Yesterday I wrote about how the first few days of a new Congress do so much to set the tone for the next two years...and how Republicans plan to use mythical “Dynamic Scoring” to lie to us. Hard to imagine for rational people, but they actually intend to lie to us, and are rigging the previously accurate and non-partisan CBO to do so.
Congress has also already announced that they intend to cut Social Security...after virtually all Republicans promised not to do so. They're doing so by building a dramatic cut in benefits into the RULES of the new Congress...an almost impossibly crude and cynical misuse of power. Republicans have virtually removed Social Security cuts from the possibility of reasonable debate.
Again, MSM, here is the newly-responsible Republican Party, the one you assurred us now understands the need for bipartisan comity.
According to a Tuesday report from the Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney, both Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have decried a new parliamentary rule just established by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives that will, they and other Social Security advocates say, make it nearly certain that millions of Americans will see their benefits slashed. The reasons for this are a bit arcane — Kathy Ruffing of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank has a good rundown here — but the gist is that Republicans will now mandate that a routine shifting of funds from one part of Social Security to another can only be done if it’s accompanied by cuts (which most Democrats will oppose) and/or tax increases (which nearly all Republicans will oppose). And if these hurdles go predictably uncleared? An estimated 11 million Americans on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) will see their benefits cut by 20 percent.
As the underrated Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik correctly notes, the rule change is a result not only of conservatives’ traditional antipathy for Social Security but also of their newfound conviction that SSDI, in particular, is out of control. (A conviction that was strengthened by no less a liberal darling than Ira Glass.) They’re wrong on this score — the number of people on SSDI has indeed increased, but not because of any moocher chicanery — but because the SSDI-handout-machine narrative has become an article of faith among the conservative rank-and-file, it hardly matters. Brown, Warren and left-of-center activists and wonks can rail all they want — but they no doubt understand as well as House Republicans that launching a campaign against a parliamentary maneuver is, politically, a tough sell.
Of course, it’s not surprising to hear that liberals are incensed over this cloak-and-dagger attempt to bleed Social Security. What’s more noteworthy, I think, is the way in which the move by Republicans (which, keep in mind, they did on the new Congress’ very first day) is so dramatically removed from whatever motivated those few voters who showed up last November to hand the GOP its big win. Cutting SSDI has no serious effect on the issues that motivated most conservative voters — cutting taxes, dismantling Obamacare, approving the Keystone XL pipeline and increasing deportations for undocumented immigrants. It wasn’t even on their radar. Politicians are supposed to react to their constituents’ wishes; who was clamoring for this?
Well, you can probably guess who: the Republican-supporting members of the 1 percent. As Princeton’s Larry Bartels and Northwestern’s Benjamin Page and Larry Seawright found in a 2013 study that I consider essential reading for those who want to understand U.S. politics today, the only significant demographic group in America that wants to see cuts to Social Security ASAP is the 1 percent. Wealthy Americans, Bartels and Page wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, not only care much more about the budget deficit than most Americans, but are “also much less likely to favor raising taxes on high-income people” as a solution, preferring instead “that entitlement programs like Social Security and healthcare be cut.” And as an equally important 2014 study from Page and Princeton’s Martin Gilens found, D.C. politicians care vastly more about the concerns of the wealthy than they do those of anyone else.
http://www.salon.com/...
Congratulations America, this is the government we chose...may God have mercy on our souls.