Category: Action Alert

Bipartisan solutions

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

It’s one week until Obama’s budget drops, and I strongly urge you to call your senators. Tell them you want no part of the Grand Bargain. The reason you need to call them is that the Senate will pass a bipartisan bill and get a vote on the House floor, and we want to stop it. Please call today:

Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest:

Here is how the DC game works:

– One side proposes to kill everyone in Kentucky and Tennessee. 15% of the public supports this (0% in Kentucky or Tennessee.)

– The other side thinks children should have enough food so they can grow up strong. (85% of the public supports this.)

– A Grand Bargain is reached in which they agree to kill everyone in Tennessee and spare the people in Kentucky, and children will get half as much food as they need.

The DC pundits will say that since everyone is angry at this, it must be the right solution because “both sides” only got part of what they want.

Obama’s grand bargain is here

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

It’s official, folks. The Grand Bargain is here.

Time to take action. If we don’t unleash holy hell, this will go through.

Even though I’ve been warning you for a long time, it’s still hard to believe that a Democratic president is offering up the crown jewels of Democratic policy — and for a mere pittance. We need to fight back. You can call your congressperson or the White House if you want, but it’s most useful to start with your senators. Tell them you’re not willing to starve Granny to make the Republicans happy.

We should concentrate on the Senate, because they’ll probably send a bipartisan bill to the House in order to bypass Boehner’s Hastert rule. Even if you called last week, call today. Be prepared to call every day for the next week. (Here’s the link.)

President Obama will release a budget next week that proposes significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security and fewer tax hikes than in the past, a conciliatory approach that he hopes will convince Republicans to sign onto a grand bargain that would curb government borrowing and replace deep spending cuts that took effect March 1.

Obama will break with the tradition of providing a sweeping vision of his ideal spending priorities, untethered from political realities. Instead, the document will incorporate the compromise offer Obama made to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) last December in the discussions over the “fiscal cliff” – which included $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction through spending cuts and tax increases.

“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit,” a senior administration official said, “but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”

The Huffington Post has more

The specifics are as follows:

  • The budget would reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over ten years — $600 billion of this reduction would come from revenue raisers, and $1.2 trillion would come from spending reductions and entitlement reforms;
  • It would change the benefit structure of Social Security (chained-CPI);
  • It would means test additional programs in Medicare;
  • All told, it would include $400 billion in health care savings (or cuts);
  • It would cut $200 billion from other areas, identified by The New York Times as “farm subsidies, federal employee retirement programs, the Postal Services and the unemployment compensation system;”
  • It would pay for expanded access to pre-K (an Obama priority) by increasing the tobacco tax;
  • It would set limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for the wealthy, prohibiting individuals from putting more than $3 million in IRAs and other tax-preferred retirement accounts;
  • And it would stop people from collecting full disability benefits and unemployment benefits that cover the same period of time.

Call the White House today

~ susie ~ 9 Comments

Someone reminded me of that old story about the pre-Russian revolution days. Peasants would lament how bad things were, and at the end would add, “If only the czar knew!” Because they somehow believed the czar had no idea of their conditions, or how they were treated. (Some historians joke that the revolution finally happened once the peasants realized the czar did know.) Oh, if only President Obama knew that Republicans were trying to trick him into cutting Social Security and Medicare!

Well, Obama really is going to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. No, it’s not a clever ploy — unless you count the part where he’s counting on you thinking that.

So here it is: The biggest trial balloon of them all in today’s Wall St. Journal. Get your dialing fingers ready. There’s a reason they let this story out on Good Friday, they’re counting on you not noticing or being too busy to do anything about it. The White House switchboard is 202-456-1414, the comments line is 202-456-1111 or you can email here.

WASHINGTON—The White House is strongly considering including limits on entitlement benefits in its fiscal 2014 budget—a proposal it first offered Republicans in December. The move would be aimed in part at keeping alive bipartisan talks on a major budget deal.

Such a proposal could include steps that make many Democrats queasy, such as reductions in future Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security payments, but also items resisted by Republicans, such as higher taxes through limits on tax breaks, people close to the White House said.

These measures would come as President Barack Obama continues his courtship of the Senate GOP in an effort to thaw tax-and-spending talks. The White House’s delayed annual budget is scheduled to be released April 10, the same day Mr. Obama plans to dine with a group of Senate Republicans to discuss the budget and other issues.

President Obama’s inclusion of the proposal would be aimed at breathing new life into bipartisan talks on reaching a deficit-reduction deal.

Oh yes, the Bipartisan Wet Dream of a Grand Bargain.

Including entitlement curbs would be notable, as Republicans often have criticized the White House for offering such steps in private negotiations but never fully embracing them as part of an official budget plan.

People close to the White House believe a proposal to slow the growth rate of such benefits would use a variant of the Consumer Price Index to measure inflation. The new inflation indicator would cut overall spending by $130 billion, according to White House projections, and raise $100 billion in tax revenue by slowing the growth of tax brackets. The White House earlier called for an additional $800 billion or so in cuts on top of those resulting from the inflation adjustments.

“We and all of the groups engaged on this are starting to feel it may well be in the budget,” said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president at AARP, an advocacy group for seniors that opposes such changes.

Call your senator

~ susie

Via Greg Sargent: “A senior Senate Dem aide tells me that Reid is not prepared to accept the emerging deal yet; he wants to talk to his caucus about it first.”
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So, seems like calls to the Senate right now might be useful…