4th of July holiday or no, Congress and the administration begin the process of selling out ordinary Americans

Say hello to the "chained-CPI" scam!

from StrengthenSocialSecurity.com

Obama chided Congress for an unusual on again-off again schedule that has ensured the House and Senate have staggered their work in Washington, making cross-chamber negotiations difficult. The Senate has met this week, while House members have been visiting their home districts. The reverse had been planned for next week.

“They’re in one week, they’re out one week,” Obama said. “And then they’re saying, ‘Obama has got to step in.’

“You need to be here,” he said. “I’ve been here.”

-- from "Senate cancels July 4 holiday recess
to work on debt deal," in yesterday's Washington Post

by Ken

Isn't it funny how it works out? In the end, the bigger trouble-makers, the House, wind up getting their 4th of July holiday! About all they lose is the opportunity to have the coming week's headlines to themselves as those insensible and indecent thugs resume their resume their rampaging and marauding against sense and decency.

Sometimes you wish these people would all go on permanent holiday. But even that fits into the Rethuglican strategy throughout the Obama administration: We don't need nuttin'. If'n we just don't let them damn socialists do nuttin', the country'll go to hell, and we'll take over. The strategy has already re-won them the House, and with the rise of the Teabagger insurrection many Rethugs have gotten greedier about their agenda of mayhem. But it's still true that they don't need much of anything, especially alongside the pleasure and profit of obstruction.

Alas, we need a budget, and alas again, we need to raise he debt ceiling, and the Rethugs are going to get as much out of it as they can. And alas a third time, the party they're ultimately negotiating with is history's worst negotiator, Barack Obama, whose basic negotiating strategy appears to be: Let's give them what they want, and then split the difference on the rest. Of course there's an alternate theory: that what the president gives away is stuff he didn't want to begin with, that what he's been getting is "compromise with cover" that gives him what he wanted to begin with.

I've already wondered here, "Is the president, that master negotiator, once again prepared to give away the store?." Welcome to "chained-CPI," a scheme reportedly being considered by White House and congressional negotiators which would change the formula for calculating the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in a way that goes way beyond the mere technical adjustment it sounds like. A press release from Strengthen Social Security argues:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates adoption of the so-called "Chained-CPI," which would be used to determine Social Security's annual COLA, would cut benefits by $112 billion over 10 years. The Social Security Administration Chief Actuary estimates the effects of this change would be that beneficiaries who retire at age 65 and receive average benefits would get $560 less a year at age 75 than they would under current law and get $1,000 less a year at age 85 -- a 3.7 percent cut and a 6.5 percent cut, respectively. [See analysis here.] The proposal will cut $1.6 trillion over Social Security’s 75 year valuation period – mainly from the oldest of the old, primarily women and disproportionately poor.

Two reports were released that analyzed the harmful effects from the proposed Social Security COLA cut. One found that the cuts would be especially painful to women who have longer life expectancies, rely more on Social Security income and are already more economically vulnerable, and to lower-income beneficiaries. About one-third of beneficiaries depend on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income. Another found that Social Security's current COLA formula already is too low because it does not take account of the higher health care costs that seniors and people with disabilities face.

"The Social Security COLA cut is a betrayal by politicians in Washington of today's 55 million Social Security beneficiaries. Indeed, it is a betrayal of the 165 million workers and their families who are earning those benefits every work day," said Nancy Altman, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. "These cuts would occur soon and they would affect everyone. Social Security does not add a penny to the deficit. Those who pledged that Social Security would not be cut as part of a deficit deal are breaking their promise if they support this proposal. So are those who have pledged that they will not cut the benefits of current beneficiaries. They will vote for this at their electoral peril."

"Proponents of cutting the Social Security COLA claim that it’s simply a technocratic improvement. This is not true -- there is no economic evidence that the current COLA provides a windfall to beneficiaries," said Josh Bivens, economist at the Economic Policy Institute and the author of A Protection, Not a Windfall: Proposed change to Social Security COLA would further erode retirees' financial security. "In fact, it likely understates the actual growth in costs of living for beneficiaries because it underweights health spending -- a high-inflation component of consumer expenditures."

"This proposal is a stealth attack that will especially hurt the economic security of older women," said Joan Entmacher, Vice President, Family Economic Security, National Women’s Law Center, and the co-author of Cutting the Social Security COLA by Changing the Way Inflation Is Calculated Would Especially Hurt Women. "The cuts may not sound like a lot to some Members of Congress, but for an 80-year old woman who depends on her Social Security check to get by, they mean the loss of a week’s worth of food each month. And the cuts just get deeper as women get older."

And thanks to the genius Dems' allowing the Rethugs to wrap themselves in the mantle of "fiscal responsibility," this sounds like just a sample of what's to come. Buckle up, buckaroos.

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