July 08, 2011 09:41 PM UTC

Is Obama selling out Social Security?

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• by: JeffcoBlue

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…?