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Tag: grand bargain
How Paul Ryan Helped Save Medicare And Social Security By Trying To Gut Them

How Paul Ryan Helped Save Medicare And Social Security By Trying To Gut Them

President Obama’s new budget will not include a proposal to implement “chained CPI” to slow the growth of Social Security benefits, according to White House officials.

And there’s one man who deserves most of the credit for making sure there will be no cuts to benefits to seniors until at least 2017 — ironically the politician who has worked the hardest to reduce the promises made to America’s retirees — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

The president had included the reform measure in his 2013 budget as an attempt to provoke a so-called Grand Bargain with House Republican leaders. Such a deal would have required them to end some tax breaks for the rich. That was never going to happen and the White House’s acceptance of this fact helps focus the 2014 elections on votes most Republicans in Congress have taken in the past to cut both Social Security and Medicare, thanks to Paul Ryan.

The chairman of the House Budget Committee’s first budget plan in 2011 not only privatized Social Security — a proposal that President George W. Bush could not even get a vote on when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress — it remade Medicare into a voucher program that radically shifted the financial burden to seniors without doing much to reduce the overall cost of health care. The plan was so popular — at least with Republican donors — that it instantly made Ryan a national hero and possible presidential candidate.

The chances of enacting the plan with President Obama in office were zero, but Ryan, buoyed by his new stardom, helped guide House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) into a debt-limit crisis that shook global markets still dizzy from the financial crisis. House Republicans demanded a dollar in cuts for every dollar the debt ceiling was raised and President Obama obliged with a plan that not only included chained CPI, but also raised the Medicare eligibility age. To sell this plan to Democrats, the president demanded a small percentage of new revenues by ending tax breaks on upper-income Americans.

Boehner was about to make the deal, when Ryan “dropped a bomb” on it, fearing it would guarantee Obama’s re-election. Instead both sides settled on the sequester.

Ryan released another budget in 2012 that dropped Social Security privatization and added a public option to his Medicare plan.  Desperate for Tea Party credibility, Mitt Romney selected Ryan to be his running mate after being forced to embrace the congressman’s budget during the primary. Together, the two men re-elected the president.

After Obama’s re-election, Speaker Boehner reportedly tried to take the offer Ryan had rejected in 2011. The president told him was off the table, and likely will be for the rest of his term unless Republicans consider higher taxes on the rich, which they won’t.

In the past two years, the deficit has been cut in half and is projected to be even lower within 10 years as a share of GDP than if the Simpson-Bowles debt plan or Paul Ryan’s first budget had become law. If the reforms to Medicare implemented in the Affordable Care Act continue to slow the growth of costs as they have since 2010, our long-term debt crisis may be solved, despite Paul Ryan’s best efforts.

Gang of Six Talks Excite Pundits, Dismay Left

The Gang of Six is back:

The president appeared in the White House briefing room hours after the “Gang of Six” briefed senators on its plan to cut the deficit by $3.7 trillion over 10 years, in part by raising $1 trillion in new revenue. Obama’s decision to align himself with the Senate package aims to further marginalize House Republicans, who have resisted any debt plan that includes new revenues.

“We have a Democratic president and administration that is prepared to sign a tough package that includes both spending cuts, modifications to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare that would strengthen those systems and allow them to move forward, and would include a revenue component,” Obama said. “We now have a bipartisan group of senators who agree with that balanced approach. And we’ve got the American people who agree with that balanced approach.”

The introduction of a bipartisan deficit-cutting plan, which was negotiated over the past seven months, revived hopes yet again of striking a “grand bargain” ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt limit.

But with only two weeks remaining, its late entry into the debt negotiations could derail the proposal.

There are reportedly over 50 senators–and perhaps as many as 60–on board with the plan. With Bill Clinton ratcheting up pressure on Republicans Monday evening by implying Obama has the constitutional option available to him, a precious few conservatives may finally be coming around to a sane deal.

President Obama praised the development, calling the plan “a very significant step” toward “the potential for bipartisan consensus,” as the plan is “broadly consistent” with his desire for a package that mixes big spending cuts with revenue raisers without gutting Medicare and Social Security.

But Obama’s very public triangulation–a willingness to, Bill Clinton style, ostentatiously undercut his own party’s priorities–is earning him some (expected) flak from the left:

“While details are sketchy, the “Gang of 6″ proposal appears to ask seniors, the middle class and the poor to bear the burden of deficit reduction, with cuts to Social Security benefits, billions in stealth cuts to be named later, and no real effort to make corporations and millionaires pay their fair share….We cannot allow a minority of Tea Party led Republicans in the House to hold our nation’s economy hostage in order to protect tax breaks for the rich and corporations, while forcing cuts to programs families depend on. The President and Democrats in Congress must stand up for everyday Americans and not give into politicians more interested in protecting their corporate backers than ensuring our economy recovers,” said Justin Ruben, executive director of Moveon.org.

“This terrible plan could cut Medicare and Medicaid to unsustainably low levels and put seniors’ well-being at risk. Anyone who wants to pass it through Congress should remember that more than 70 House Democrats have already pledged their opposition, and more are signing on every day,” intoned co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona.

Watch for a Nancy Pelosi statement on the deal–her House caucus is dominated by the Progressive Caucus to a much greater extent than when Dems had the majority (most of those who lost their reelection bids were conservative Blue Dogs) and many of their votes will be needed for any deal that brings more money into government coffers, even if it does so through a net tax decrease.