Tweet
(photo: ulrichkarljoho)
It calls for between $200 billion and $300 billion in new economic stimulus spending that would be paid for with lower interest payments from reducing deficits.
It also seeks around $400 billion in Medicare savings, with half coming in benefit cuts and the other half in cuts to healthcare providers. Details of that proposal were scant but tackling the popular Medicare program is always politically risky for politicians.
It is unlikely this specific deal being offered by the Democrats on the committee will be accepted by Republicans, because it calls for tax increases and more stimulus, but it still puts our social safety net in danger. It is another instance of the Democratic party steadily moving towards the official position of saying Medicare benefits can and should be cut.
As we have seen time and time again, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats offer conservative leaning ideas to sweeten a compromise. The Congressional Republicans reject the compromise but then demand that only the GOP ideas that “even Obama supports” are part of a new bill.
While this latest Democratic offer is most likely doomed, it may be an attempt to make themselves appear to be the only “reasonable” party that is willing to compromise. But the real effect will be to move the whole debate farther rightward.
76 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
But wait a minute. What if the Republicans cherry pick the medicare cuts, reject the parts that might be good for people, and the Dems go along with it? Same way the Republicans approved of medicaid cuts but rejected good stuff in the ‘jobs’ bill and the Democrats went along with it.
Face it, the 99% are a punching bag and the ‘pugs and the dems just take turns hitting us.
Idiots.
This is why I can no longer vote for Dems. They are corporate owned cowards. The Dems should be targeted as worthy of losing all support by progressives, as they do not support the people who elected them. They are a disgrace.
Maine said it all for me. Dems (incl Obama) are corportized suckers and don’t deserve to be re-elected. Why in the world is the Super Committee cutting so much more than required? Huh?
When we come full face with our disastrous situation and get seriously upset, progressives (and even more important the non-labeled but in fact progressive voters) in this country who care about the public interest as part of the 99% will go into the streets and create a new independent party.
Oh! Excuse me! We are already doing this. Keep an eye on two sites: NYC General Assembly Working Groups and Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street which is replicated all over the country (and the world) wants to stay formless and goal-less for a while, letting actions, demands and goals emerge from local Occupations, from the bottom up as it were, while two working groups on NYC General Assembly site want to express demands and goals from a broader position, from the top although agreed to by consensus. One working group has crafted “The 99% Declaration” with 20 rough-draft goals. They use Facebook for discussion and plan to convene delegates in Philadelphia in July 2012 to formalize a Petition for Redress of Grievances to be presented to 3 branches of govt for action and if not acted upon, they want to reconvene to form an independent party to run candidates for office in the 2014 midterms — for starters. Another working group in NYC GA (“Demands”) is formulating several goals/demands and moving more slowly, debating each set of demands, intending to bring them to the NYC GA for consensus, while the 99% Declaration working group appears to be moving ahead without consensus until they get to the National General Assembly in Philly which they will form. By now new working groups might have formed. It’s all moving fast. There is tension, as there must have been when our Declaration of Independence was first argued out. In any case, there is serious energy forming itself into action.
Take a look at these sites and get involved. Find an Occupation near you.
let’s just bring in the tricoteuses
It’s past time for someone to take Patty’s sneakers away from here and send her home for good before she does any more destruction by legislative “good intention”.
PS – I’m making an opaque reference to her support for DoD black-projects and her willingness to turn the Columbia River Gorge into a channel for radioactive sluice.
The Democrats in Congress are all 1%ers. They are the enemy, not allies.
Jon- tangential question (but very relevant) — the recent accounting by USA Today/KFF about the huge cuts in benefits to Medicaid is already happening — and this will only accelerate as PPACA implementation moves forward…
The Dems could not even seem bothered to include mammograms for poor women aged 40-50 in the law (the Mikulski amendment only applied to non-medicaid) … CA and CO have already dropped mammas…
Should Obama/HHS and progressive leaders in Congress be (a) allowing -bc HHS could deny those changes (b) speaking out at all AGAINST this turning of Medicaid into 3rd world health care?
And has anyone considered that the HIE (exchanges) under PPACA are merely a staging ground to do the same to the non-Medicaid population?
Link for California
We knew the Dems were Dino’s, this should not be a shock. I think everybody on that committee wants to cut those programs (Oops, I mean STRENGTHEN) but the Dems need something to hide behind and the GOPers are ideologically incapable of agreeing to anything that looks like a tax increase.
Our best hope is that the supercommittee has an epic fail.
Boxturtle (And our odds look good for that right now)
The Dems are the lesser-of-two evils my ass.
What is easier to defend against, evil that tries to bludgeon me right out in the open, or evil that pretends it is my friend and then knifes me in the back?
50% of congress are millionares. 1% of the population is millionares.
Well, there’s the problem.
Boxturtle (Starting to think that we shouldn’t elect anyone without fastfood experience)
This is the Peter G. Peterson Super Committee we are talking about. What did you expect?
They are the Evil of lessers.
Boxturtle (I’d much rather have an enemy that didn’t pretend to be my friend)
Peas glorious peas, yum yum
Peterson owns these people, because he represents the money trust, not the trust by the people.
If you still support Obama after he has governed so far to the right, the democrats will have no incentive to change and will keep moving further to the right.
There’s a pea salad they make in the cafe here that’s quite good. Peas, cheese, and onions in a nice creamy coleslaw-like dressing.
Boxturtle (If I MUST eat my peas….)
This is the first time I’ve seen this Declaration.
While I think it could still be scrubbed to remove some of the pet rhetoric that could make it sound too partisan to some (many?) it’s much improved over the List of Demands that came out earlier.
Satin America, our betters and providers of jobs to Denim USA, understand our situation better than we do. And that means we must occupy only soup kitchens instead of public spaces surrounding their towering castles in the cities and seats of power. It’s time for us to share in the sacrifices needed to ensure their undertaxed dividends and capital gains.
assholes
elitist assholes who will be eating shit when their comeuppance comes
maybe it’s time we began occupying excess private property
watching Obama slit his own 2012 throat…
I don’t think he wants to even be a notable Prez. His legacy will be similar to Hoover’s. What a wasted effort.
I live in Pennsylvania. I just read that President Obama and Sr. Bob Casey will be spending a lot of time in this state next year working for the moderate Republican and Independent vote.
Meanwhile they have lost my vote…I’m a Democrat.
I feel we’ve reached the point of no return. I feel there is no hope and the only change will be downward.
The Democrats are working very hard to bring the OWS movement into their tent. Every astroturfed group in my county in Pennsylvania is on Wall Street pushing Obama’s agenda. They’re good people and they mean well but they just can’t bring themselves to be part of an independent movement. They love OWS and so do I. But can OWS resist the money that comes with the price of alignment with a party that will betray them?
Only time will tell.
On November 5th we are asking every citizen of the world to pull their money out of corporate banks, and into local credit unions. Our goal is to shut their doors, and close their blinds. Our goal is to break their backs and blind their eyes. We are the antibodies of the world. We have come alive and active to rid the world of parasites and moral disease.
Remember, remember the 5th of November.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN4IAu_W8WQ&feature=player_embedded#
Ideas about old age are rapidly changing. While popular culture makes us think that you’re going to be parachuting when you’re 70, the fact is that most won’t. Most of the elderly, if they’re not downed by cancer, can develop high blood pressure (which I have also), diabetes, and heart problems, although those are not restricted to the elderly. Face it, our organs are breaking down–we don’t live forever, nor are we supposed to. Why should I demand life-saving, expensive treatments to give me an additional 6 mos of life which I can’t enjoy? Medicine is just another profitable business. In this economy, I don’t see many younger than myself, unless they are in the top 20% of the population (which enjoys the most income) having a very pleasant retirement without their full SS benefits, and even that will be subsistence level.
The average SS payment amounts to about $13K/yr. I get a little less than that and many are forced to live on even less. Only high earners get the maximum, $36K/yr, and they are generally already well fixed with retirement funds, investments, etc., although not always so. Yet those same people enjoy lowered capital gains and other benefits the lesser of us do not.
Only a fundamental restructuring of the economic principals of the US that are in effect right now will save the benefits that are due us. I don’t expect the DINOs on the committee to understand that. People with lots of money seldom do. After all, money is power, and power corrupts. Getting it out of our electoral process as it is now is imperative.
Boy that Obama is a friend of the workingman with those Super Committee and Grand Bargain ideas.
Hey, I have a candidate for his special Jobs Committee. This bastard can sit next to Immelt at those secret, get-away luncheon/meetings.
“But the real effect will be to move the whole debate farther rightward.”
And therein lies the reason I will not support the Democratic Party any longer: their insistance of chasing the far right wing has pushed themselves increasingly to the right. When today’s liberal (sic) party is to the right of where Barry Goldwater was 40 years ago, something is terribly, terribly wrong.
But the REALLY good NOOZ is:
Make women pump ‘em out and let ‘em starve.
What a goddamned crazy country we’ve become.
they are dead to me if they do this.
Are all those on the Super Committee up for re-election next year?
If not, maybe we should encourage them to resign because they certainly are not representing the people of this country. They refuse to listen to the citizens.
Oh yeah! That is why people are in the streets!
These days I feel like I am living in alternate realities. Simultaneously. Is that even possible?
I march every Saturday with one or two thousand other citizens, all carrying signs protesting massive and growing income inequality, malfeasance by financial institutions and legalized bribery in government.
Then I read about the other reality, a tiny and insular group of people in power who are happily proposing to cut the incomes of the poorest among us.
Can these people in power even see or recognize the alternate reality of the masses who elected them? We’re like two streams running side by side but with no connection between us. If we at some point don’t merge then one stream will dry up or, perhaps rush off the continent’s edge into spectacular and deadly drop.
Time to primary any Democrat who offers to cut entitlements including Obama.
if they don’t do it it will only be because the gop stops them by refusing to give even a tax fig leaf
so that’s what obamadems have been reduced to: hoping the batshit crazy republicans can stop the democrats
pardon me for saying so but so but if the obamadems haven’t lost you yet they probably aren’t too worried you’ll ever leave
I agree with Peterboy. They are dead to me if they do this.
Let’s be absolutely clear…. NO TAX RATE HIKES FOR THE EXTRAVAGANTLY WEALTHY – NO CUTS…….period….. EVERY SINGLE RETHUGLICON ON EARTH MUST PAY…
and i have the same comment in response:
“if” never gets to “then”
So you are going to vote repub instead in protest???? Pa-lease! I’m not thrilled w/Obama’s record here, but he is FAR FAR better than any repub alternative.
and i will amplify a bit with this: in 2012 our “choices” are either obama or (most likely) romney
if either obama or romney (or any other goper) wins, what do we have to look forward to in the ensuing 4 years? nothing, not one fucking thing
if ever there was a time to break the democratic party and reclaim it for the people or consign it to the dustheap of history, this is the time
reject obama and corporatism, reject the partisan duopoly, break the plutocrats stranglehold on america
i think you are wrong
there comes a time — and that time has come — where one must be prepared to absorb short-term pain to ensure long-term gain
what we are doing, what we have been doing for decades now, is succumbing to the established political structure that guarantees that the status quo persists
neither a vote for romney nor a vote for obama will change that status quo, a vote for either one reinforces the status quo
Yes, we do not have representation in Washington. Not at all. They are out to destroy us because that is what the 1% want. The 1% have decided that they can get all the labor they need overseas, so we are just an inconvenience for them now. Especially the well educated middle class. We’ve got to go. Especially the baby boomers who are costing money via Medicare and Social Security, we’ve really got to go. I am more angry with the Dems because we know what the Republicans are, but the Dems have sold out so completely they are worse than many Republicans now. Obama the worst of all. I know people want to believe, but there is nothing there. More Medicare cuts and my husband and I may have to leave the country to afford health care. Our doctors say they will retire after January, they are sick of the government sticking its hand in their pocket and telling them how to practice medicine. Maybe I’ll see them again overseas, since some say they are leaving the country. Here is what we are looking at, moving away, defaulting on our home which is underwater, renting in our new country of residence, where we can get good, affordable medical care and a low cost of living. Can’t say I’m sorry to leave. This country has gone to shit. Led by sociopaths and a propagandized, increasingly ignorant populace who doesn’t value freedom or democracy enough to fight for it. I mean fight against our corrupt government, not make war on other countries that have resources the 1% want to steal.
Great analogy. As my friend Will Williams explains, “People opt for getting hit by getting hit with ‘a left’ because it hurts a little less than getting hit with ‘a right,’ but either way you’re taking a punch.”
The time has come to realize that both parties are boxing for the corporations which fund their campaigns, and we have to stand up and fight back!
My main hope is that citizens are paying attention. I still keep hearing too many people saying: Oh, they’ll NEVER cut Soc Sec & Medicare. It’ll STILL be there forever… Hear it ALL the frickin’ time.
Wake up, sheeples….
Note to the OP: if you’re going to use the term “grand bargain,” at least please put it in quotation marks. This is FDL, not the corporate media.
I spoke with an acquaintance who administers a nursing home this morning. He told me Medicare cuts cause him to attempt to provide the same level of care with less funding. The nursing home has to make a profit. Therefore, preserving profit with less Medicare funds means cutting costs and consequently the level of care. It also causes him to work his other staff harder by making each of them do the work of two people. This is what so-called Democrats do to the elderly, who are the most vulnerable members of society and the working class.
FUCK THEM WITH A DICK BIG ENOUGH AN ELEPHANT COULD FEEL IT!!!
I know. Every time I mention it to my “used to be activist” friend he just brushes it off.
” oh, they’re not going to do that”
He says he wants to be happy until the Gestapo shows up and puts a bullet thru his head…
PS: he ain’t happy
This has been the entire rationale for the existence of the Democratic Party for 2 decades – to further moving the country to the right. The question that remains is why the “left” keeps aiding this process by continuing to vote for Democrats? If they were going to “take back” the party from the DLC/Clintonista/corporate-Dems, when exactly were they planning for that to happen? Is there anything – including the complete destruction of the social safety net – that would constitute the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back? Or, how many times will the “left” play Charlie Brown to the Democratic Party’s Lucy before they wake the fuck up and go 3rd party?
Same thing with a friend of mine who worked with developmentally disable adults. In order to make a profit, the privateer kicked all but ONE client out of the program. Now there’s only one person in the home so that the HMO fuckers can make their smack
“While this latest Democratic offer is most likely doomed, it may be an attempt to make themselves appear to be the only “reasonable” party that is willing to compromise. But the real effect will be to move the whole debate farther rightward”
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
i’ve come to believe that political partisanship within the american duopoly is a thought disorder encouraged and manipulated by the plutocrats
it accepts a framework of reality that is utterly fantastical and horribly destructive
got to remove the chains
How ironic. The Retardicans and their DINO enablers will make fertilized eggs people just like the CORPS. they’ve endowed with person hood. As for the rest of us they are busy taking away all of our rights. In the end only Corps. and fert. eggs will be people. The rest of us will be slaves, serfs or peasants, without rights.
The whole world is watching……
oh blue how i wish the whole world were watching. i fear these machinations are largely hid from view by corporate media who would rather bring us a heroic dog story than tell us what congress is up to.
yes, that about sums it up. the fertilized eggs as people will “satisfy” the religious enablers from the 99%, and the corporations as people will “satisfy” the country club republicans who are wanna-be 1%ers but never will get there & will also remain in the 99% for life. That segment of the 99% – I think they like to self-identify as the 53% or something – will be ever so happy to watch Soc Sec & Medicare be defunded, as long as they can cling to their religious belief systems, guns and/or country clubs.
The rest of us? Too bad, so sad… you’re a slave for life. Get used to it.
We need to get primary challengers for all of the members of that committee. Starting with Kerry. This I care more about deficits than you do meme goes completely against the polls for all Americans. It especially goes against the Democratic Party. It kills the only salient campaign issue working for taking back the house. Lets see what could be in the campaign ad? “They want to kill Medicare right away, I just want to peel it back a little at a time. Vote for me if you want Medicare later and with fewer providers accepting it”. Thta should get us about no votes.
A third party only works if you start at local races. If yo can start running candidates for Congress or Senate you can start to create a base. If your third party candidate were to win without a presence in the House and Senate they would end up more isolated than Carter was. The Democratic establishment fought him as hard as the Repubs.
Seems the Dems are not just “chasing” but PUSHING the r’s as well.
How many issues are dems away from really merging with the r’s? Maybe they already have but we just can’t see it because most focus too much on differences and give too much meaning to labels?
Here’s hoping that more people every day wake up to the idea that neither D nor R should be resuscitated with WE the people’s precious time and other resources.
Really, how so?
He has expanded and institutionalized Bush policies, and to this day talks out of both sides of his mouth while pursuing pro-Wall street, pro-MIC, and pro-Koch brothers policies.
If a SCOTUS nominee is all you can come up with, don’t bother. If a Repub were to nominated a real loony, the Dems would surely derail the nomination, right?
Brought to you by the Peter G. Peterson Super President.
Obama is a more effective “repub” than any with the actual label. No thanks, don’t want.
I strongly believe we don’t have a shot at setting things right until we put obama behind us.
Let Romney do to his corporate wing what obama did to us and we’re going to have a lot more support flowing to OWS and to the 99%.
Jon,
The Obama Democrats on the Super Committee also offered up the Social Security benefit cut despite that cut not affecting the deficit. Indeed after Obama saying he would protect Medicare and Social Security, it will be hard to pick the bigger flip-flopper – - – Mitt Romney or Obama.
Ending the use of CPI-W so as to use “chained CPI” and thereby get lower SS benefits is just being mean, wanting to hurt Seniors because Obama loves Pete Peterson or hated his parents.
Regarding “The 99% Declaration”, declaration number “2. Rejection of the Citizens United Case.” I’d like to see it extended to demanding the impeachment of the 5 SC justices that OK’d the complete corporate takeover of all levels of our gov’t. Make it a litmus test for any candidate of any party who wants the 99%’s support.
How about any that want our support need to follow Bernie Sanders lead and declare independence from both parties? That’s more like it.
The SuperCongress (and austerity fever in general) has been overtaken by events. I guess they’re so insulated and unaccountable they don’t know it yet.
If it isn’t a disorder, it’s at least a constriction on thought and suppression of possibilities.
also, what prevents obama from appointing a right wing nutter to the scotus?
peas!
For balance he could excuse it. Or he could outright trade it away for a get out from under investigation bargain. Might as well accept that obama is going to find new ways to screw us.
i agree w you
romney will be less destructive than obama2
1) any politican who puts their rotten hands on Medicare/Medicaid benefits should have their hands cut off. period.
2) since we are the 99%, only we can push Obama and the Dems back to the left and it CAN BE DONE.
3) the occupy movement has already changed the national dialogue-we need to add to it and make it LOUDER, STRONGER & NON STOP
How about those Democratic politicians who TRY to cut the social safety net but are prevented from doing so by the GOP? Off with their hands, too? If not, why not?
No.
At best you will be offered a few crumbs to bleed off a lil pressure from the angry left and re-solidify the new normal.
The d-n-r corporate duopoly will continue globalization, growing the empire, race to the bottom and death by a 1000 cuts.
The times the dem party played at being progressive are the anomalies not the other way around.
Don’t resuscitate, don’t push them, run them the f-ck over.
OWS has grown and is growing out of the national dialogue. It’s growing out of an international dialogue as well.
The dialogue with the 1% hasn’t changed. It’s same old, same old, the elites controlling the crumbs and withholding democracy. The 1%’ers will respond like they usually do. I don’t care what the dialogue is on msm.
People are saying the same things they have been saying for a long while. What may be changing is the way we see each other. A tipping point exists.
I agree strongly with the sentiment.
May I recommend Bulgaria, the weather is nice, people are friendly, the healthcare is decent and not expensive, food is cheap. They have sea resorts, mountains. In the city of Veliko Turnovo a lot of British expatriates live. That’s the country we are planing to retire to. Also we fell in love with the small town of Jeravna, close to the Black Sea .
Lmao….. so you are happy with what OBAMBI has done?? Oops I should say, Not Done. He is a complete sell out and a tool for the Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc……How bad must you be bent over before you realize that’s not a “hemrrhoid your feeling, ……..good grief
They are the opposition. They and the GOP are ONE. The us vs them shit is a fucking tv game show…a ruse, an illusion. They are ALL ONE BIG PARTY OF CORPORATE WHORES MASQUERADING AS POLITICIANS. ITS ALL FAKE.THEY FUCKING LAUGH AT PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT THINK THE GAME IS REAL.
OBAMA IN A NUTSHELL – “We are not going to let the republicans do this awful shit…..SO WE WILL.”