Just as aside, My mother recently got a notice from the SS Admin that praise be to god her SS was going up to keep up with the cost of living. I assume other seniors got the same letter.

When you wade thru all pages you find out your “increase” is about a dollar a month. Twelve dollars a year! Mom can finally get those new hardward floors she has been saving for.

My thought was just if they had not sent out this notice they probably could have bumped that up to $1.25 on the savings from the printing and postage.

From Huffpost–Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

I had to laugh at Moveon.org’s response. They were the biggest Obama cheerleaders and told the rest of us to shut the f*ck up about criticizing Obama. Now they think they have leverage in this fight when Obama no longer faces re-election. S*ck it b*tches! He’s your guy and you own this.

The Feds need to completely calculate CPI-E (for elderly) and divulge that figure.

Then, if they dare, they should decide how much to “penalize” that figure for the elderly, and divluge that as well. Then do the cut and be accountable.

CPI-E should be the starting point for all that’s germane to the elderly.

“President Obama agreeing to this change is a serious betrayal of the coalition which just re-elected him …”

He can’t help it. It’s who he is and what he does.

Once again, his betrayal of his base will lead to resuscitation of the republican party. The more effective evil strikes again.

Headline for November 2014: “Republicans triumph as democrats stay home again“.

Obama is a bad president and a bad person.

I am so mad and I have already called my senators and congressman. Obama will ruin the 2014 House elections. This would make him a very bad Deem and president. He holds all the cards and gives them away. He is no politian and we should have elected Hillary!!!

coach bill has it right.

and i have been telling anyone who would listen for the last 4 years that obamas main goal is destroying the democratic party.

you saw how nothing got accomplished the first 2 years when dems had a strong hold on all 3 branches when suddenly it took 60!!!!! votes in the senate to get anything done.

and remember these bush tax cuts were passed by a 52 person republican senate majority!

so,,,,obama caves into republican policy every chance he gets and democrats stay home in 2010 and after obama with a landslide election and 70% approval the tea bags and the right wingers rise stronger than ever having been completely silenced just 2 short years earlier.

he throws the first debate rather than expose romney and how the elites really function in this country and destroys all the democrats national momentum.

now..with these tax cuts expiring UNDER LAW he proceeds to cut the SS benefits of the most needy while ensuring the wealthy contribute nothing!!

the entire country polls AGAINST this plan AND SUDDENLY ITS THE DEMOCRATS THAT ARE BLAMED WHEN OBAMA WAS SITTING THERE WITH all the leverage!

republicans can now actually avoid even having to vote for this obama plan since only about 30 of the safest republicans congressmen need even vote to make it a majority.

result?
come 2014 the democrats Absolutely LOSE THE SENATE and suddenly obama gets to pass every single republican piece of legislation he can with cover of republicam majority.

and who will bet a dime that the 60 votes senate requirement never again sees the light of day once this happens?

Did you really think that you were going to get a full loaf? Here we go again–and I thought that his experience with Romney gave him a spine.

It escapes me as to why Obama is playing with social security, which is not entitlement spending, but a liability to people who have paid into this system.

Whenever I hear Obama and Pelosi saying they are standing firm on a principle I know that they are about to cave on that principle. So when I heard both say social security is off the table because it has nothing to do with the deficit I knew ssi was getting cut. Obama shld be ashamed of himself, to go out and ask millions of people to trust him to do the right thing and then go back and cut their benefits takes some brass ones.

” Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools. Five long years I thought you were my man, But I found out I’m just a link in your chain. You got me where you want me, I ain’t nothing but a fool. You treated me mean, oh you treated me cruel. Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools. ” Aretha Franklin version We’ll Mr. President we see, from these polls, the American citizenry isn’t really interested in you and Speaker Boehner coming together. We’re more interested ( across the generations ) in seeing that 60-70% of us don’t fall apart in our golden years. In the words of your brain dead predecessor, ” Fool me once, fool on you. Fool me twice, we won’t get fooled again. ” Please end the bartering and enjoy the holidays. We’ll be looking for a real, fair and better deal in the coming months. Something along the lines of; New Deal 2.0.

You have to accept now that he does not particularly care about what history thinks about him. So much for the lesser of two evils.

It sort of tells you that the existence of that “fund” is somewhat meaningless. Congress can do whatever they like. Period. End of discussion.

That he cannot run anymore is the ONLY reason any of these shills are comfortable criticizing him.

Don’t forget the disabled and the widows and orphans. Remember, this is Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance.

And, as someone pointed out on another thread, altering the CPI may affect federal employees as well.

Hillary is to the right of Obama.

It is not a matter of either spine or brains. He has wanted to cut social safety nets since before his inauguration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011504114.html

And this is not unique to Obama. It is right out of the DLC playbook.

I disagree. IMO, he is very concerned about how history views him or he would not have gone to such lengths to associate himself with Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan or his wife with Jackie Kennedy.

Remember the partial train ride between Illinois and D.C., ala Lincoln? The Lincoln menu for lunch on Inauguration Day 2009? Etc.

Delusional.

“Congress can do whatever they like…”

… just as long as it benefits the elites and screws over the rest of us.

you mean he seriously thinks he is FDR? He is in for a big surprise when history starts calling him a nobody a few years from now.

somehow, someway, someday, we have to change this dynamic.

I articulated my problems with the deal via email just this morning. For anyone who’s interested, the address is here.

Obviously Americans oppose Obama’s plans on Social Security! The voted for Republicans because the American people want Social Security to be privatized! Clearly they want the Social Security entitlement slashed and ended because they elected only Republicans who are 100% promising to slash Social Security to take control of the House where all spending originates.

Obama should follow the will of the voters on the spending by agreeing with John Boehner who represents the will of the voters to slash Social Security!

And if the voters do not want Social Security cut, they have a chance in less than two years to vote out every Republican who succeeds in slashing Social Security, and then we can have a real debate over what kind of benefit Americans are willing to pay for during their working lives as they raise their families and then as they are forced out of or must leave the workforce.

I do not recall any Democrats running against Republicans elected to the House who promised to hike taxes to boost the Social Security benefit for survivors and dependents of disabled and dead workers and to ensure those who are no longer able to work for any reason to live respectably.

The idea that an elite should overrule the will of the voters as manifest by Congress is undemocratic. Even if the majority is wrong in their decisions to vote, we must respect the decisions and consequences of the people in their voting decisions.

John Boehner was elected president? Eric Cantor is president? Paul Ryan is president?

Why did the voters vote for and elect Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan if they did not want Social Security cut?? Those three and all the other Republicans in the House voted to cut Social Security! How many were defeated just a month ago? If all or most were not defeated, then doesn’t that means a huge share of the voters want Social Security cut?

Why are the voters not held to account for their votes? Shouldn’t voters get the Social Security cuts they wanted by voting for Republicans to put them in control of the House by a significant number, twice.

If the voters think the Republicans are lying about cutting Social Security just to get to the right of Democrats, well, time to make sure voters know the Republicans really do want to cut Social Security. If the voters think Republicans have overreached by cutting Social Security then they can vote the Republicans out just like they voted out Democrats who did health reform just like they promised in 2008.

Nothing is fixed in stone. If the voters do not want Social Security cut then they can vote for candidates who promise to have Social Security benefits increased.

The House is where the voters express their views on tax and spend.

Didn’t LBJ, Eugene McCarthy, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry “destroy the Democratic Party” with only Obama resurrecting it? It was while they were president or running for president that Democrats slowly lost control of Congress. Only Obama provided the spark to restore the Democratic Party to relevance and action, rather than being a dam trying to hold back change.

Oh, mulp… I understand your grief but you were warned months in advance as to exactly what would happen when Obama was reselected.

It must feel terrible having spent so much time trying to urge, cajole and harangue people into voting for Obama only to watch him do this… but that’s just something you’ll have to learn to live with.

A learning experience… hopefully…

Just lemme know under which freeway ramp TBogg’s refrigerator box and cat food stash are so that I can laugh my ass off at the plight of a very popular blogger post-Obama.

Obama “saved” the Democrat Party by becoming a Republican just as Johnson “saved” Vietnamese villages by destroying them. Overheard some queen in the gym gloating about how on the ropes the Republicans were but when I reminded him that this only gave the Democrats further license to move to the right into the breach, leaving there no political voice to the left of right, his smile turned upside down to a frown.

If Romney had offered this deal, dems would have been up in arms, but you see, they have cover now. We all knew this was going to happen, didn’t we? I did not vote for any incumbent democrat in Michigan and never will again. The more effective evil will destroy what’s left of the New Deal and those who held their nose and voted this cretin back in will have to own part of the blame. We were warned.

I have a feeling the huge opposition by Moveon.com etc. (a surreptitious propaganda arm for the 1%) to the cuts to social security could be a ruse to extend the George Bush tax cuts for the top tax brackets.

Basically, I think they are going to extend the Bush tax cuts–which is a reduction of progressive taxation on the top income brackets–by taking social security as hostage.

Bush cut the top tax rate from 47% to 35% in 2000s. Now, they are saying, if you want to preserve your social security, you have to make permanent those Bush tax cuts. Does that sound like a good compromise to you?

All the fuss that has been created over the ss cuts tells me that ss is currently in the process of being taken as hostage in order to extend the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $1 million.

Make no mistake, the most important item here that matters to the top income earners is the steep Bush cuts to their income tax RATE, from 47% top 35%. That is a structural change, that I suspect Obama and Boehner want to preserve above everything else.

So Obama is now going to say–”since you are so opposed to cuts to ss, I am going to preserve ss for you, but in return, we will have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% (along with everyone else).”

I predict: that Boehner and Obama have an understanding, and that the following will be the final “agreement”:

1.) Extend the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $1 million–the key and central goal of both Boehner and Obama, for that preserves the deepest, structural, curtailment of the previously progressive tax code in favor of the top 1%.
2.) Eliminate various “loopholes” and deductions on the top income earners, and call that the tax increase on the rich that will raise revenue.
3.) Not cut social security and say that we will have to extend the Bush tax cuts on the top 1% in return for preserving ss and extending the unemployment benefits etc.

For a moment, I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt when he said he would veto any extension of the Bush tax cuts for the top 1%. But if 1,2 and 3 are correct, if my layman’s predictions above are correct, then Obama is, as we have suspected all along, indeed a deeply Republican politician whose purpose has been to restructure taxes deeply in favor of the 1%.

I have the sense that if I am in the top 1% income bracket, the Bush tax cuts from 47% to 35% is the most important, deepest, structural change to the tax code that I would want to preserve above all in all this negotiations. That is key. And it is simple. If Obama lets that happen–extends Bush tax cuts on the 1% (even if they are extended for those earning less than $400,000)–then I know that has been Obama’s intention all along, if even I can predict the outcome of his “negotiations.”

Well, Obama has to go big to create enough backlash against the Dems for the Repubs to get back in power, so, yeah, it’s all about Wall Street, the Wealthy, and the Destruction of the real Dem Party.

Leveraged buyout to make it the Democratic Corporatist Party (DCP).

Since 2007 actually.

Uh, I’m pretty sure that everyone didn’t get a say in Cantor’s re election or for that matter Ryan or Boehner’s.
Unlike the presidency, the House isn’t a national vote. So a Cantor re election is hardly a national mandate to cut Social Security.

Obama Dems GOP only care about the uberich Wall st wants they don’t care what everyone else wants…