Senators Max Baucus and Harry Reid. Thanks for nothing, guys. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Some details have emerged from yesterday's
Catfood Commission II Democrats' offer to slash Medicare in order to reach out to Republicans—an offer that was
summarily refused. This is a time when you can actually be thankful for Republican intransigence on taxes. They might just be saving critical entitlement programs with their refusal to budge, because Democrats Max Baucus and Harry Reid
are still pursuing an insane grand bargain.
Speaking for a majority of the six Democrats on the panel, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) on Tuesday urged his GOP colleagues to pick up where President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) left off in a summer battle over raising the federal debt limit.
Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, offered to cut as much as $500 billion from Medicare and other health programs and to adopt a less generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits, according to aides familiar with the talks.[...]
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) broached the idea of a "grand bargain" on taxes and entitlements in a meeting last week with Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Democratic leadership aides said the goal was to determine whether such a deal could come together.[...]
But Boehner and McConnell have been steadfast in their refusal to consider tax increases big enough to persuade Democrats to throw their weight behind reductions to popular social programs.
"Their offer is a joke," said one Democrat with knowledge of the GOP counter-proposal. "Democrats came to the table with an offer that had serious skin in the game for both parties. Rather than offering real solutions, Republicans are just doing more of the same posturing they do every time they walk away from efforts to constructively tackle this crisis."
Whose skin is in this "game" exactly? It sure as hell isn't Reid's and Baucus's. It's the skin of our most vulnerable citizens. That's the game they're playing. And they think that it's their sacrifice they're willing to make.
It's not, Senators Reid and Baucus. The worst that can happen to you is that you lose the next election and only have your very generous federal retirement to live on, or maybe those speaking fees and lobbyist gigs that will undoubtedly come your way. No, it's not your skin that's at risk at all. So maybe you can remember that next time you feel like bargaining away the security of the people you're supposed to be representing.
And really, how tone deaf can they possibly be? How absolutely insulated from what's happening in this country right now to think that making life worse for the most vulnerable of the 99 percent makes any kind of sense? What Atrios says: "the people in charge are incompetent and/or evil."