Obama Budget Proposal Cuts Are 'Unconscionable,' Says AFL-CIO & What's the 'Chained CPI,' Why It's Bad for Social Security and Why the White House Shouldn't Be Touting It (VIDEO) 6&4APR13

MORE of the political backlash from the Progressive and Labor communities. Pres Obama may plan on sticking to his proposal, but the Democrats in Congress will pay if they go along with his plan. There is no way people are going to volunteer for and donate to Democrats up for reelection if these politicians give in and vote for the chained cpi proposal or any cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. We, the Bold Progressives, labor activist, and the people of faith who got Pres Obama reelected will prevail in this battle. He has till Wednesday to come up with a better plan. A few articles on this from HuffPost......

WASHINGTON -- President Obama hasn't formally proposed his "compromise" budget plan yet, but the White House can already see cracks forming among its trusted progressive coalition over cutbacks to cherished safety net programs.

On Saturday, organized labor quickly made good on its promise to oppose a White House budget that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, with the AFL-CIO labor federation ripping the president's expected proposal with unusually tough language in an email blast to activists.

The email (below) came with the subject heading, "Obama's really bad idea."

"From all reports I’ve seen, President Obama is going to propose a budget plan next week that is unprecedented for a Democratic president," said the email from Damon Silvers, the AFL-CIO's policy director. "It will propose a cut to Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities."

"It is unconscionable to ask seniors, people with disabilities and veterans who are barely making it to be squeezed even tighter at a time when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits."

That the AFL-CIO would oppose such a budget comes as no big surprise -- the federation has been saying as much since the day after Obama's election victory over Mitt Romney. But the fact that one of the president's strongest allies is preemptively calling his proposal "unconscionable" hints at some of the withering criticism Obama can expect to come from his left flank.

The president will propose his budget on Wednesday. As HuffPost has reported, it is likely to include a proposal to readjust the way the cost of living is calculated for Social Security beneficiaries. Known as "chained CPI," the switch will effectively reduce payments over time. The budget is also expected to include additional means testing for Medicare.

The budget would trim the deficit by an estimated $1.8 trillion over a decade, with $600 billion in savings coming from revenue and $1.2 trillion coming from domestic program and entitlement cuts, according to the New York Times.

While the inclusion of chained CPI and other cuts strengthen the possibility of a "grand bargain" over the budget, many to Obama's left seem to be questioning the prudence of starting negotiations so close to the middle. Count the AFL-CIO among them.

In his email, Silvers steered activists to a petition and urged them to "tell President Obama: No 'chained CPI and no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or other cuts to Social Security benefits. Period.'

Read the email in full:

From all reports I’ve seen, President Obama is going to propose a budget plan next week that is unprecedented for a Democratic president. It will propose a cut to Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.

It appears the proposed cut will take the form of “chained” CPI—a discredited way of calculating annual cost-of-living increases that does not keep up with actual costs, eating into benefits.

But there’s more. The president’s budget proposal also would require middle-class seniors—people who make $47,000 a year and more—to pay higher Medicare premiums.

These cuts are bad policy. And the only way we’re going to stop them is if President Obama and all members of Congress hear that we’re not going to tolerate them. Sign our petition to the president NOW.

It is unconscionable to ask seniors, people with disabilities and veterans who are barely making it to be squeezed even tighter at a time when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits.

It’s bad policy to make cuts that will weaken our economic recovery.

And it’s wrong, at a time of record income inequality and stagnant wages, to make the gap even worse by undercutting the retirement security of working- and middle-class Americans.

The majority of Americans oppose cuts to our country’s most important family protection programs. It’s time to make some noise about it.

We need to invest in America's working families, not pull the rug out from under them. That starts with repealing the sequester and making corporations and the richest 2% pay their fair share. And that should never, ever include cuts to benefits that millions of working families rely on.

Tell President Obama: No “chained” CPI and no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or other cuts to Social Security benefits. Period.:

go.aflcio.org/No-Cuts-Obama

In Solidarity,

Damon Silvers
Director of Policy, AFL-CIO

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/06/obama-budget-proposal-cut_n_3029598.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

What's the 'Chained CPI,' Why It's Bad for Social Security and Why the White House Shouldn't Be Touting It (VIDEO)

The White House and prominent Democrats are talking about reducing future Social Security payments by using a formula for adjusting for inflation that's stingier than the current one. It'scalled the "Chained CPI." I did this video so you can understand it -- and understand why it's so wrongheaded.

Even Social Security's current inflation adjustment understates the true impact of inflation on the elderly. That's because they spend 20 to 40 percent of their incomes on health care, and health-care costs have been rising faster than inflation. So why adopt a new inflation adjustment that's even stingier than the current one?

Social Security benefits are already meager for most recipients. The median income of Americans over 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of them depend on Social Security for more than half of this. The average Social Security benefit is less than $15,000 a year.

Besides, Social Security isn't in serious trouble. The Social Security trust fund is flush for at least two decades. If we want to ensure it's there beyond that, there's an easy fix -- just lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes, which is now $113,700.

Why are Democrats even suggesting the inflation adjustment be reduced? Republicans aren't asking for it. Not even Paul Ryan's draconian budget includes it.

Democrats invented Social Security and have been protecting it for almost 80 years. They shouldn't be leading the charge against it.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

 

Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/chained-cpi_b_3016471.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

The Obama Coalition vs. Corporate America 9JAN13

A very interesting article sent to me by a friend, and my comments to her. Thanks again Heidi....

Pretty good article Heidi, thanks for sharing. The last two paragraphs hold a warning for all progressives."The 1980 election marked the start of a quarter-century of corporate political hegemony that permeated the administrations of Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush – as well as, to a substantial degree, the administration of Bill Clinton. In other words, the current Republican implosion notwithstanding, it would not be surprising to see conservative feet on Democratic throats before too much time has passed."
Just because we won the election doesn't mean we won. Pres Obama seems to be intent on continuing his administrations policies of extraordinary rendition as well as government surveillance within the U.S., both threats to our civil liberties and human rights. And his choice to head the cia is tainted by American torture of detainees in U.S. custody. That is not progressive. He could have sent a strong signal to the bank-financial cabal and wall street that times they are a'changin if he had nominated Paul Krugman for Treasury, but chose to go with someone who may be tough, but will not be able to reign in corporate corruption and abuse of power. The only bright spot so far is Chuck Hagel for Defense. Just his nomination is sending waves of panic through the military-industrial complex because he has been a real soldier and knows the horrors of war first hand and because he knows the Pentagon's budget must be cut and he will not sacrifice the welfare of the troops in favor of military contractor's profit margins.

Progressives have had to fight corporate political hegemony all through Pres Obama's first term, that is why not one ceo or member of any corporate board of the banks and financial institutions that almost destroyed our economy in this last recession has been charged in criminal court and why the "fines" levied against their financial institutions have done nothing to curb their greed and lust for power.

If the fractured, squabbling republican party ends up dominant with their feet on Democrats throats it will be because Pres Obama will caved to their demands. The next big fight is to raise the fed debt ceiling and Pres Obama has said he will not be held hostage by the gop. Does that mean he stands his ground and makes them responsible for possibly shutting down the government, or will he give in in another "compromise" where the progressive agenda is sacrificed? We shall see.

By the by, here's an interesting article on the civil war in the gop.....

Birch Society Republicans: America Now Has Three Major Political Parties 4JAN13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/birch-society-republicans-america-now.html

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.

The slow implosion of the Republican Party — along with the growing strength of a Democratic coalition dominated by low-to-middle-income voters — threatens the power of the corporate establishment and will force big business to find new ways to reassert control of the policy-making process.
The warning signs are everywhere.
The development carrying perhaps the most symbolic significance was the abandonment last week by 85 House Republicans and 40 of the 47 Republican senators of their longstanding commitment not to raise taxes. The tax increase was imposed on the affluent, a core Republican constituency. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page did not mince words, not that it ever does:

The Senate-White House compromise grudgingly passed by the House is a Beltway classic: the biggest tax increase in 20 years in return for spending increases, and all spun for political purposes as a “tax cut for the middle class.”

The potential institutionalization of a majority Democratic coalition of the downscale – including single women, minorities, union members and the young — is equally (if not more) ominous for members of the top 0.1 percent and for the corporations that have profited over the past 40 years.
Voters in this ascendant coalition believe “politicians help the rich get richer and corporations collect record profits while refusing to hire or increase wages or salaries for workers,” according to an extensive study conducted by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
Although there is a pro-business wing of the Democratic Party — associated with figures like current and former Treasury Secretaries Timothy Geithner and Robert Rubin, and with centrists like Senators Mark Warner of Virginia, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and  Max Baucus of Montana — this faction is in danger of being submerged by a surge of redistributional demands coming from voters in the bottom half, income-wise.
This isn’t the only thing causing problems for what we used to call Big Business — represented by the Business Roundtable, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Bankers Association and other trade associations — which faces a set of challenges that have the potential to threaten its clout.
Economists on both the right and left, from Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University to the Times columnist Paul Krugman, are increasingly talking about the detrimental consequences of high concentrations of economic and political power – concentrations that threaten the innovation that is supposed to be what makes unequal outcomes worth the price.
Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T., who wrote the highly regarded book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” with James A. Robinson of Harvard, argues that concentrations of wealth and market power allow “the already well off and already well organized” to exercise excessive leverage through “lobbying, campaign contributions and otherwise” that distort market processes.
The wide range of hostility to big business is reflected in the views of Erick Erickson, the influential right-wing blogger at RedState.com who, “through a mix of incendiary posts, canny self-promotion (he has 24,540 Twitter followers) and endorsement of conservative primary candidates” has made himself “a conservative powerhouse.” Erickson contends that a central failing of the Republican Party is its subservience to the business elite:

The Republican Establishment gets their head patted as they sip wine with major C.E.O.s who want Washington to just do something. But these C.E.O.s have something in common. They want Washington to work for them. Washington working for Fortune 500 does not equate to Washington working for families or entrepreneurs or small businesses. We have an unlevel playing field with Washington picking winners and losers with cushy jobs for the elites when they leave the Capitol.

A second development that raises the level of hostility to corporate chieftains is the fact that there has been, over the past decade, a sharp decline in the reward for work.
Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino of the Cleveland Federal Reserve  documented this decline in a paper published in September, “Labor’s Declining Share of Income and Rising Inequality.” The following chart shows the continuing shift in the distribution of national income from labor to the owners of capital, beginning in 2000:

Cleveland Fed

An additional chart put together by the Cleveland Fed demonstrates that from 1948 to 1973 compensation rose at almost exactly the same rate as productivity; in other words, workers gained proportionately as their productivity improved. Over the following two decades, from 1974 to 1995, however, the rate of compensation growth fell behind productivity by roughly 0.25 percent a year, and then fell even further, by 0.5 percent, over the years from 1996 to 2011. For a worker making $25,000 a year in 1974, the failure of his pay to keep up with his productivity growth means that he made $5,763 less in 2011, $43,225, than he would have had his pay kept up with productivity gains, $48,988.
The more workers recognize that their wages are not keeping up with their productivity gains, the more they are likely to press for redistributive government action through tax policy or by other means.

Cleveland Fed

Jacobson and Occhino write

that economists have identified three long-term factors that explain why “the wage-productivity gap has widened and the share of income accruing to labor has declined.” The first is the decline of unions and the resulting weakening of the bargaining power of labor. The second has been the movement of well paying jobs overseas – the “migration of relatively more labor-intensive sectors from advanced economies to emerging economies. As a consequence, the sectors remaining in the advanced economies are relatively less labor-intensive, and the average share of labor income is lower.” The third factor is automation and technology advances which have encouraged a shift from workers to machines — “technological change connected with improvements in information and communication technologies, which has raised the marginal productivity and return to capital relative to labor.”

The shift of income from labor to capital occurs at a time (and may well be one of the causes) of huge increases in the share of income flowing to C.E.O.’s and those at the top of the income distribution.
Although the stars are lined up in favor of the anti-corporate left, American business, when its back is to the wall, has historically proved to be extraordinarily resourceful.
Just over 40 years ago, at a similarly volatile moment, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote a 6,030-word memo to the United States Chamber of Commerce that has gained legendary status: The Powell Manifesto or, as it was formally titled, “Confidential Memorandum: Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” The soon-to-be-appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court warned: “We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.”
In the face of this onslaught, business mobilized and by 1977 was back on top, defeating liberal initiatives like consumer protection and labor law reform during the Carter administration. Then, in 1980, a unified coalition of corporations and trade associations helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency, and the Republican Party wrested control of the Senate.
The 1980 election marked the start of a quarter-century of corporate political hegemony that permeated the administrations of Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush – as well as, to a substantial degree, the administration of Bill Clinton.
In other words, the current Republican implosion notwithstanding, it would not be surprising to see conservative feet on Democratic throats before too much time has passed.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/the-obama-coalition-vs-corporate-america/?emc=eta1 

Obama Tells Progressives He Won't Budge On Bush Tax Cuts13NOV12

SEQUESTRATION, THE FISCAL CLIFF, it is looming and it is a real threat to the entire nation. The difference is in who will actually suffer if a budget agreement is not achieved. The poor and the working poor, the retired, the disabled, the least among us, those living on the very edge (and I do not mean in a risk taking way) will be hit the hardest. The gop and the tea-baggers are already pushing for a budget agreement to protect the rich and to shift the cost of any budget agreement onto the middle class, working class and the poor. Pres Obama and Progressive Democrats in Congress are girding for the fight as laid out by the President, dedicated to making sure the bush tax cuts for the rich are ended so they start paying their fair share and making sure cuts are not directed to vital government agencies and the social safety net. From HuffPost....
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will enter high-stakes budget negotiations firmly committed to seeing the tax rates for high-income earners rise to pre-George W. Bush levels, he assured a gathering of progressive and labor leaders on Tuesday.
"I am not going to budge," he told the group, according to an attendee who relayed material from the meeting on condition of anonymity. "I said in 2010 that I'm going to do this once, and I meant it."
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment, but two other sources who attended the meeting confirmed the quote. The administration seems to have staked out a firmer position than during the first stand-off over the Bush-era tax cuts, in November and December of 2010, leaving the impression that it won't sign off on a compromise that doesn't increase the tax burden on the wealthy as a means of paying down the deficit.
How the president plans to effect that outcome is still unclear. Top Democrats in the Senate have said they would be comfortable letting all the tax rates expire -- as they are scheduled to do -- at the end of the year, after which they will put together a tax cut bill that would re-establish the Bush-era rates for incomes below $250,000.
Several sources at the meeting said the president was, as one noted, "more nuanced than going off the cliff." Obama hopes to place "maximum pressure on House Republicans so at the end of the day he may be able to budge them," the source added.
"It seemed like he meant it," the first source said. "That suggests that they are ready to go over the ledge."
Following the meeting, a handful of attendees spoke briefly to the press, praising Obama for vowing to firmly oppose an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy.
"It was a very, very positive meeting," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "We're very committed to making sure that the middle class and workers don't end up paying the tab for a party that we didn't get to go to, and the president is committed to that as well."
"The president was really standing firm on taxes," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. "Everyone in the room talked about how much they have the president's back in this fight."
The expiring Bush-era tax cuts are just one component of a larger budget deal that needs to be hammered out with congressional Republicans, the details of which remain unclear. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney ducked a question during Tuesday's press briefing as to whether Obama would be willing to put cuts to entitlement benefits on the table in negotiations with Republicans. Instead, Carney pointed to the $340 billion in savings from entitlement reform already in Obama's plan.
The first source said that the president "seemed to agree that Social Security" should not be part of any grand bargain because it "didn't add to the deficit."
Carney also left the door open to the idea of raising the threshold for extending the Bush-era tax cuts to $500,000 or $1 million. Obama drew the line at $250,000 in his proposal.
"He is not wedded to every detail of that plan," Carney said, when asked specifically if Obama would be willing to raise the limit.
In the process of putting together a far-reaching piece of legislation, the president will have the help of the progressive community's political arms. All of the meeting's attendees pledged to keep their election-season campaign apparatuses intact for purposes of drumming up support for the president's budget priorities.
Obama asked the attendees to focus their efforts on pressuring House Republicans to reach an agreement on the tax cuts, reminding them that the American people made clear in last week's elections that they want to see the wealthiest pay more in taxes, according to a source familiar with what was discussed at the meeting.

AFSCME president Lee Saunders, who attended the meeting, said his members are prepared to devote as much energy to pressuring Republicans to reach a balanced debt deal as they put into the campaign season.
"We're going to have our folks engaged, just like they were in the election," Saunders said. "They're going to be engaged in this campaign."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/obama-bush-tax-cuts_n_2124324.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications