Alex Lawson said last night he was hopeful that all the ruckus raising over Social Security and Medicare would get Obama to back off. Looks like the White House is reading the poll numbers:
President Barack Obama’s new deficit-reduction proposal will leave out changes to Social Security, and may exclude any increase in the Medicare eligibility age, people familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.
President Obama is considering a deficit reduction proposal that leaves out two of the most controversial measures he has put forth before, one affecting Social Security and the other Medicare. Laura Meckler has details on The News Hub.
“As the president has consistently said, he does not believe that Social Security is a driver of our near- and medium-term deficits,” White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement.
Changing the inflation formula so Social Security benefits grow more slowly and raising the Medicare eligibility age were ideas Mr. Obama had been willing to accept this summer, when he was trying to strike a deficit-reduction deal with House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).
That deal ultimately collapsed after Mr. Boehner walked away from the talks. Democrats, who believe it is strategically unwise to put forward a compromise position at the outset, have urged that Mr. Obama not include them in the new deficit plan he is set to unveil Monday.
Instead of raising the Medicare eligibility age, the White House is considering recommending cuts to providers and possibly increasing premiums for wealthier recipients, people familiar with the discussions say. It’s also possible the president would propose changing the inflation calculation for other government programs, which currently use the same measure as Social Security does. The White House declined to comment on those discussions.
I don’t trust the guy one inch any more.
Also, why is everything with Obama such a big freakin’ secret? Why are we dependent on leaks and anonymous sources to find out what the man thinks and what he plans to to? Why can’t he just say what he thinks, what he plans to do and then DO IT? Its worse than the old days when we were dealing with the Kremlin and people had to read Pravda with a magnifying glass to find policy announcements buried at the bottom of articles about a new tractor factory.
The only people who feel the need to hide and keep things secret are people who are afraid to tell the truth. Whatever else Mr Obama is, I am becoming more and more convinced that he is basically a man who is afraid.
If Obama told you what he really thought the oligarchy and the rest of his plutocrat friends might get pissed off at him. Not because they would disagree we him. But because he’d be telling all their secrets and we’d all realize that they have been working their game on all of us since “man” discovered fire. All of the High Priest, like those of the Sanhedrin, have been politicians since the very begining. Politics has always been about prostitution.
Obama’s The Compleat Weasel. He’s trying to find another way to hand his golfing buddies our money right now.
Complete.
Nope–While “compleat” is a variant spelling of “complete ” (or is it vice versa?), “compleat” has a long tradtion of meaning “very skilled” in something. The connotation is that of someone so skilled as to be at the top of thosel who do the thing being discussed.
Here’s Wiki on The Compleat Angler (first published 1653).