Here’s something you can usually count on: the Washington Post editorial board is rarely on the side of human beings. They just love that political process!
If President Barack Obama’s budget offer is primarily an attempt to win over members of the Centrist Hack Pundit Community, and perhaps get them to train their fire on congressional Republican instransigence instead of constantly indulging in leadership surrealism, here’s some good news: The Washington Post editorial board is on board. Sure, chained CPI does not nearly go far enough in depriving Social Security recipients of the money that helps stave off destitution, but it’s a rollicking good start, apparently:
Though far from perfect, the budget President Obama released Wednesday represents the best hope for replacing sequestration with a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal before the federal government hits its statutory borrowing limit in late summer — and before Congress gets paralyzed by the politics of the 2014 elections.
The editors, naturally, refer to the chained CPI cuts, as well as reductions to Medicare, as the “most important” parts of the deal. (More important even than sparing the country from “excessive domestic-spending cuts falling most heavily on those Americans least able to afford them.” They are a little put out, however, that even as Obama offers these cuts to earned benefit programs, he doesn’t seem to actually wantit bad enough, in his heart of hearts: “Mr. Obama too often casts entitlement reform as a concession to extract Republican assent to higher taxes, rather than a worthy end in itself.”
You know what I say: Obama has been trying to give the GOP these cuts for so long that you might as well accept the fact that they are, at bottom, something he is not at all reluctant to do. That said, if it’s sometimes difficult to cast things like chained CPI as a worthy end in itself, well … that’s because it’s not a worthy end in itself.
Chained-CPI isn’t all that bad the liberal corporate media (oxymoron) and conservative Democrats tell us. (The 1%.) So let’s focus on the “good stuff” in Obama’s budget. The increase in the minimum wage for instance. That’s the old shell game. Like when the warmongers tell us not to concern ourselves with the toture and all those dead kids. Instead we should focus on the “truth, justice, and the American way” that we are bringing to those once oppressed but now “free” people. What clowns the idle rich are.
@imhotep: Well said. When they put the pea under the cup, you just know they’re going to baffle you with bullshit. Hey, look over here. No, over there. Now back here.
For a slightly new take on all this see Digby today: Bunch of over educated and under-experienced ivy league technocratic snots, tweaking public policy to squeeze the “fat” out of our already pathetic social support programs, while pretending no one will be hurt. Smart, quick on the uptake, well informed, ambitious, and utterly craven. Reminds me of Matt and Ezra, in their worst moments. Or the Chicago boys helping Pinochet. Scum, really. Ready to flush many people down the toilet to further their careers.
A tipping point has been passed. Obama isn’t triangulating any more, he has taken the lead on cutting signature Dem programs. Recent revelations on who is really being vaporized in PAK fit in nicely with the emerging new consensus on the left. Digby seems now all in against Barry and the boys. Can Joan Walsh be far behind?
Gee, I wonder what Hillary thinks about all this.
Adams, the Hillary crowd ‘are’ the conservative Democrats. They all love chained-CPI. Just ask Hillary supporters Rendell, Pelosi, Miller, Matthews, and the rest. Hillary herself will tell us what she thinks only after all the dust has settled. She is far and away the most dishonest and craven politician operating today.
Ask the garment workers in Haiti about Hillary’s priorities.
Oh yeah Imhotep – Hillary is waaaay more dishonest than O-Bomb-Ya….
The very fact that we’re all talking about something called a CHAINED CPI is an indictment. What bullshit. It all makes me so very sick.
Although the term superlative really wants to make me change my mind.
If the peons are complaining about their retirement program going up in smoke, maybe they won’t notice that the “economic recovery” still has not hit the 99%.
Democrats still refuse to acknowledge that they elected a trojan-horse Republican.