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Bob Corker says Social Security chained CPI will be part of upcoming debt ceiling fight
It appears Social Security will be left alone in any immediate deal to address the fiscal cliff. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has dropped his demand to include a Chained-CPI Social Security benefit cut in a smaller package due to opposition by Senate Democrats. From Huffington Post:
Tense “fiscal cliff” negotiations on Capitol Hill Sunday inched forward slightly as Republican senators agreed to take Social Security cuts off their list of immediate demands.
The cut that GOP leaders had proposed — picking up on a now-defunct offer from President Barack Obama — involved basing Social Security cost-of-living adjustments on a chained consumer price index (CPI), which grows more slowly than current measures of inflation and therefore would give seniors less in benefits as time went on.
Social Security is only safe in the very short term though. Now that President Obama has officially backed it giving the Republicans what they see as political cover, they are intent on getting it.
Any smaller deal to avert the fiscal cliff will likely only delay the sequestration cuts for a few months. This will probably result in an attempt to find a permanent solution to the sequestrations being tied in with a potential debt ceiling fight in early 2013. That is when the GOP plans to renew their push for Social Security cut, according to Bob Corker:
“We do expect it to be part of the debt ceiling negotiations,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), in a signal that extending the nation’s borrowing limit — which the United States has nearly reached — will not be part of any imminent deal.
Social Security has not been saved from cuts, but it appears to have gotten another temporary reprieve. It will probably only be a few months before it is under attack again.
Photo by World Economic Forum under Creative Commons License
16 Comments
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Oh, this was the plan all along: Wait until the debt ceiling is hit.
This is pretty much what I figured unless they resolved both fights at the same time. Plus Obama wants to give it up. Sucks!
Agreed. THis is only the preliminaries.
Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.
This temporary reprieve will give Obama et al., time to soften up the base with the standard propagandistic template: “This isn’t the best deal but given the crazy Republicans we must do something, yadda, yadda.
Time to threaten every Dem with a primary challenge.
I had the sound turned on when I watched Obama’s announcement. Did you? Please, listen to what the guy says!
C-CPI is a trophy for O and the thugs. It will happen sooner or later.
Maybe now our government can turn away from the deficit and work on a real problem.
Let’s not count Grandma’s cat food cans until we know how many she can afford.
Well put!!!! And, stay away from the Friskies “Tuna and Egg.”
Thanlks Oscar. I needed a good laugh this afternoon. Working ’til 5PM
Sorry, I don’t have a sound card in my work computer.
@ docp: Don’t you feel bad now????? :-)
Just take it out when O comes on. You already know the drill.
IMHO, “chaining the CPI,” was never on the table for the lame duck Congress until Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The duopoly is relatively desperate to provide stimulus. It’s a measure of their hubris that infrastructure spending was never a major part of the debate. An even better measure of their hubris imho is that marijuana legalization were never mentioned. Those two issues have a lot of traction, a lot of trade value.
A major wingnut funding source, the NRA,/ gun and ammo manufacturers has been hurt. That’s a plus.
More than anything else, what might have prevented chaining the CPI, was Romney’s ads attacking Obama for cutting Medicare. It was a wake-up call to Congressional Dems about how the GOP will use any vote against Social Security/Medicare against them. IMHO, another huge issue was that the elites had to have a deal to preserve the illusion of the “fiscal cliff.” To have no deal, and have the world not end would have hurt their credibility.
I overheard some retired military worrying that retired pay will come under that chained CPI stuff. They also get S.S. It is little more than a guess, but I doubt that middle-income Republicans favor this.
Has anyone heard many `real` average humans favoring chained CPI. Not twitter streams or broadcast media. Real people seem to have heard of the issue, and perhaps, are just as bipartisan as the politicians – but have an opposing view.