While you might not think it from watching cable news the reality is that the American people overwhelmingly believe protecting Medicare and Social Security benefits is more important than deficit reduction. According to Pew Research, 55 percent think keeping Medicare and Social Security is more important than reducing the deficit. Only 34 percent of Americans [...]

President Obama wants to cut Social Security benefits as part of a grand bargain and he is working hard to get Congressional Democrats behind his proposal. The only thing preventing the program from being cut is House Republicans’ unwillingness to accept a deal. Fortunately, for people who care about Social Security there are three main [...]

I would like to call cutting Social Security by adopting the chained CPI the worst idea seriously being considered in Washington, but that title already belongs to raising the Medicare eligibility age. Chained CPI is at least a strong contender for second place. First, cutting Social Security at this time is incredibly misguided because the [...]

Currently Obama has gotten the political upper hand in the sequester fight by blaming the Republicans for the lack of willingness to compromise. Fortunately for Obama, much of the decision about the sequester has been focused on the possible impact of the cuts, who is to blame, and the lack of negotiation. Lucky for the [...]

While some polls show that Americans in general support the vague idea of reducing government spending, when ask about specific programs, it’s a completely different story. According to Pew Research, foreign aid is the only program that a majority of Americans don’t want to see spending on increased or remain the same. From Pew: This [...]

Just in case you haven’t gotten the message already, the White House wants to make sure everyone knows President Obama supports cutting Social Security benefits. They are even bragging about Obama’s desire to cut Social Security benefits on the official White House blog: And he’s laid out a specific plan to do more. His proposal [...]

Just in case you were worried that Washington might have accidentally stopped talking about Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson, or the deficit for a whole day the dynamic duo is trying to grab the spotlight today with a brand new deficit outline. Not surprisingly much of their proposed deficit reduction would come from cutting Medicare and [...]

Both the upcoming sequestration cuts and the end of the current continuing resolution will give President Obama another chance to push for a grand bargain.  Thus the administration is laying out what it will and will not consider as part of a “balanced approached.” Apparently the pushback against raising the Medicare eligibility age was strong [...]

No bad idea supported by President Obama is ever permanently defeated, it is at best simply stopped temporarily. In a statement today about the sequestration cuts Obama wanted to make it clear that the proposed entitlements cuts that he has previously backed are still on the table. In fact Obama made sure to repeat this [...]

In roughly a month Washington’s focus will again turn to attempts to get a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction when the sequestration cuts are set to go into effect, so the Business Roundtable is already laying down their goals. Their proposal for Social Security and Medicare reform including adopting the chained-CPI and increasing the eligibility [...]