If the stimulus and banking bailout weren’t controversial enough, the summit fills some entitlement reform critics with dread, as they fear it could speed calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.For we dwellers within blog-land, Josh Marshall may function as the canary in the coal mine. He has always done remarkable work on the issue of Social Security. On the other hand, during the primaries he became so hooked on Obama-flavored kool-aid that he started to inject and to snort the stuff. If he has an Alec-Guinness-at-the-end-of-Kwai moment -- "Good Lord, what have I done?" -- then there's hope.
Strikingly, however, Obama appears to be getting unusual room to maneuver on entitlements by most of his liberal allies. On the subject of entitlement reform, in fact, Obama’s honeymoon continues — at least in the unlikely precincts of the Democratic left, a counterintuitive development that has buoyed the spirits of reformers who would like to see drastic changes in the way Social Security works.
Opponents of significant changes to Social Security benefits were jarred in January, when the then-president-elect echoed George W. Bush’s claim of an entitlement “crisis,” warning of “red ink as far as the eye can see” in Social Security and Medicare. Obama promised that those programs would be a “central part” of his plan to reduce the federal deficit.
Update: Actually, Marshall may be approaching his "Colonel Nicholson" moment. Look at his column right now. First, he front-pages these comments from a reader...
At what point do you think Obama fans will dispense with this weird fantasy that your reader BR indulges in about what Obama is really thinking and what his real plans are?...
But there has to come a point where people stop pretending that Obama is some superintelligent ninjalike political operator who's playing the game at a level the rest of us novices cannot even comprehend and instead start holding him accountable for the decisions that he or his subordinates make.Next, TPM publishes this important investigative piece by Zachary Roth, who highlights Obama's choice of Robert Wolf for his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. This man is literally the wolf guarding the sheep: Wolf heads UBS.
When Geithner was nominated a lot of people complained that he was a poor choice because he was far too beholden to the big Wall Street players and their interests. Now it appears that he's trying to do everything in his power to protect those very people at the expense of the American tax payer. For better or worse this falls squarely on Obama's shoulders--as it should.
It's the subject of a widening federal investigation, being conducted by both DOJ and the IRS, into its offshore private banking services, focused on allegations that it helped an estimated 19,000 wealthy clients evade billions in taxes.There's no place for a Paul Krugman or a James Galbraith on that advisory board. But a slimeball like Wolf is welcome.
Marshall seems to be awakening from his slumber. Will Moulitsas or Atrios or Aravosis or the DUmmies notice the screaming alarm clock...?
5 comments:
Good news! A post at Uppity Woman discusses an opinion piece in Bloomberg that points out the health care reform language put into the stimulus bill courtesy of Tom Daschle. To whit:
One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs.
The Bloomberg piece goes on to quote Daschle as saying health reform "will not be pain free" and states that seniors will have to "be more accepting of conditions that come with age instead of treating them."
We don't have to worry about Social Security because Medicare will let us all die at a certain age when it become not "cost effective" to keep us alive. So, no worries.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs
http://uppitywoman08.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/ruin-your-health-with-the-obama-stimulus-plan-better-yet-just-die/
old dem
When I said, on one prog blog, that Obama wanted to privatize social security, I was called a liar and a racist. I know, I know...and it's not even that I am such a know-it-all, I was going by what he said in the campaign. The ability of the Obots to completely filter out anything they don't want to hear from or about Obama is indestructible, it appears. Amazing stuff, that O-Aid.
I've been following the SS debate forever (well, 20 years or more), and as is relatively well known in that debate, there was a lower limit number for gdp growth that would assure the fiscal soundness of SS indefinitely without any changes whatsoever.
That number is 2.1% average gdp growth.
If other trend lines remained the same (growth in the elderly population, growth in the worker population based in part on immigrants (younger, and more children per household, etc.)), then all that had to happen to keep the SS fund solvent over the next 50 years or more, without any changes in any scheduled benefits or CPI adjustments, was that gdp had to average 2.1% real growth.
The long-term gdp growth average was 3.5%, so it seemed that achieving a 2.1% average growth in the gdp was a no-brainer.
Now, we see how there could be a shortfall from even that modest number. First, throw in a couple of years of NEGATIVE growth, in a contractionary economy. When, or even if, we return to growth, we may well see very low rates of growth.
Therefore, what was once seen as a guaranteed (albeit low) gdp increase figure may now be beyond the ability of the economy to achieve, which would indeed require adjustments to SS's scheduled taxes and/or benefit schedules.
That's the math, NOW.
XI
XI: Actually, it was already known back in 2000 that the benefit structure would have to be changed around 2038 even with a projected wage-based adjustment of 3% a year for the next 75 years [Soc. Sec. Admin projection] and a projected market growth of 3.6% The required cut would have been by 20%, which would have subsequently maintained it over infinity.
There are many simple adjustments that could be made: indexing to prices rather than wages (there are several models of this referred to here: http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/fall05/w11406.html), lifting the cap on contributions, cutting off benefits past a certain income point (after all, Soc Sec was intended as an income suppliment for people who needed it to live decently, not for people to be able to buy that second fur coat)...it could even be made progressive instead of regressive (after all, even the arch-conservative economist Adam Smith admitted that historically, only progressive taxes have been proven to work). Of course, these all have to be considered in relation to each other, so they don't work at cross-purposes.
All this aside, in the period of 1930-2005 (which includes the negative growth years from the Great Depression - '30 (-8.6%) '31 -6.4%), '32(-13.0%), '38 (-3.4%) -plus '46 (-11.0%) and '82 (-3.4%), and eight recessions on top of that) GDP growth averaged approx. 3.575% which is (of course) well over two-thirds higher than that 2.1% figure.
Sergei Rostov
These Obots are like Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse Now. We are unworthy to fathom the depths of Obama's calculations. If we could only interact on his level we would understand that he's pulling this great ninjutsu and all would be calm.
Post a Comment