Is Obama living Iron Lady's legacy?

President Barack Obama slipped the controversial "chained CPI" formula for cutting Social Security cost-of-living increases into his 2014 budget, angering liberal Democrats in the Senate, the House, and progressive organizations.

By Emily Theroux
When Barack Obama introduced his 2014 budget today, one controversial item made it look more like the kind of austerity plan that might have been devised by formidable British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher than a fiscal proposal by a “stateside” Democratic president.

That’s because, for the first time, a Democratic president has dared to propose cutting increases in Social Security benefits — the linchpin of the American social safety net. His inclusion in the budget of “$230 billion in savings from using a chained measure of inflation for cost-of-living adjustments” broke a campaign promise not to cut benefits for current or near-term retirees. The move infuriated progressives, who delivered 2 million petition signatures to the White House yesterday, demanding that the item be expunged.

An Obama adviser termed the infamous “chained CPI” budget item a “goodwill gesture” to Republicans. The president himself, according to Politico, viewed it as serving “a tactical purpose” by proving he’s not afraid to “flout party orthodoxy.” Liberal organizations like MoveOn, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the National Organization for Women, and the Campaign for America’s Future called it a betrayal.

I call using the left (by goading them into a heated public confrontation purely to score points with his opposition) unmitigated, full-throttle political posturing.

New formula would cost retirees $112 billion

Robert Reich

President George W. Bush, barnstorming the country to hawk his much-maligned Social Security privatization plan in 2005, got zero, zilch, nada for his trouble. No one was buying Dubya’s scheme to turn the popular entitlement program into a high-stakes casino.

Obama might have paid more heed to the lessons of recent history before attempting to foist chained CPI on the American electorate. This ill-advised modification of the formula for calculating the consumer price index — a “market basket” of goods and services on which annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to Social Security are based — would result in what the AARP has understated as “not a small benefit change” for the oldest and most vulnerable retirees, as well as for military veterans.

As economist Robert Reich observed in a videotape last week introducing an anti-CCPI petition later submitted to the president:

“The idea is that when prices go up, most people substitute lower-cost items. So a true calculation of the cost of living should take account of this substitution effect. This makes no sense for seniors, because they spend 20 to 40 percent of their incomes on health care, and they can’t substitute lower-cost alternatives.”

AARP estimates that chained CPI will cost Social Security beneficiaries $112 billion and veterans $25 billion during the next decade. Because the formula compounds benefit reductions over time, it will result in an annual benefit that is “roughly $1,000 (in 2012 dollars) lower by the time a beneficiary reaches age 85,” according to AARP’s Josh Rosenblum. “Eventually, … beneficiaries would lose a month’s worth of benefits every year.”

For disabled veterans, the reduction is even more severe. "Permanently disabled veterans who started receiving disability benefits at age 30 would see their benefits cut by ... $3,200 a year at age 65," wrote AARP's David Certner, who met with Andrew Biggs of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and discussed CCPI's tax ramifications. As Biggs noted:

"You want to have (Congress) do something. You don't want to have them do something really crappy, though. ... On the Social Security side, it's not good policy. On the tax side, it's not good. At some point, you say it's not good policy."

CCPI 'an idea not befitting a Democratic president'

"Mr. President, the chained CPI is a cut to Social Security benefits that would hurt seniors. It's an idea not befitting a Democratic president. If you want to reform Social Security, make the wealthy pay their fair share by lifting the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes."

That was the message delivered by former Secretary of Labor Reich’s petition. On this side of the pond, liberal economists like Reich and  Paul Krugman agree with advocacy groups for retirees and veterans that CCPI is a raw deal for Social Security recipients.

Margaret Thatcher

Yet Thatcher, who died Monday at age 87, would no doubt have applauded Obama's heartless formula. (Thatcher, Reich tweeted, "gave Ronald Reagan the courage of his misguided conviction.") She didn't cotton to coddling "the less fortunate," whom she regarded, as many on the extreme right do, as moochers, leeches, malingerers, and reprobates. Baroness Thatcher would have been right at home with Mitt Romney's opinion of the "47 percent" of Americans who, in his flawed estimation, "believe that government has a responsibility to care for them."

Mme. Thatcher once opined:

"I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand, ‘I have a problem; it is the government’s job to cope with it,’ or ‘I have a problem; I will go and get a grant to cope with it’; ‘I am homeless, the government must house me!’ … They are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

Even tax-averse millionaires hate chained CPI
Chained CPI has a single dubious claim to fame: virtually everyone loathes it, from wealthy investors to veterans, from aged “pensioners,” as the Baroness would have called them, to hordes of boomers on the brink of retirement.

Everyone, of course, except Thatcherites “dismissing Britons in need as parasites and wastrels” (in the words of progressive blogger Richard Eskow), like-minded congressional Republicans  — and, now, our own inconstant leader. The Barack Obama of hope and change has transformed himself into someone that his once-loyal liberal base no longer recognizes.

Our peerless 2008 presidential nominee, whom we hurried to endow with shimmering waves of potentiality and purpose, turned out to be a mirage. Like the Nobel committee did a year later, we pinned on Candidate Obama our most quixotic aspirations, as the seemingly interminable nightmare of the Bush/Cheney oligarchy neared its bitter denouement.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker/AP photo

But our champion inevitably let us down. President Obama didn’t prosecute the torture-mongers for war crimes or the Wall Street banksters for the financial crisis. He didn’t slip on that pair of comfortable shoes and march with union members protesting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s legislative assault on collective bargaining rights. He didn’t advocate single-payer health insurance, fight institutional racism, or battle poverty. He didn’t swoop in to advance gay civil rights or create a pathway to citizenship for immigrants. He didn’t close Guantanamo or reject indefinite detention of prisoners or halt drone warfare, but instead took their precepts to lengths no one could have envisioned.

Despite an impressive record of policy achievements, Barack Obama is not now, nor has he likely ever been, the transformative president he vowed he would become if we worked our collective asses off to put him in office. Home safe after his successful reelection; dissed and thwarted by GOP obstructionists so many times, you’d think he swear off any notion of a “grand bargain,” he’s still trying to burnish his bipartisan cred. The far right may brand him a socialist, but Obama governs, as many on the left complain, like a predictable, center-right Clintonian Democrat or a moderate Republican — not the progressive icon we so badly needed him to be.

The 44th president talks a pretty good game, but he slow-jams the news.

Congressional firebrand Sanders takes action

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont/AP photo

I’m not alone in uttering this heresy. The din of disillusionment has been almost deafening in the blogosphere and on Twitter for the past week. If Congress cuts Social Security by implementing this callous adjustment — a deliberate and unnecessary “sacrifice” that, as Reich points out, the Republicans haven’t even asked for —– Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as members of progressive groups, have suggested there may be 2014 primary challenges to Democratic members of Congress who vote for it. As for the House, Representatives Alan Grayson and Mark Takano collected the signatures of 29 progressives who vowed to vote against any bill that includes Social Security benefit cuts.

Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida

Did Obama at least mean well, before ascending to the tantalizing pinnacle of power? We’ll have to leave that question to history. No one can imagine, before the fact, what it’s going to be like up there, in that rarefied stratum that’s only been attained by 44 Americans in the brief span of almost 237 years.

In the words of the troubadour, it’s lonely at the top, and — as I’m sure the Iron Lady could have told us if her lips weren’t sealed against anyone’s ears but Saint Ronnie’s —– as magnetic as the polar north.

Why wingnut witticisms? 'Because stupid'

Alaska's lone congressman, Don Young, was forced to apologize for referring to Latino farm workers as 'wetbacks' during a recent interview. Photo by Dennis Zaki/AlaskaReport.com.

By Emily Theroux

“Stupid is as stupid does,” said Forrest Gump’s mother, who almost had it right. “Stupid is as stupid says” might be a more accurate watchword for the recent surge in wingnut imbecility.

Governor Bobby Jindal’s “Stupid Party” has been on a tear during the past few months, ever since losing the 2012 election caused widespread existential angst among the Freeperati. What should have been a time for sober introspection has devolved into a blabfest of ideological inanity, as Republicans try to one-up each other in some cosmic open-mic Battle of the Booboisie.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

You want stupid? I’ll give you stupid — “biologically stupid,” as RNC Chairman Reince Preibus* put it during an interview with Radio Iowa. “Listen, I don’t think our platform is the issue,” opined “R-r-r-r-r-r-reince” (as Rachel Maddow calls him, with an obligatory tongue roll). “I think a lot of times it’s some of these biologically stupid things that people say, you know, that I believe caused a lot of the problems.”

Yes, Freeper fans and foes, teabaggers like Todd “RapePublican” Akin say the dumbest things, to paraphrase the late Art Linkletter — and lose elections for it. I’m sure you have a few G(ullible) O(btuse) P(arty) favorites of your own.

Just humor me, and I’ll see your “asinine” and raise you two “moronics.” (“Mindlesses”? “Myopics”? “Wacko birds?” Never mind, as Emily Litella used to say. Andiamo!)

Texas Teddy’s ‘Cruzin’ for a bruisin’ ‘ by parroting the guv

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas

“Senator Ted Cruz isn’t going to let all the stupid in Texas belong to Gov. Rick Perry,” wrote Joan McCarter of Daily Kos, on the occasion of what she called “Dumb Pronouncements from Texas About Medicaid Day.” Good ol’ boy “N*****head Rick” got the ball rolling with the following April Fool’s Day bluster about expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act:

“Texas will not be held hostage to the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand.”

And how, exactly, will three years’ worth of free Medicaid funding hurt the state’s 2,036,000 uninsured adults — at 33 percent of the population, the highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation?

Allow Cruz the Crusader to explain:

“Our friends who are saying they want health care do not realize that expanding Medicaid will worsen health care options for the most vulnerable among us in Texas. … If you want state funds to provide for our prisons and law enforcement to incarcerate violent criminals and keep them off the streets, you should be glad we’re not signing up for this Medicaid expansion … because the pressure is going to crowd out just about every other priority in the budget.”

Oh, really, Senator Newbie? You forgot to mention that the very Medicaid expansion your team turned down would have significantly increased total spending in your state’s economy, as well as real gross product, personal income, and retail sales — and saved 2,938 lives in the bargain.

Gohmert's 'cognitive' leaps: guns to gay marriage to bestiality
 

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas

Let’s hear it again for Texas, where Rep. Louie Gohmert had the huevos to compare limiting the number of rounds in a gun magazine to expanding the definition of marriage to include LGBT couples. “(W)hy would you draw the line at 10 (bullets — or one spouse)? And the problem is once you draw that limit, it’s kind of like marriage when you say, (if) it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?”

As the congressman noted when rejecting a hate crimes bill in 2009:

“If you’re oriented toward animals — bestiality — that’s not something that can be held against you … Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children — you know, there are all kinds of perversions — pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations.”

Do tell. Sounds like a 14th-inning stretch, if you don’t mind mixing your bestiality metaphors with a little baseball.

Why not ‘marry gay’ so you can scam government benefits?

Sue Everhart (Marietta Daily Journal)

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” said Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart.

“Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

Incredible! Why pretend you’re gay to “get all the benefits” of marriage? You can already score the same perks by getting hitched to someone of the opposite sex — you know, the time-honored “one man, one woman” route.

Religious rightie: ‘The gay’ behind N. Korean belligerence

Radio talker Rick Wiles

Right-wing radio haranguer Rick Wiles went all “Kim Jong-un” on marriage equality last week on his Trunews talk show.

“You know, at precisely the same time the Supreme Court is hearing these arguments on same-sex marriage, in Asia a crazy man in possession of nuclear weapons is openly saying: I have ordered our military to position our rockets on U.S. targets in Hawaii, Japan, Guam and the mainland of the United States. Could our slide into immorality be what is unleashing this madman over here in Asia to punish us? You got this happening over here and you got this happening over here: Could the two be connected?“

PFAW’s RightwingWatch.org has been all over this story, as well as the one about Wiles making his case to the fundies that the actor playing Satan on the History Channel’s The Bible series is a dead ringer for President Obama. “God guided the hand of the makeup artist and blinded the eyes of everybody on the movie set while it was being recorded” so no one would notice the resemblance — which just goes to show you, Wiles concludes, that “the man in the White House is a devil from hell.”

A month ago, Wiles sounded the tocsin to fellow Obamaphobes: “Let me remind the gay rights fanatics, North Korea plans to send a nuclear warhead our way. There’s a terrible price to pay for outright rebellion against the holy God of Israel, and your sins are going to get us all killed.”

As my friend Jim would say, “I’m sick and effin’ tired of being blamed for wars and natural disasters.”

‘And out of his mouth comes a-bubblin’ crude — Texas tea’

Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas

They sure do make ‘em witless in the Lone Star state! From freshman congressman Steve Stockman‘s Twitter feed gushed the following “Texas crude”:

“The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.”

Later, Stockman topped off a string of snarky oil-themed tweets with this trenchant observation:

“Energy-rich oil propelled civilization into the 21st century. But liberals want to turn back the clock to inefficient Bronze Age wind power.”

These witticisms don’t seem so slick when you consider last weekend’s pipeline leak in suburban Mayflower, Arkansas. If enough of that “black gold” wells up out of the ground, from enough hidden pipelines, under enough subdivisions whose residents were never informed the pipelines were there, Stockman’s “civilization” is going to wind up blasted back to the Stone Age.

* * *

See more “fun Freeper facts” below:

• Ann Coulter links smoking and sodomy in bizarre rant to Geraldo

• Alaska congressman casually slings ethnic slur at migrant workers
  

• El Rushbo: Food stamps are taxpayer-scamming ‘buy-beer program’

• Fox: First Lady turns Easter Egg Roll into ‘fat camp’ to torture kids

* Reince Priebus, according to fallen Fox News pundit Dick Morris, will be featured in a new “outreach” ad targeting Latino voters. Priebus is expected to thank “those Latin Americans who’ve come to the United States to help us build our country, to help harvest our food, to help make our economy work (italics mine).” Forget “biological stupidity” — how about “ethnic stereotype stupidity”?