Food Insurance or how the DNC needs to nationalize Rand Paul's idiocy. However, I came across this article today in the HuffingtonPost and I almost blew a gasket.
The article was conveniently re-titled at Huffpost to a more gentle "Is Obama's Secret Council Deciding The Fate of Social Security?" and I followed the link to the original article titled "Has Obama Created a Social Security Death Panel?" and I became incensed.
At first I thought it was some right wing nutter trying out some Rethuglican talking points, but I remembered I found it on Huffpost and the article was posted in the Harvard University website, not exactly a Rethug hangout. In reading further, it sounded like the authors were talking about Rethug talking points about HCR...example, It's a flawed process, it's being done behind closed doors, these people want to cut your Health Care Social Security, AND there are DEATH PANELS!
WTF are we doing? we cannot use Rethug tactics to try to kill or de-legitimize the President's deficit commission decisions before they have even come to a consensus. We need to wait until something comes out, if anything. We have to take the partisan politics out this process, its way too important a problem and must be solved.
This country has a REAL problem with its debt and while I do not subscribe to the Retug meme that the US will become like Greece, BS, its IS possible. And if we should fall back into another recession within the next ten years it could happen. We are currently at a debt to GDP ratio of 60%, if we get to 100% we are like Greece, but this is highly unlikely since our economy continues to innovate and grow unlike Greece's'.
However, even at 60% of GDP its a dangerous level and with interest eating up more and more of the annual budget, unsustainable. So the only way to fix it is to raise revenues and cut spending, we just need to come to some consensus as a people, about what level of social and military spending, along with taxes we can live with to take care of this issue.
Bottom line you cannot raise rates to 90% on the Rich as some of my more progressive brethren suggest and you cannot cut Social Security and Medicare as some of my conservative friends suggest. You have to do some combination of both things using a scalpel, not a hatchet!
The President has made a decision that in order to seek some type of consensus he is willing to lock 18 individuals up in a room and see if they can figure something out, if not, no foul no harm!
However through our advocacy we cannot start throwing around death panel talk like the Rethugs did during the HCR debate, its wrong and simple minded.
We have to as a country and a people, FIX this problem, its real, however, its not too late. We cannot subscribe to running to the either conservative or progressive corners of the ring, we have to meet in the middle and work it out. If the Rethugs don't want to do it, the American people will see that and keep us in power. But only if we can come up with credible plans and NOT use Death Panel language to demagogue this issue.