"Liberals didn't kill Obama's Social Security cuts: Republicans did."
"The reference is to President Obama's decision to remove the proposal to reduce the annual cost of living adjustment to Social Security benefits. The proposal would have reduced benefits by roughly 0.3 percentage points annually against current law. This cut is cumulative so that after ten years it implies a cut of roughly 3.0 percent, after twenty years, 6.0 percent, and for someone who lives to collect benefits for thirty years the cut would be 9.0 percent. (Obama's proposal includes some offsets, so the actual cuts would be somewhat less, especially for the oldest elderly.) "The point of the piece is that Obama would have gone with this proposal, and probably still would today, if the Republicans were prepared to make some concessions on revenue. This is the logic of saying that the Republicans killed the plan, not liberals. "However, this is just half the picture. The Republicans did not force President Obama to take the proposal out of his budget, liberals did. Because of a massive outpouring of opposition from across the country, Democratic members of Congress, who have to run for re-election, urged President Obama not to include the proposal in his 2015 budget." Dean Baker full: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/wapo-tells-liberals-that-they-have-no-political-power-the-case-of-social-security -- Wobbly times http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com.au/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
