Fittingly, The GOP Is Targeting Democrats Who Vote With Republicans Against Working Families

Yesterday, when I woke up, I found that my friend Dena had sent me the above NRCC ad running in the Savannah and Augusta media markets against the most right-wing Democrat in Congress, Blue Dog/New Dem John Barrow. This session, on crucial roll calls , Barrow's ProgressivePunch score was a dismal 26.87. The only Democrat who voted more frequently with the GOP-- and only by one or two votes with a score of 26.43-- was corrupt and reactionary Utah Blue Dog Jim Matheson, who is finally retiring this year, leaving Barrow as the undisputed champion for title of the Worst Democrat in Congress. Conservative Republicans Justin Amash (R-MI), Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Walter Jones (R-NC) back progressive legislation more frequently than Barrow. Jones' Progressive Punch score for the session was 41.28. Basically, Barrow is against everything progressives want and, when push comes to shove, Boehner knows he can always count on him-- more so than on Amash, Gibson and Jones.

But now the GOP sees an opportunity to knock him out of Congress-- by targeting him for voting against the interests of working families (i.e., following the Republican line). Barrow, has favored cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and increasing the retirement age, standard Republican Party fare. And now the GOP is using it against him-- as they should... and as a vibrant Democratic Party should have in a primary. But there is no vibrant Democratic Party and there was no primary. And, so far, the DCCC and their House Majority PAC have wasted $2,156,920 trying to save his worthless hide again-- over $450,000 this week alone.

As Lori Montgomery explained in the Washington Post yesterday, "Cutting federal health and retirement spending has long been at the top of the GOP agenda. But with Republicans in striking distance of winning the Senate, they are suddenly blasting the idea of trimming Social Security benefits." Oh that's still the immutable agenda for conservatives, of course, but now they don't talk about it publicly. And, they're attacking conservative Democrats who have "reached across the aisle" to give them a hand with that toxic agenda. Like Barrow. Other conservative Democrats who cozy up with anti-family Republicans regularly and who are now being pummeled with GOP ads for it include Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Scott Peters (D-CA). Rove's shady SuperPAC, Crossroads, has been accusing Hagan of supporting a “controversial plan” that “raises the retirement age.” They don't mention the controversial plan is standard Republican fare that will be implemented as soon as the GOP controls the government.

Older voters typically dominate the electorate in non-presidential years, so the resort to Social Security as an issue in the Nov. 4 midterms is hardly surprising. But what has drawn attention-- and charges of hypocrisy-- is the decision by Republican groups to attack Democrats for supporting conservative ideas in a proposed “grand bargain” on the budget drafted by Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming.

Once venerated in both parties as a good-faith proposal, the Bowles-Simpson plan calls for political compromise to rein in the $17.9 trillion national debt, which was dangerously elevated by the recent recession. Republicans would raise taxes, the theory goes, in exchange for Democrats cutting health and retirement spending. Among its proposals: trim Social Security benefits for well-off seniors, raise the retirement age to 69 by 2075 and adopt the new inflation measure, known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI.

Both Crossroads GPS and NRCC, the party’s campaign arm for House races, have cited Democrats’ support for Bowles-Simpson as the basis of their charges on Social Security, though many Republicans-- including Rove-- have criticized President Obama for failing to support the Bowles-Simpson package.

The progressive approach, being pushed by people like Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson-- and by every Blue America candidate-- is to end the cap on Social Security taxes that allows rich people to only pay on the first $117,700 of income. As The Post points out, "More than 70 percent of Republicans and 92 percent of Democrats agreed that top earners should pay Social Security taxes on their entire earnings, not just wages under $117,700. Meanwhile, three-quarters of those surveyed oppose raising the retirement age and reducing cost-of-living increases, for example, by adopting the chained CPI." Washington's conservative consensus isn't headed in that direction and conservatives of both parties are still dead set on instituting chained CPI.