Democrats incensed with White House over Social Security, Medicare 8JUL11

THERE can not be any caving to the gop / tea-baggers this time, maybe Pres Obama hasn't learned anything from the last budget negotiations but the rest of us did. The gop / tea-bagger agenda is to provide more wealth and power, more economic and political control to the rich, to corporate America, to wall street and to the financial industry, and to do so on the backs of the retired, the poor, the disabled, the working and middle classes of this country. Their greed and lust for more wealth and more power will not be satisfied until the nation becomes a Third World economy governed as a plutocracy. This may sound extreme to some until one considers the state of our union after the bush era tax breaks and their extension, the corporate welfare policies of the government, and the unrelenting assaults on Social Security, Medicare, basic government services and the government funded social safety net. Let the republicans and tea-baggers make all the accusations about class warfare they want, it is a battle they started and it is one the Republic can't afford the Democrats and Pres Obama loose.

(Brendan Smialowski - BLOOMBERG) 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.
In a Friday afternoon press conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), emerging from what she called a “lively” House Democratic Caucus meeting, declared that Democrats “would not reduce the deficit or subsidize tax cuts for the rich on the backs of America’s seniors.”
But Pelosi appeared to crack the door for a deal, after she met with Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama at the White House Friday.
“I’m still optimistic that we can find a place that we can come together,” she said. “It has to be reflective of our values because ten years of a budget has a very serious impact on the future.”
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.
The Rhode Island Democrat added that as Obama prepares to hold a second meeting with congressional leaders on Sunday that “it’s important in the next several days to send as strong a signal down Pennsylvania Avenue as we can.”
Furthermore, liberal and labor groups said Friday that they, too, are mobilized to deliver that signal on the 2012 campaign trail. Max Richtman, the acting CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security, said that his group is readying a TV ad for late next week and is preparing to deliver nearly 700,000 petitions to the White House next week voicing opposition to any changes to seniors’ cost-of-living adjustments..
“We’re devoting more resources to this than we ever have before,” Richtman said.
The anger among Democrats surged after the news leaked mid-week that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) were attempting to craft a sweeping deal that could cut as much as $4 trillion from the deficit by reforming Social Security, heretofore a sacred cow to liberal Democrats, and overhauling the tax code, likely lowering overall rates but also raising some revenue. But Boehner said Friday there was “no imminent deal” leading up to a weekend summit with the president.
The White House and Congressional leaders must reach a deal by Aug. 2 to extend the borrowing power of the U.S. government or it will default, according to Treasury officials.
Some House Democrats are taking a “once bitten, twice shy” approach to the current dilemma. They point to the White House’s handling late last year of a deal that extended the Bush-era tax cuts — a move that especially chagrined liberal members, who felt the package was unduly generous to higher earners — and worry that they will again be asked to provide the votes for a final deal to which they haven’t really contributed.
And more than one month after House Democrats won a special election in upstate New York that largely hinged on House Republicans’ plans to overhaul Medicare, some Democrats and interest group leaders are renewing their argument that, as Whitehouse said Friday, “the public is with us on this.”
“I just have two words I hope people will keep in mind: Kathy Hochul,” said NOW President Terry O’Neill, referring to the Democrat who prevailed in the New York special election.
“I think that there was a lot of unhappiness on the Democratic side when (reports that Social Security may be on the table) came out, and from what I understand, it blindsided the leadership. They didn’t really realize it was coming out,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).
“And there’s all kinds of theories as to why it came out. Some people think it wasn’t the president; it was some of his people wanting to position themselves or whatever. But it wasn’t a good thing.”
Democratic members and aides described a growing sentiment among the caucus to put pressure on the House Republican majority to pass any debt-limit deal on their own if it goes too far in cutting spending and if it overhauls entitlement programs.
“I feel that they have the majority here and they need to come across with 218 votes for whatever deal that’s cut,” said Engel, who was one of the 112 Democrats that opposed last year’s tax-cut package.
“I don’t think that we should let any of them get off the hook and provide the votes to pass it. This is their baby — let them put up the votes....If it’s going to be too lopsided on the cutting side, yeah, I think we should reject it.”
Read more on PostPolitics
Republicans rebel on debt deal
In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts
Bachmann weighs whether to sign “cut, cap, balance pledge”

By Felicia Sonmez  |  01:14 PM ET, 07/08/2011