We Have Consensus! We Have Consensus!

Except none of us are part of it. The people of this country, by overwhelming margins in every poll, do not want to sacrifice Social Security on the alter of deficit reduction. Nor do they want to scuttle Medicare so the wealthiest 1% can continue to pay astoundingly low taxes. This consensus is a consensus inside the ruling elite and any Democrat who grasps it will ruin his or her political career. That includes Obama, whose main hope for holding on to progressives in 2012 is that the GOP nominate someone as bad as Hitler, a distinct possibility. (Apparently holding on to progressives isn't part of his march to reelection; econometrics are.)

In the precious, lighter than air world the elites have created for themselves in Washington, the election earlier this month was "dominated by vague demands for less debt and smaller government." Someone's been watching too much Fox. And the solution, or as they put it in the Post yesterday, "the sacrifices necessary to achieve those goals are coming into sharp focus. Big cuts at the Pentagon. Higher taxes, including those on home ownership and health care. Smaller Social Security checks and higher Medicare premiums."

Now "smaller Social Security checks and higher Medicare premiums" are what the right has been demanding forever. And once there was a Democratic Party to stand up and push back. Now there's Obama... and his Cat Food Commission. "A surprisingly broad consensus is forming around the actions required to stabilize borrowing and ease fears of a European-style debt crisis in the United States. As a presidential commission struggles to build political momentum for such a package, even Republicans who initially opposed the commission's creation are still at the negotiating table." Even Republicans! What a laugh! Reactionary Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn is "open to everything if it gets us where we need to go." And he'll accept the notion that it won't officially be called serfdom or slavery at first.

Coburn is among a dozen lawmakers serving on the independent commission that President Obama created to help rebalance the federal budget. The panel will conclude its work after Thanksgiving with a vote that will reveal whether a convincing majority of its 18 members can agree on a deficit-reduction strategy.

Whatever the outcome, the plan unveiled this month by co-chairmen Erskine B. Bowles, a chief of staff in the Clinton White House, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, has been respectfully received with a few exceptions by both parties. Its major elements are also winning support from a striking line-up of commentators.

Are they in a parallel universe? Every comment I read mentioned "dead on arrival." They hope to kill Social Security and Medicare with easily reinstated military cuts and easily decreased modest tax increases.

Social Security is proving to be the most emotional issue. Over the next 65 years, Bowles and Simpson would gradually raise the early retirement age from 62 to 64 and the standard retirement age from 67 to 69. They would reduce scheduled benefits for better-off retirees and use a less-generous measure of inflation to calculate cost-of-living increases. And they would guarantee higher benefits to the poorest and oldest retirees, those most in need of additional support.

Organized labor and other liberal activists say the changes would prove devastating to the elderly, particularly janitors, waitresses and other blue-collar workers who cannot stay on the job until they are nearly 70. Meanwhile, neither party is eager to cross seniors, who turned out in big numbers on Nov. 2 and favored Republicans in "historic proportions," according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

"It was a real wake-up call," Lake said, adding that Democrats could benefit by "taking a strong and vocal stand" against any reduction in Social Security benefits.

Remember, this "consensus" they're talking about is a consensus of millionaires. Only 1% of Americans are millionaires but around 50% of congressmen are. "And of these congressional millionaires, 55 have an average calculated wealth in 2009 of $10 million or more, with eight in the $100 million-plus range."

“Few federal lawmakers must grapple with the financial ills -- unemployment, loss of housing, wiped out savings -- that have befallen millions of Americans,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics’ executive director. “Congressional representatives on balance rank among the wealthiest of wealthy Americans and boast financial portfolios that are all but unattainable for most of their constituents.”

In 2009, the median wealth of a U.S. House member stood at $765,010, up from $645,503 in 2008. The median wealth of a U.S. senator was nearly $2.38 million, up from $2.27 million in 2008.

I'm not saying all millionaires-- congressional or otherwise-- should be strung up or drawn and quartered or even guillotined, and certainly not without fair trials, but the only consensus from millionaires I'm interested in hearing about is from the Patriotic Millionaires who are putting self-serving class warfare aside and calling on Obama to let the Bush tax cuts on the rich expire already. Here's part of the letter they sent fellow millionaire Barack Obama yesterday:

For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as scheduled.

We make this request as loyal citizens who now or in the past earned an income of $1,000,000 per year or more.

We have done very well over the last several years. Now, during our nation's moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don't need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way.

Letting tax cuts for incomes over $1,000,000 expire, is an important step in that direction.

That's the kind of consensus I like. But the kind of consensus inside the ruling elite was better expressed a few days ago by slimy Minnesota Representative and incoming Labor Committee Chair, John Kline, one of the most virulently anti-labor congressmen ever elected. His perspective is we can't fund everything and jobless benefits aren't a priority. Although Kline and the rest of the GOP managed to block extending unemployment benefits to 2.5 million American families last week, they're debating whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, at a cost of $830 billion over the next decade. Earlier this week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the rich, while deriding extending unemployment benefits as “some new massive spending.” If there's anyone in Minnesota further right than Bachmann, it's her pal Kline, who is also fanatically devoted to extending the Bush tax cuts to millionaires and who had this to say on Minnesota Public Radio:

KLINE: That’ll be a tougher lift in the 112th Congress. We’ve had unemployment benefits be extended for almost two years in some states, a little bit less in Minnesota. When you’re running a one and a half trillion dollar deficit per year, that’ll be part of the discussion as to whether that’s a priority for how we’re going to spend money. I would just reiterate what I said earlier, that the obligation for the Congress is to look at the entire budget and recognize that we’re borrowing over forty cents of every dollar that we spend, and say what are the priorities going to be. We can’t fund everything.

Q: But what do you tell those folks hanging on by a thread who really need those benefits?

KLINE: Well, they, heh, the best thing to do for them is to get the economy back on track and get businesses hiring so that they have a job that they can go to. We simply don’t have the money to keep extending unemployment benefits indefinitely. We just don’t have the money.

Here's how this played out in New Jersey. The gluttonous millionaire isn't one of the Patriotic Millionaires: