Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Long-simmering tensions between the White House and congressional Democrats on how best to address the country’s debt boiled over on Friday, with leaders and rank-and-file members alike fuming at reports that President Obama is mulling cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan debt-limit deal.
“What I’ve heard from people you might not expect to hear it from … is if they bring to the Senate a [deal] that really comes down heavy on working families and children and the elderly and they expect me to matter-of-factly vote for it, they’ll have another thing coming,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Friday morning.
[…]
Sanders, one of the Senate’s most liberal members and a vocal opponent of the inclusion of entitlement cuts in any debt-limit deal, spoke out against the proposed cuts on a conference call with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
The call included speakers representing more than 300 liberal organizations, including national labor unions, the National Organization for Women, MoveOn.org and the Alliance for Retired Americans.
“There’s been very little conversation between the White House and the Senate about this, and I think they’re making a grievous mistake if they think they can just present anything to us and assume that because we’re Democrats, we’ll go along with what the president has capitulated to,” Whitehouse said.
Progressive grassroots organizations are preparing to mobilize against the President if necessary: MoveOn.org, the PCCC and others have already blasted their membership with requests to contact the President and tell him to not make a deal with the Republicans that harms Social Security and Medicare. Many progressive Democrats, including Sen. Mark Udall, were unhappy with the President’s deal with Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts. But lately, Sen. Udall has been talking as much about spending cuts as growing revenue. This worries me.
I believe the President is giving ground when he should be fighting, and experience has shown the Republicans are not acting in good faith anyway. What is Obama hoping to achieve? Remember what we “gained” by sacrificing the public option? The recent special election victory by Kathy Hochul in a conservative New York congressional district clearly shows the public does not want Medicare and Social Security cut while the rich keep their tax breaks and loopholes. I hope that Democrats in Congress stand firm against proposed cuts, and that enough people contact the White House to show President Obama that cutting America’s safety net is a mistake.
Politically, morally, these are the values that make us different from the right. If we give them up…?
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That said, Dick Lamm was prescient about greedy geezers.
The people who say generational warfare sucks are the people who already won it. Just like the people who dismiss a return to Reagan-era tax rates as class warfare.
Why should someone who’s 66 more be entitled to guaranteed health care than someone who’s 6?
Nobody wants to insure you.
When you’re 6 it’s different.
Manage to survive long enough and you’ll be part of every generation; you don’t get an option or a choice.
“Sorry Commander — I have to join the opposing army, I just had another birthday.” LOL.
PS. Has Dick Lamm headed out onto the ice flow yet? LOL.
But if it’s cute the programs for the middle class and poor and retain the lowest tax rates in ~ 100 years for the rich – NFW.
I said back at the time that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would wind up being permanent.
If there are cuts for SS and Medicare, then the loopholes for special interests better be on the same chopping block.
Unfortunately, the GOP’s “revenue neutral” BS is very likely to take precedence.
The notion of using the 14th Amendment as leverage should be kept as an implicit “Deus Ex Machina” over the Republican negotiators.
I think the GOP has some other notions about how to raise revenue on the backs of the less fortunate. It all comes out of the discussion “share the burden, fix the tax code”. Watch for them to eliminate the earned income tax credit, the chidcare tax deduction, maybe the deduction for kids (not a bad thing) while retaining subsidies for big oil, etc.
… packing as much of their hypocritical social agenda as they can into the budget cuts against the middle class and those in most need.
He strikes me as a good poke player, though.