During the 2012 presidential campaign, liberal Democrats said that, although they had reservations about Barack Obama’s continuing support for Republican policies, they could not vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. If they voted with the Green Party, the Democrats said, Mitt Romney might win. If Mitt Romney became President, he would do terrible things, like cutting Social Security.
Within the few weeks since his victory on Election Day, however, Barack Obama has begun to enact many of the policies that Democrats said made Mitt Romney an intolerable choice for the White House. Robert Reich, a Democrat who urged Americans to re-elect Obama, is now waking up to this reality, noting that, although Obama promised to protect Social Security from budget cuts if he was re-elected, Obama is now offering to help Republicans with their plans to cut Social Security.
Robert Reich’s method of dealing with this betrayal from Obama is to feign surprise. Reich is pretending that he had no way of knowing that Barack Obama would break his campaign promises and embrace the Republican agenda, even though that’s what Obama did soon after he was elected President the first time back in 2008. Reich asks, “Why is the President back to making premature and unnecessary concessions to Republicans?” Reich knows the answer, of course: Barack Obama makes promises to liberals while campaigning, even though he has no intention of keeping those promises.
Of course, other Democrats may be reacting to Obama’s quick flip flop on Social Security in different ways. I’m curious as to how those Democrats who voted to re-elect Obama are dealing with this latest betrayal. If you’re a Democrat who voted for Obama this year with the presumption that Obama would keep his promise to protect Social Security from budget cuts, please take the poll and leave a comment below to share what’s now going on in your mind.
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Obama has an incredible knack for helping the GOP out when it has a weak negotiating position. There IS NO DEBT CRISIS, this entire discussion is worse than useless, draining time and energy away from much more important discussions like finance reform, unemployment, infrastructure maintenance and climate change.
Precision in thought and speech is always a good thing, so first let’s be precise in discussing this. To date, as far as I know, Obama has not offered to “cut Social Security.” Rather, he floated an offer to replace the conventional CPI (consumer price index) metric with another flavor, termed the ‘chained CPI,’ in future calculations of annual cost of living increases in Social Security. Reasonable people can differ regarding which CPI metric is most appropriate to apply; me, I’m opposed to using the chained CPI. Here’s why. The conventional CPI metric attempts to measure how much more one would need to spend in order to maintain one’s current quality of life; if the price of beef (for instance) increases by 5%, then you’ll need to spend 5% more in order to maintain your beef-eating quality of life. Proponents of the chained CPI metric, on the other hand, point out that if the price of beef rises while the price of chicken (supposedly a reasonable substitute for beef) stays flat, then one can (and perhaps will) buy more chicken and less beef, and so will not need to increase spending by as much as the conventional CPI would suggest (chicken and beef are ‘chained’ in the chained CPI calculation). Same thing for, say, cable service and satellite service. There are, perhaps, some merits (in some circumstances) to the chained CPI versus conventional CPI, as well as some demerits…it is good to remember that inflation, unlike, say, air temperature, is an abstraction, not a physical variable, and thus, as I said before, reasonable people can differ regarding how to measure it (and thus will differ somewhat in the values they measure). My concern is that chained CPI has a ‘slippery slope’ component which conventional CPI does not. Today, beef is chained to chicken. Maybe tomorrow tofu (shudder) is chained to chicken. Ultimately, Soylent Green is chained to tofu, and before you know it we’re all eating each other to try to stay alive (I kid, but you get the idea). What’s chained to what is a decision made by faceless bureaucrats, who may be susceptible to political pressure. Under Reagan would ketchup be chained to vegetables? The take-home is that chained CPI strays from the principle of determining how much more you need to spend in order to maintain the same quality of life. Instead it purports to measure the extra spending needed to maintain a ‘good enough’ equivalent of your current quality of life, where somebody I don’t know decides what’s ‘good enough’ for me. Personally, I’ll pass on that, thanks anyway. So no, I don’t support Obama’s proposal to substitute the chained CPI for the conventional CPI.
But that said, I would next add this: I’ve been in enough negotiations over the course of my life to know that it ain’t over till the volumetrically challenged person sings. Sometimes in negotiations people tender offers which they don’t in fact want to see accepted, and even believe won’t be accepted. Maybe this is one of those moves. I don’t know, and neither do you. Judging a negotiation mid-way through the process is like judging a half-completed painting, or a hand of poker still in progress. I’m reserving judgement until I see what happens. I do get that a lot of good people are nervous about this gambit of Obama’s…I’ll be the first to admit that he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory in previous rounds of negotiations with Republicans (and here I’m being polite). I’m just saying I can’t personally form a strong opinion until I see what happens.
Bill, that’s a long statement, but it isn’t precise at all. It’s evasive and dishonest. Yes, Barack Obama has offered to reduce Social Security payments to old and disabled Americans. That’s means cuts to Social Security. Cuts.
The Obama-Biden reelection campaign specifically promised to keep Social Security cuts off the table. Now, Obama himself put Social Security cuts on the table.
It would not be precise of me to say rhat Barack Obama is a stinking liar, because I have never smelled him. It is absolutely precise to say that Obama is a liar, however, and a despicable one.
The amount of money people were promised after they pit in their hard earned money will be reduced under the Obama proposal. That’s a cut, Bill, and no, reasonable, honest people can’t disagree about that.
Please recall, Jae, that I said “reasonable” people can differ.
I’m sorry you find my statement “evasive and dishonest.” But then, I’ve long since abandoned all hope that people who disagree with each other can have thoughtful and polite discussions via the intertubes. Perhaps we should just restrict ourselves to calling people names.
Bill, do you disagree with the substance of what jae said, or do you simply take offense at the tone? The discussion might be more thoughtful if you would respond to the substance.
Well, J., if the substance of Jae’s comment is that he finds Obama despicable and he feels that anyone who disagrees with him on this is equally so, then I agree completely; he does, and he does.
If, on the other hand, his substance is that (1) Obama has violated a campaign promise not to offer to cut Social Security, and (2) is therefore a liar, then I can’t say whether I really agree with him or not on point 1. I honestly don’t know whether Obama said that or not (though I’ll agree that Obama promised not to cut SS…a different thing than flapping one’s gums in a negotiating session, as I’ve already discussed), and even if he did I have already opined at length on my view that reasonable people can differ regarding whether what he has proposed constitutes a cut. On Jae’s point #2 all I can really say is that anyone who is shocked…SHOCKED…to conclude that a politician’s actions are out of keeping with his campaign rhetoric should probably grow a pencil-thin moustache in order to even better imitate Captain Renault.
And, to summarize, the substance of my own argument is that it ain’t over till it’s over, so mayhap we shouldn’t get our panties in a wad just yet.
Bill, if you regard Barack Obama’s campaign promises as not worthy of trust, then what criteria did you use to decide that Obama would be a better President than Romney? Obama is now, after all, implementing many of Romney’s promised policy items.
Yeah, let’s wait til it’s too late, like we did with climate change – let’s wait til social security is taken away, oh and medicare too – before we get upset about having put all that money in for our entire working lives only to have it taken away before we can even use it. Great idea.
Whatever they do to social security is okay, but, by all means, don’t touch the military budget! We need more bombs and guns and bullets and death to keep the American dream alive!