David Axelrod doesn't call us fucking retarded

By Frank Moraes

On the other night's Rachel Maddow Show, David Axelrod explained that everything Obama has ever done or ever will again do is just right. We actual liberals just don't get it. We don't understand the bigger issues that Serious Democrats understand. We don't understand that "free" trade agreements are great because they make rich people even more rich, even though they don't help the poor and middle class anywhere. We don't understand that the loss of manufacturing jobs is just a sign of globalization and there is nothing we can do so we ought to be happy with those minimum wage service jobs. We don't understand that what is good for GE, Exxon, and GM is good for America.

In other words: we don't understand that the Republicans are right about all the economic issues.

Axelrod patiently explained that we just have to do something about Social Security because Medicare is in trouble. He also explains that, sure, he would be for raising the payroll tax cap. That ought to be part of the mix. That was his word: part. Because, you know, we have to be reasonable about this. For every dollar that a rich man pays, we need to take a dollar away from a poor man. Not doing that might, I don't know, hurt the feelings of the Republicans. Of course, Axelrod was quick to note that a payroll tax increase will never happen. Rachel Maddow pushed back on him pretty hard; it was nice to see. And it even made Axelrod backpedal a bit.

And maybe that's why he never got around to saying that liberals are fucking retarded. Maybe that's why he's not mayor of Chicago.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

The president has already agreed to a deal I don't like

By Frank Moraes 

I saw a bit of The Ed Show last night as I was making dinner. Ed Schultz said something that shocked me. I don't have the exact quote, but it was more or less, "I know that the president isn't going to agree to any deal that we don't like." I could hardly believe it. Did he really just say that? After chained-CPI and $400,000 lower limit for tax increases? Maybe by "we" he meant "multi-millionaires on TV." Because the only liberals who expect Obama not to make a very bad deal are liberals who aren't paying attention. 

In the same segment, he talked about how Boehner's "Plan B" (That's the name of a birth control pill, right?) would raise taxes on the poor and middle classes because of other tax cuts that were part of the stimulus bill. Greg Sargent deals with this in detail in an article earlier today at The Plum Line blog, John Boehner, Scourge of the Wealthy, Ctd. ("Ctd." means "continued" because of a previous article.) He shows that half of the households in the top 1% would get a tax break. So this is not a serious plan.

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Chained CPI madness

By Frank Moraes 

I'm getting sick of having to talk about this stuff. The possible Chained CPI change would be even worse for future retirees than it is for current retirees. According to Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is willing to go along with the Chained CPI madness "if it is offset with a small increase in Social Security benefits for longtime beneficiaries." Remember: the CBPP is a liberal group. But does that also mean that they are brainless?

If we use Chained CPI for Social Security, it will mean that the cost of living adjustments will be at least 0.3% too low every year. For current retirees, that means that in ten years, they will see about a 3% reduction in their real (inflation adjusted) benefits. This comes to roughly $100 per month. This is important and we should not accept it. The CBPP is suggesting that we adjust very old retirees' benefits up. There are two problems with this.

First, if we know that the Chained CPI is wrong -- that it won't allow benefits to keep up with inflation -- why are we doing it? The answer, as I've already discussed, is that those in power in Washington want to cut benefits. But they are cowards and don't want to be seen as doing so. So they use this convenient backdoor to gut Social Security.

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Obama to sell out Social Security?

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Frank will have more on so-called "Chained CPI" later today. Stay tuned. -- MJWS)

Ezra Klein is again reporting that a Fiscal Cliff deal is almost done. And once again, I don't get this deal. He says that we will see the 39.6% tax bracket but only for incomes over a million dollars. There will be something less for incomes over $250,000 amount. In return for this, the president gets an extension of unemployment benefits and some unnamed stimulus spending. But the payroll tax cut will end. And the biggest thing of all: we will change the way that cost of living adjustments to Social Security are made.

People are calling this new Chained CPI a reduction in benefits. It is most definitely that! But it is also a backdoor way of destroying Social Security. The program will not keep up with inflation. Over the long term, the program will become more and more irrelevant. And that's why conservatives (and to a lesser extent "liberals") have been pushing this for decades. The truth is that the current COLA for Social Security is probably too low, because of what seniors actually buy. For example, they buy a lot of drugs that don't go down in price and they buy relatively few electronic devices that do.

The trick to Chained CPI is that it assumes that people will substitute. If flashlights get too expensive, people will switch to lanterns! Really. Although it is more along the lines of energy substitution. If heating oil gets too expensive, people will switch to gas. The problem is that this is very likely not an option. When was the last time you changed your water heating system because the price of energy changed? And how much did it cost? But again, the point is not to more accurately model how prices increase; it is to destroy Social Security; or at least to cut it without anyone noticing.

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Americans side overwhelmingly with Obama and the Democrats on fiscal policy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've got this, Speaker. You lose.

Reflecting the right-leaning, Republican-friendly, split-the-difference views of the Beltway media generally, NBC is pumping up a new poll that suggests Americans are hungry for compromise:  

An overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress and the Obama White House to reach a deal featuring both tax increases and spending cuts to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, according to the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Oh really. So Americans just want each side to give in and meet halfway, because apparently each side is equally right/wrong and perfection can be found right in the middle alongside the Beltway media and its indisputable wisdom? 

Uh, no:

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No, Boehner, you tell us what popular programs you'd like to cut

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As usual, more ridiculousness from Republicans on the "fiscal cliff":

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said on Tuesday that he was still waiting on the White House to detail what spending cuts President Obama would be willing to make in a potential deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year.

"Where are the President's spending cuts?" Boehner said in speech on the House floor.

Talk about negotiating from a position of weakness. This is just bullshit posturing. As Greg Sargent notes, "Dems have already agreed to well over $1 trillion in spending cuts in 2011 -- cuts Boehner himself said were significant at the time. By contrast, Republicans have not agreed to a penny in new rates."

Two things are going on:

1) As Sargent suggests, "the idea is to try to blame the White House and Dems for the failure to reach a deal. But polls continue to show that Republicans are losing this PR battle badly."

2) "As for the demand that the White House go first in detailing its spending cuts, this is an almost laughably transparent ruse. As I keep noting, if Dems propose more in detailed spending cuts, Republicans will simply dismiss them as unserious, no matter what Dems offer -- pulling the talks further and further in their direction."

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Screw rich a little, poor a lot

By Frank Moraes

I try not to read David Brooks, but Matt Yglesias tricked me into reading him with this tweet:

I don't understand what David Brooks is proposing here or why:nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opi…
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 4, 2012

So I went ahead and read "The Truly Grand Bargain." What Brooks is doing is a bit of a mystery. Normally, I would think he was just admitting that some Republican demands are hopeless. For example, the top marginal tax rate will go up to 39.6% automatically on 1 January. But he isn't calling for that. Instead, he claims that the Republicans should be, "Willing to see top tax rates go up to 36 percent or 37 percent." What?!

But it gets worse. He wants major cuts to Medicare and Social Security in exchange for this one or two percentage point increase in the top tax bracket and a one year ceasefire in the Republican war on the United States credit rating, know as the debt ceiling. Dean Baker did some calculations on this offer. He finds that Brooks is asking for a 6% cut to poor retirees' incomes and in exchange, Brooks is offering a 1.5% cut in the incomes of the rich through tax increases.

Baker notes, "It's interesting to think about what he would suggest putting on the table if the Republicans had won the election."

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Not serious

By Mustang Bobby

The Republicans said that President Obama's offer on the fiscal cliff fix was "not serious." So they came back with one of their own:

That framework aims to raise new revenue through an overhaul of the tax code. It also calls for slicing $600 billion from federal health programs, in part by increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, and saving $200 billion by applying a less generous measure of inflation to all federal programs, including Social Security benefits, according to GOP aides.

For the first time, Boehner managed to get his entire leadership team — including conservative champions such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the 2012 vice-presidential candidate — to publicly sign on to a plan that explicitly calls for new tax revenue. Republicans say they are willing to extract all the new tax money from households earning more than $250,000 a year, the same group Obama wants to target with higher tax rates. But the GOP plan would raise the money by wiping out deductions instead of raising rates.

In a meeting with reporters, Boehner called it "a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House."

It's basically the same stuff that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were offering up until about a month ago when they lost the election. No tax rate changes, severe cuts to programs for the middle class, and deficit reduction through the magic of closing loopholes, which is one step away from traveling to the Delta Quadrant via a wormhole.

The only point of this counter-offer was to show what "not serious" really looks like. 

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Dumb, Dumberer, Dumberest

By Carl 

You'd think after having their asses handed to them in the November elections, Republicans might be a little more... flexible.

And you'd be wrong. The Great Orange Satan -- No, not Kos, the other one -- has stopped crying long enough to lash out at working Americans:

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner proposed $2.2 trillion of spending cuts and new revenue that lack what President Barack Obama calls essential for a fiscal agreement: higher tax rates for top-earning Americans. 

Boehner, an Ohio Republican, yesterday called it a "credible plan that deserves consideration by the White House." The Obama administration promptly rejected the proposal, which would raise the Medicare eligibility age and slow Social Security cost-of-living increases. 

[...]

With the Republican blueprint, both parties now have their opening offers on the table. Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, said the Republican plan signals "act two" in negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff. "There will be an act three undoubtedly, and hopefully the distance between the bid and ask is closed," he said.

In fairness, at least one of the aspects noted above might make sense, in a perverse way: raising the Medicare eligibility age.

Look, people are going to have to work longer for a bunch of reasons (not least of which is the two major recessions that have triggered on the watch of President Bush, destroying 401(k)s), which means there is a good chance that they'll have private health insurance available to them under Obamacare. By delaying the port over to Medicare, the nation could save billions over time.

Of course, who relies on Medicare but the folks who weren't able to sock away shrinking wages for retirement.

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Republicans reject Obama's initial "fiscal cliff" proposal, but he was right to make it

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Times reports:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

Tax increases (on the rich)? Stimulus spending? No more Republican-made debt ceiling crises? Now that's some change I can believe in. No wonder Republicans immediately rejected the proposal.

So does that mean it was pointless? Absolutely not.


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I got mine...

By Mustang Bobby

James Kwak in The Atlantic on the future of entitlement programs:

When people say that we can't afford our entitlement programs, they're really saying that rich people won't pay the taxes necessary to sustain our entitlement programs. To be fair, many rich people probably would be willing to pay higher taxes if they knew the facts. But a small number of extremely rich people have successfully spread the myth that we can't afford our entitlement programs.

By the way, the term "entitlement" has been used to make it sound as if people are getting something for nothing. Of course that's bullshit. Everyone who collects a paycheck pays into Social Security and Medicare. But it's not like it's going into a savings account with their name on it; they're paying for the people on it now, and when they retire, the people working will be paying for them. So if everybody — and that includes those of you in the royal boxes — pays their fair share, the system works and it will keep on working.

Ironic that the ones who are the real freeloaders are the rich folk who don't give a rat's ass about anyone else.

Along those lines, I really like what Josh Marshall has to say about how to solve the fiscal crisis:

When you want to efficiently raise revenues, you raise rates. A major simplification of the structure, rooting out all the miscellaneous loopholes and special interest deductions, is probably also a good idea. But that's for fairness and efficiency. Not what you do if the federal coffers simply need more money.

Usually when people say they're willing to raise revenues but want to do it by closing loopholes, they're BSing you. And that's most of what we're hearing today. But I think we're at the point where some of the Republicans making these arguments have gotten themselves so wrapped up in a ball of anti-tax verbiage that they may actually be ready to accept some bizarre Rube Goldberg approach to deduction caps which would raise something like the same amount of revenue as tax rate hikes. And that may be possible.

But at the end of the day, just clean your clothes. If you've got some weird hangup about doing the laundry you could keep buying new clothes after each wearing. Or you could use more perfume. Or you could socialize only with people with no noses. But at end of the day, just f'ing clean your clothes. And the same way, just raise the rates.

Anything else is just people in denial or bargaining from people who need to quickly move through all five stages and get to acceptance. Or a fight they need to have with Grover Norquist. Whatever the problem is, get into therapy, get over it and don't inflict it on the rest of the country or the nation's finances.

Just do it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Ross Douthat wants a fight

By Frank Moraes

You all know how much I admire reasonable Republicans. Or at least, you know how much I would admire them if they existed. For the record: any Republican who is reasonable has already become a Democrat. The people like David Frum are not reasonable. This is very simple, people! "Not crazy" does not mean "reasonable." Instead, "not crazy" means less -- perhaps, "reasonable fascist."

Ross Douthat is a supposed reasonable Republican. How do I know? He's a Republican and he is sometimes on Up with Chris Hayes. But unlike Josh Barro, who often makes a lot of sense, Douthat just annoys me. In fact, what most annoys me is that he is a Catholic, yet doesn't evidence much in terms of Christian compassion. Also, he doesn't write nearly as well as Garry Wills.

Most recently, Douthat tells us about "Our Enemy, the Payroll Tax." It's a bit weird, because he is making sense but in the cause of evil. He says we should turn Social Security into a plain old-fashioned tax.

Yes! We should do that! If we did that, we could get rid of the Social Security cap. The problem with the way it is now is that people think of it as an insurance program: the more you pay in, the more you get out. And this justifies billionaires paying in a pittance, because they will only get what they consider a pittance out. But if Social Security is just a tax like any other, there is no justification for this most regressive of taxes. In fact, we might even be able to make it a little progressive. But for the time, making Social Security a flat tax would be a huge improvement. (And that ought to give you some idea of how awful the system is today.)
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Progressive ideas get media coverage

By Frank Moraes

Keith Ellison (D-MN)

The House Progressive Caucus has long had a lot of good ideas. But in general, they get little coverage. For example, while all the media were going gaga over Paul Ryan's budget, the Progressive Caucus released the People's Budget, which was ignored except when it was used to ridicule its name. Whereas the Ryan budget was just a Trojan horse meant to justify huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the People's Budget actually balanced the budget.

The line from the mainstream press was always the same: the People's Budget was a non-starter. No one would ever take it seriously. On the other hand, Paul Ryan's budget was very serious because people took it seriously. Of course, the people who took it seriously were primarily the usual suspects (wealthy people who want to reduce their taxes) and the mainstream press itself. It is interesting that reporters claim they should only report what the two sides say and never comment that one side is wrong. And yet, when it comes to something like this -- budget proposals on the right and left -- they choose to not even report on the left side.

In this context, I am pleased to see some actual liberal budget proposals seeing a little media light. As I've been screaming for years, a good way to fix entitlements is to actually fix them and not destroy them. On the right (and sadly, in the White House), we mostly see proposals to cut benefits -- directly, through cost of living declines, and through increased eligibility requirements. What exactly is getting fixed here? I think it is the problem that Social Security and Medicare even exist. Those on the right and in the middle see that as the problem: government was just too generous in the past and now we need to do something about it. This is why their arguments are generally so weak or flat out wrong, like the argument that Social Security was only meant to support a population that had a life expectancy below 65. (This argument is literally wrong and weak: it is not true and even if it were it would be a terrible argument.)

Last week, Senator Mark Begich has introduced a bill that would eliminate the payroll tax cap that makes Social Security the ridiculously regressive tax that it is. Similarly, the Progressive Caucus, led in part by Keith Ellison, is pushing the same idea in the House.

I don't expect these proposals to get much traction. But the fact is that at least the radio silence on them is starting to lift. More reporters are covering this stuff. I suspect that most people think that ideas to "fix" entitlement programs only come from the right. The fact is that only ideas to destroy entitlements come from the right. Ideas to truly fix entitlements come exclusively from the left. And the only way anyone will know this is if we talk about it in the public square and don't relegate it to rooms so quiet no one can hear.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Behind the Ad: Obama on his commitments to seniors

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Florida.

What's going on: Last week, the Obama-Biden campaign started running an ad in Florida that emphasizes the commitment his administration is making to seniors to protect Social Security and Medicare, in contrast to the Romney-Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The Social Security Paradox

By Frank Moraes

(Ed. note: Frank's already done five guest spots for us. So let's just drop the whole "guest" thing. He's on the team. Welcome aboard, Frank! -- MJWS)

Do you know the Social Security Paradox? It comes up all the time regarding reform of the program, but almost no one notes the paradox. Here it is: in order to stop future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits now.

The worst case scenario is that at some point in the next 50 years, Social Security will run out of savings and only be able to pay 75% of promised benefits. This is 75% of the benefits at that time, so they are inflation adjusted. This is a problem, but not a catastrophe. And it is absolutely not the case that there will be no program for young people. That is, there will be Social Security for people retiring in 50 years, unless somehow all the Very Serious People get their way and "reform" it out of existence.

C.A. Rotwang[1] has written an incredible article about liberal efforts to "tweak" Social Security, "Mr. President: Tweak This!" Right off the top, he notes that the program will be short by at most 1.6% of GDP in any year. The actual amount of money doesn't matter. What does matter is that we are currently taking in too little money in federal taxes. In the last part of 1990, total federal taxes were 21% of GDP. Today, they are down below 16%. So just by bringing taxes up slightly, we solve any shortfall.

But such ideas are off the table. Republicans just want to destroy the program. Liberals want to "tweak" it. As I've noted in the past, just for the sake of fairness, we should get rid of the payroll tax cap, which is currently set at $110,100. This makes the tax highly regressive. Most people pay 12.4% (half directly and half via their employers).[2] For example, if Mitt Romney was paid a salary, he would only have paid payroll taxes on the first $110,100 of his estimated gross income of $20.9 million last year: $13,652.40. That would mean that unlike regular people paying 12.4%, Romney would have paid 0.065%. Of course, since all of his income was "capital gains" he paid nothing at all.

Ideas like this are simply off the table. The rich have far too much power in Washington and they will never allow their taxes to be raised in this way. (At least they won't do it without a major fight from the rest of us.) So the liberals — The good guys! — propose three ways to "tweak" the system:

1. Reduce inflation adjustments;
2. Raise the retirement age;
3. Means test.

Note that each of these tweaks do what I talked about regarding the Social Security Paradox: reduce future benefits to prevent reduced future benefits. Rotwang discusses each one of these in details and shows that they are all substantial. For example, according to a study by David Rosnick and Dean Baker at CEPR, increasing the retirement age from 67 to 70 would result in an 18% reduction in lifetime benefits for couples in the bottom 20% of the income distribution.

The main point of the article, beyond pointing out that Social Security is not in crisis, is to show that the "tweaks" of Democrats have big benefit cuts concealed in them. Rotwang ends:

Much has been made of Republicans' flagrant disregard of truth. And Lord knows they deserve it. But what of their counterparts? I suggest that if Democrats are honest, they would a) acknowledge their own exaggerations of the program's difficulties, and b) spell out the impact of their purported "tweaks." After all, if Romney ought to spell out how his magical tax proposal reduces rates and recoups all lost revenue, shouldn't Democrats do the same with respect to their Social Security reform nostrums?

In the matter of Social Security, Barack Obama and the Democrats have some 'splainin to do. The return of Occupy! cannot be too soon.

Government keep your damn stinking hands off my Social Security, indeed!

---

[1] Rotwang is a brilliant robot inventor in Metropolis. So I don't know what is really going on at The Huffington Post.

[2] I am only including the Social Security part of the payroll tax. Additional money is taken out for Medicare.


(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Ryan's budget: It's a joke

By Mustang Bobby 

Never one to mince words, Paul Krugman gets delightfully shrill on the plans Paul Ryan has for our economy:

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

If this sounds like a joke, that's because it is. Yet Mr. Ryan's "plan" has been treated with great respect in Washington. He even received an award for fiscal responsibility from three of the leading deficit-scold pressure groups. What’s going on?

The answer, basically, is a triumph of style over substance. Over the longer term, the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it — and in Washington, "fiscal responsibility" is often equated with willingness to slash Medicare and Social Security, even if the purported savings would be used to cut taxes on the rich rather than to reduce deficits. Also, self-proclaimed centrists are always looking for conservatives they can praise to showcase their centrism, and Mr. Ryan has skillfully played into that weakness, talking a good game even if his numbers don't add up.

The question now is whether Mr. Ryan's undeserved reputation for honesty and fiscal responsibility can survive his participation in a deeply dishonest and irresponsible presidential campaign.

It doesn't really matter if his numbers do or don't add up. We have already seen that Mr. Ryan is, if not a full-bore hypocrite about such things as the Obama stimulus, he's at least an opportunist. He's also shown that even if you dress up snake oil and sell it as a scientifically tested cure for everything from the common cold to the limp dingus, it's still snake oil.

The blame for the Republicans running a con man for VP isn't really with the party or the candidate; they've been doing that for years. The blame is that the voters have let them get away with it. You would think that after Spiro Agnew and Dick Cheney we would have learned our lesson. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Happy birthday, Social Security. And many, many more.

By Ramona

Tuesday marked the 77th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act, and even though it's not one of those anniversaries we might consider A Big One, it's important. For this reason: it may well be the last time any of us will be able to celebrate this landmark law without also being reminded of its untimely death.

Two years ago, when we celebrated Social Security's Diamond Anniversary (well, some of us did) the usual rumblings against the best and brightest of our safety net programs could be heard, but since they were far off and not unlike anything we had heard before (and since the Democrats were still in the majority), we did the usual and just ignored them.

Two years later, they're not just rumblings, they're lightning strikes. Even the folks who have the most to gain from the continuance of Social Security are getting ready to cast their ballots for the very politicians who are not just promising but itching to kill it dead. Mitt Romney and his cohort, the Social Security-hating Paul Ryan, would like nothing better than to get the chance in November to kill off all such safety nets once and for all. If they win the presidency, we can kiss goodbye any hope of saving Social Security and its offspring, Medicare and Medicaid. The only reform we'll see is a slow elimination or corruption or privatization of the social programs many more addled Americans have now been lulled into associating with "Big Bad Government."

The creation of the Social Security program was nothing short of a miracle. Days after FDR was sworn in for his first term, in March 1933, he appointed a committee to come up with a plan to help the people who had become victims of a devastating depression by giving them money. Cash in their pockets. Money that the oldest, the ones who couldn't work, would never have to pay back. And they did it without judgment because they knew the people in this nation were poverty-stricken because they, the government, hadn't been governing with the best interests of the citizens in mind. In effect, they owed them. (Well, no, they didn't say that, but they didn't have to.)

Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law -- August 14, 1935

 

Roosevelt envisioned creating a long-term safety net that would eventually be self-sustained by payroll deductions when everyone got back to work, but he was adamant about the need for the federal government to start these payments before the coffers were filled. His idea was that the normal safety nets had long since disappeared, the country was in trouble, and the government had a moral duty to help out.

President Roosevelt appealed his case for Social Security to Congress this way:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

The amount necessary at this time for the initiation of unemployment compensation, old-age security, children's aid, and the promotion of public health, as outlined in the report of the Committee on Economic Security, is approximately one hundred million dollars.

(Roosevelt's message to Congress on Social Security -- January 17, 1935)

For all intents, remember, the treasury was empty, and such a request must have sounded plain loony to some. Of course it did. The Republicans fought him all the way, but they were in the minority and they lost. (Interesting to note, though, that 81 Republicans in the House and 16 in the Senate voted for the Social Security Act.) 

Three years after the law was enacted he went before the American people and talked about what it meant for the country: 

Five years ago the term "social security" was new to American ears. Today it has significance for more than forty million men and women workers whose applications for old-age insurance accounts have been received; this system is designed to assure them an income for life after old age retires them from their jobs.

It has significance for the needy men, women and children receiving assistance and for their families -- at least two million three hundred thousand all told; with this cash assistance one million seven hundred thousand old folks are spending their last years in surroundings they know and with people they love; more than six hundred thousand dependent children are being taken care of by their own families; and about forty thousand blind people are assured of peace and security among familiar voices.

It has significance for the families and communities to whom expanded public health and child welfare services have brought added protection. And it has significance for all of us who, as citizens, have at heart the Security and the well-being of this great democracy.

These accomplishments of three years are impressive, yet we should not be unduly proud of them. Our Government in fulfilling an obvious obligation to the citizens of the country has been doing so only because the citizens require action from their Representatives. If the people, during these years, had chosen a reactionary Administration or a "do nothing" Congress, Social Security would still be in the conversational stage -- a beautiful dream which might come true in the dim distant future...

Now this is interesting to consider. The first to turn to Government, the first to receive protection from Government, were not the poor and the lowly--those who had no resources other than their daily earnings -- but the rich and the strong. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the United States passed protective laws designed, in the main, to give security to property owners, to industrialists, to merchants and to bankers. True, the little man often profited by this type of legislation; but that was a by-product rather than a motive. 

Taking a generous view of the situation, I think it was not that Government deliberately ignored the working man but that the working man was not sufficiently articulate to make his needs and his problems known. The powerful in industry and commerce had powerful voices, both individually and as a group. And whenever they saw their possessions threatened, they raised their voices in appeals for government protection. 

It was not until workers became more articulate through organization that protective labor legislation was passed. While such laws raised the standards of life, they still gave no assurance of economic security. Strength or skill of arm or brain did not guarantee a man a job; it did not guarantee him a roof; it did not guarantee him the ability to provide for those dependent upon him or to take care of himself when he was too old to work.

Long before the economic blight of the depression descended on the Nation, millions of our people were living in wastelands of want and fear. Men and women too old and infirm to work either depended on those who had but little to share, or spent their remaining years within the walls of a poorhouse. Fatherless children early learned the meaning of being a burden to relatives or to the community. Men and women, still strong, still young, but discarded as gainful workers, were drained of self-confidence and self-respect.

The millions of today want, and have a right to, the same security their forefathers sought--the assurance that with health and the willingness to work they will find a place for themselves in the social and economic system of the time. 

("A Social Security Program Must Include All Those Who Need Its Protection," radio address on the third anniversary of the Social Security Act -- August 15, 1938)

This is what we're fighting to save. The moral code of this country, as spelled out by the founders, has always dictated that government is there to serve the needs of the people. Sometimes that's ignored, as Roosevelt himself infers in his radio address, but it's never forgotten.

Even now, it's not forgotten. Not by us. Reading through Roosevelt's statements on Social Security, it's clear that he intended to work tirelessly to do what was right for the people still suffering from the effects of a man-made, wholly unnecessary depression. We need to remind our leaders today -- also to blame for a wholly unnecessary depression -- that social safety nets are an obligation they've inherited, and are, in fact, an obligation they agreed to when they took their oaths of office and vowed to uphold the constitution.

So let's get to the meat of it: President Obama is no Roosevelt. Not even close. But in my heart of hearts I believe he knows in his heart of hearts what he should do. So far he hasn't done it well, but there's no denying baby steps have been taken. He dropped the ball early on and hasn't recovered it yet, but there's hope. With President Obama, there's hope.

If Mitt Romney is elected president, either because of or in spite of his running mate, in all likelihood the Republicans will take both the House and the Senate, and that will be the end of Obamacare, of Social Security, of Medicare and Medicaid, of any chance at easing the conditions of the poor and middle class and rebuilding a country nearly devastated by a man-made economic crisis not of our choosing and not of our making.

How do we get that message out? I don't know, but it can't hurt to keep reminding voters that once upon a time, in conditions much like these, something happened in this country that changed us forever. Our government took charge and did, not just what they were elected to do, but what they were morally obligated to do. They took care of a nation in mortal pain. And the country survived. It thrived. So much so that, until this latest man-made fiasco, we were still seen as the greatest nation in the world.

We could keep reminding them of that. 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Some things never change

By Mustang Bobby

Digby found a clip of FDR having fun at the expense of conservatives who opposed his programs in 1936:

For those of you who can't see clips on-line, President Roosevelt is having a great time mocking his critics who promised to repeal and replace Social Security and other programs with something better and it won't cost anything, just like what we're hearing from the GOP today about the health-care law.

Mr. Roosevelt died seven years before I was born, so I only know him from history books and film -- much the same way people under 40 know about JFK today -- but when you talk about transformational presidents, as in those who left the country fundamentally different after they left office, Mr. Roosevelt was pretty much the gold standard for modern America. A lot of the things we take for granted, from Social Security to electricity in the rural parts of the country, came from his administration and his attempts to rescue the nation and the world from economic collapse. Not all of it worked, and he overreached on some things. And a lot of what he did was blatantly political.

FDR was probably one of the most coldly calculating politicians to hold the office. He knew exactly how to frame his message and his programs to gain maximum support from the voters, and he had the added advantage of knowing how to drive his opponents crazy by taunting and tweaking them. It had the desired result; his opponents -- the rabid right wingers and isolationists -- came off as bloviating ninnies and crackpots, and Mr. Roosevelt got in a good laugh.

On a larger point, Mr. Roosevelt cemented the idea that the President of the United States could be the leader of his political party without compromising his duties as the president of all the people. Sure, presidents had done that before; some more effectively than others, but it was always behind the scenes and the fiction that the president was above all the petty politics was maintained. FDR broke down that barrier by making it seem as if what was good for him politically was good for the nation and vice versa. His opponents called it demagoguery, but they were strangely silent when Richard Nixon, a Republican, did it (and with criminal intent) or when Ronald Reagan, who once worshiped Mr. Roosevelt, did it as well.

Now we're hearing that Barack Obama is shamelessly using his office for political and partisan purposes by changing his administration's application of certain laws regarding the children of undocumented immigrants. Oh, the horror of a president doing something in an election year that has a political as well as a practical and humanitarian angle to it. The denials by the White House are cute -- "Oh no there's no political motive at all, mi fiel amigo" -- but you can tell by the delicious over-reaction from the right wing that this was a very deft move and that if they were presented with such an opportunity, they would do it in a heartbeat and crow about it on Fox News.

It also happens to be the right thing to do, which these days seems almost beside the point.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Karl Rove's message is getting clearer and clearer: Rick Perry is a crazy, unelectable extremist.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republican presidential frontrunner Rick Perry has a long record of craziness, including his view that Social Security is an un-American Ponzi scheme:

In Perry's book, released just nine months ago, he writes on page 48 that Social Security is "by far the best example" of a program "violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles." On page 50, he says that we have Social Security "at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government."

On ABC yesterday, George Stephanopoulos asked Karl Rove about this, and Rove, like most Texas Bushies no great fan of the Texas governor, took the opportunity to slam Perry pretty hard:

STEPHANPOLOUS: And a lot of questions about how how Rick Perry will handle this test. So much talk about his books and what he's written in his books, "Fed Up!" Questioning the 16th Amendment, which imposed the income tax. The 17th Amendment, direct election of Senators. And I think he's gotten the most attention for what he said about Social Security, calling it a Ponzi scheme. Compares it to a "bad disease" that's been "imposed on us for 70 years." You know how much trouble that can be for a Republican candidate in a general election. So how does he handle it and must he disavow some of these statements in the book.

ROVE: What they've done thus far is, I think, inadequate. Which is to basically say, "look, we didn't write the book with the presidential campaign in mind." Well, okay, fine. But they are going to have to find a way to deal with these things. Because, as you say, they are toxic in a general election environment and they are also toxic in a Republican primary. If you say Social Security is a failure and ought to be replaced by a state-level program, then people are going to say: "What do you mean by that?" And make a judgment based on your answer to it. Each candidate has strengths. Each candidate also has challenges. This, for Governor Perry is his challenge. Now he's got formidable strengths. But this is his biggest challenge.

You'll note that Rove is sort of dispensing campaign advice here: Deal with this, it could be Perry's undoing. And he's also being a good team player: Perry has "formidable strengths."

But, yes, this is Karl Rove, a man who has achieve fame and glory playing to the extremes in campaign after campaign, saying that one of Rick Perry's core views, one that appeals to the far right of the GOP, and hence to much of the base, is "toxic," and hence that Perry himself is toxic. And not just in a general election context but within the GOP as well, including with the right-wing grassroots base that dominates the party's primaries.

Obviously, Rove has an agenda. Among other things, it is to try seriously to win the election. But the only way for the Republicans to do that, even in these depressed economic times, is to nominate an electable alternative to Obama. And seeking to dismantle Social Security, a highly popular, deeply ingrained, amazingly successful program, isn't exactly the way to go. Rove is saying that even his party's extremes find that too extreme.

And that's saying something.

Marco Rubio slams Medicare and Social Security, claims they "weakened us as a people"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Give Republican wunderkind (if not quite as much of one as, say, Paul Ryan) Marco Rubio credit. He certainly knows how to go thick on the right-wing ideology and appeal to the red-meaters who want to roll back all that has been accomplished in terms of social and economic justice since the Great Depression.

I'm not sure he's all that bright, but he says the right things, including yesterday at the Reagan Library, talking about Medicare and Social Security:

These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government's job.

Republicans eat up this sort of nostalgia -- once upon a time, in some idyllic conservative paradise, people were virtuous and there was no need for government.

Of course, such a time never existed.

Sure, way back when, before the New Deal and Great Society, some people saved for their retirement and some people took care of others in need, and there were charitable institutions just as there are now but it's not like it was all roses. There was massive suffering as well, a huge underclass that could barely survive, not just the poor but vast swaths of what constituted the "middle" class.

Not that any of that appears in conservative history books or anything. If you were poor, you deserved it. It was as simple as that.

But here's what Rubio and his ilk (i.e., Republicans, conservatives) miss: Programs like Medicare and Social Security weren't established to create dependency (or a state leviathan) but because people -- millions and millions of them -- needed help, and because only the government, a government of the people, was in a position to provide that help. It isn't like the private sector cared, and individual charity only goes so far even in the best of times.

Not that Republicans give a shit.

They have their delusional mythology and cruel and unusual ideology to uphold, after all, and they apparently wouldn't mind it if seniors were wallowing in their own feces in hovels without heat, children were begging in the streets and scouring garbage dumps for food, and the rest of the America that falls outside their right-wing "paradise" were sliding deeper and deeper into an abyss of abject hopelessness.

Good times.