Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-GOP to Demand Mandatory Cuts in Social Security, Medicare as Price for Debt Ceiling
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Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 08:43:23 -0400 (EDT)
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GOP Plans to Demand MandatoryCuts in Social Security, Medicare as Price for Debt Ceiling
 
     It isincreasingly clear that the Republicans will demand mandatory cuts in SocialSecurity and Medicare as a price for increasing the debt ceiling later this spring.
 
     Of course theywon’t say they are demandingmandatory cuts in Social Security and Medicare. 
 
     Over the Easterrecess they’ve had a taste of just how strongly people feel aboutMedicare.  Before they left the Capitollast month House Republicans voted – almost unanimously -- for the Republicanbudget that ends Medicare and replaces it with a privatized system of partialsupport for private insurance premiums. They ran into a town hall buzz-saw ofopposition in every corner of the country.
 
    The HouseRepublican budget plan authored by Congressman Paul Ryan isn’t going anywherein the Senate.  
 
     If the “gang ofsix” Senators come up with a deficit reduction plan that is acceptable to itsthree Democrats and three Republicans, that may attract brief interest amongthe elite media.  But such a budget dealwould have to involve substantial increases in revenue – presumably fromraising taxes on the wealthy – and that has exactly zero chance of beingapproved by the Republican House.
 
     But the Republicans won’t let the 70-pluspercent opposition to cuts in Medicare and Social Security dissuade them.  They’ve come up with a new plan thatsugarcoats their attempts to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare.   It’s called a “mandatory global spendingcap” and it’s nothing more than the House Republican budget in disguise. 
 
     The Republicanslike this plan because, when you ask everyday voters if they support a“mandatory global spending cap” they think it sounds pretty good.   What better way to force the government to“live within its means”?  
 
     But support turnsinto solid opposition the moment people understand that the “mandatory globalspending cap” would require mandatory cuts in Medicare and SocialSecurity.  In fact, this proposal isn’t away to make the government “live within its means” – it’s really a way to cutMedicare and Social Security in order to give more tax breaks to millionaires.   It’s a way to reduce the “means” that normalpeople live on, and hand them over to the Donald Trumps and Paris Hiltons ofthe world. 
 
     Turns out that ifyou set a spending cap at a fixed level somewhere close to the averagepercentage of Gross Domestic Product that has gone to Federal outlays over thelast couple of decades, it will inevitably force cuts in Medicare and SocialSecurity.  That’s because the percentageof the population that is older and receiving Medicare and Social Security isgoing up.  This will automaticallyincrease the percentage of GDP going to Medicare and Social Security benefit –which, of course, Americans have paid for their entire working lives.   In fact, the “mandatory global spending cap”is a trick intended to sucker ordinary people into supporting a proposal to cuttheir own Social Security and Medicare benefits.
 
     But, you say, wemay just have to renege on our commitments to pay Social Security and Medicare benefitbecause “we’re broke” and the Federal deficit is soaring out of sight.
 
    First, of course,we’re not “broke.”  Big corporations andthe wealthiest Americans are making more money – and a higher percentage of America’stotal income – than ever.  The fact isthat if millionaires and billionaires paid taxes at the same rate they didduring the Reagan Administration – and the income they earn clipping coupons oninvestments were taxed at the same rates as people who work for a living – thatwould go a long way to eliminating the deficit.
 
      And the expertstell us that Social Security would be solvent for 75 years if you required higher-incomepeople to pay as much in Social Security taxes as their secretaries andjanitors by eliminating the cap on income for which Americans pay SocialSecurity taxes. 
 
    But if ModerateDemocrats in the Senate need to support some deficit reducing measure at thesame time they vote to raise the debt ceiling, there is actually also anelegant way to require that the Government eliminate its deficits that does notrequire mandatory cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
 
     Instead of a“mandatory spending cap” you could pass a “mandatory deficit cap.”  This would require Congress to agree on agradually-lower year-by-year dollar target for the deficit over the next tenyears.  Congress could achieve thistarget through any means – from raising taxes on the rich, to cutting spending,to eliminating tax expenditures like subsidies to oil companies.  If it failed to do so that would triggerautomatic reductions in spending – and tax expenditures. Social Security andMedicare would be excluded, since the benefits paid by these programs have beenearned and paid for during people’s working lives.  The same would be true for the smallpercentage of Federal expenditures going to low-income programs that providethe critical social safety net.
 
     That kind of  “deficit trigger” is similar to -- though notexactly like -- the one proposed by President Obama in his budget speech.  It would provide the discipline to forceCongress to cut deficits over the next decade, without requiring cuts in SocialSecurity and Medicare.   It would alsoallow moderate Democrats in the Senate to support action that is responsive tovoter concern about the deficit that doesn’t run a foul of their rock-solidsupport for Social Security and Medicare. 
 
    Of course theproblem with this proposal from the Republican point of view is that itactually addresses the deficit – and forces Congress to choose between taxbreaks for the rich on the one hand, and Social Security and Medicare on theother.  Since three-fourths of the voterschoose cutting tax breaks for the rich, the Wall Street/CEO faction of theRepublican Party (the dominate faction of the GOP) is not so wild about thisapproach.  In fact, of course they don’treally care about the “deficit.”   Allthey really care about are more and more tax breaks for themselves. They wereperfectly happy, for instance, to massively increase the deficit last fall inorder to continue the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy. 
 
     On the otherhand, the Wall Street/CEO faction of the Republican Party is not about to allowthe Tea Party gang to default on the Federal Debt and precipitate anotherfinancial market meltdown.   
 
     That’s why, ifDemocrats frame the choice as a “global spending cap that will mandate cuts inMedicare and Social Security” versus a “deficit trigger” that will protectSocial Security, Medicare and the social safety net – but also get the FederalDeficit under control – Democrats win.
 
     But it’s up toDemocrats to affirmatively frame the debate in the upcoming budget battle.  And it’s critical that moderate SenateDemocrats do not allow themselves to be stampeded into knee jerk positions thatlook good at first blush, but on closer inspection have horrific implicationsfor their constituents on the one hand, and turn out to be politicallyunpopular on the other. 
 
Robert Creamer is a long-timepolitical organizer and strategist, and author of the book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,available on Amazon.com. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.

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