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Economy

More Than A Quarter Of Americans Would Have Lived In Poverty Last Year Without The Social Safety Net

By Travis Waldron on Nov 10, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail have spent much of the year trying to gut social safety net programs vital to the livelihood of America’s poor and elderly citizens. From House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare-ending budget plan to multiple proposals from the GOP’s presidential candidates, conservatives have sought to extract massive cuts from important programs, even while supplying the wealthiest Americans with massive tax cuts.

But Americans continue to rely heavily on safety net programs to stay afloat, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Without the permanent safety net programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various assistance programs) and temporary programs included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (which Republicans have falsely claimed didn’t work), more than a quarter of the country’s population would have fallen beneath the poverty line in 2010, CBPP says:

Our report also shows that if the government safety net as a whole — these temporary initiatives (all were featured in the 2009 Recovery Act) plus safety-net policies already in place when the recession hit — hadn’t existed in 2010, the poverty rate would have been 28.6 percent, nearly twice the actual 15.5 percent.

CBPP’s report comes on the heels of newly-refined poverty measures from the Census Bureau that painted an even bleaker picture of American poverty. According to the new measure, 16 percent of the population, or approximately 49.1 million Americans, lived in poverty in 2010, up from 46.2 million found in the official report released in September. The bulk of that difference comes from seniors, the very people who rely most on social safety net programs. Because the alternative measure takes out-of-pocket medical expenses into account, it found that nearly 16 percent of those over age 65 lived in poverty in 2010, up from 9 percent in the September report.

Economy

Bachmann Says She Wants Deeper Entitlement Cuts Than Those In The House GOP’s Radical Budget

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 15, 2011 at 1:22 pm

During an interview with Bloomberg News’ Al Hunt, 2012 GOP presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that she envisions entitlement reforms that go well beyond what House Republicans approved in their budget, written by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). While Ryan is always careful to say that his plans would not affect those “near” retirement, which he defines at 55 or older, Bachmann believes that those whose retirement is imminent should be subjected to cuts:

BACHMANN: Anyone who is currently a senior citizen on entitlement benefits, they will receive them. We’ll be crystal-clear. But beyond that, we will reform the entitlement programs now, not five years from now, not 26 years from now, now. Anyone who is not yet on those programs, we’re going to change them.

HUNT: So if anyone’s 62 or 63, they would face Medicare cuts now?

BACHMANN: There would be changes in the entitlement system. And of course, we’d have to agree to them, but we all know what needs to be done. Whether it’s longevity issues or means- testing, that needs to be employed.

HUNT: But you would go beyond where Paul Ryan went on Medicare and you would address Social Security cuts, too?

BACHMANN: For Social Security, again, I want to be crystal clear: Anyone who is currently a retiree would not be impacted. But for people who are younger than that age, that needs to be on the table. Everything needs to be on the table.

Watch it:

Consider that she has said that she wants to “wean everybody off” entitlements. “Basically, what we have to do is wean everybody else off,” she has said. “So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.” As a reminder, the House Republican budget all but eviscerates Medicare, increasing costs for seniors dramatically, while gutting Medicaid. And for Bachmann, that isn’t enough.

Economy

Cantor: Entitlement Promises ‘Frankly, Are Not Going To Be Kept For Many’

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 4, 2011 at 9:35 am

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he is ready and willing to slash entitlements like Medicare, because, in his opinion, Americans have to “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many“:

What we need to be able to do is to demonstrate that that is the better way for the people of this country. Get the fiscal house in order, come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that, frankly, are not going to be kept for many. [...] The math doesn’t lie.

Watch it:

Republicans have been saying for months that they want to preserve programs like Medicare and Social Security for all people over the age of 55, but that those under 55 will have to shift into a different program. But Cantor’s pronouncement is maybe the most explicit explanation that, under the GOP’s vision, the government would be actively reneging on promises made to those who haven’t yet hit the arbitrary age of 55.

Of course, the math would look much better, particularly on Social Security, if the GOP were to back off its insistence that the government not collect a single dime in new revenue. Meanwhile, Jacob Hacker, political science professor at Yale University, has called the GOP’s scheme to raise the Medicare retirement age “the single worst idea for Medicare reform” since it “saves Medicare money only by shifting the cost burden onto older Americans caught between the old eligibility age and the new, as well as onto the employers and states that help fund their benefits.”

Security

Joe Lieberman Says U.S. Should Cut Social Security To Pay For Fighting ‘The Islamist Extremists’

By Zaid Jilani on Aug 2, 2011 at 1:16 pm

This past April, right-wing war hawk John Bolton suggested during an interview on Fox News that the United States should cut Social Security and Medicare to finance the defense budget.

During debate over the debt deal today on the Senate floor, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) appeared to endorse this call. Lieberman explained that he is working with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) on a Social Security spending reduction plan and that “we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense…to protect us…with Islamist extremists”:

LIEBERMAN: I want to indicate today to my colleagues that Senator Coburn and I are working again on a bipartisan proposal to secure Social Security over the long term, we hope to have that done in time. To also forward to the special committee for their consideration. So, bottom line, we can’t protect these entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world while we’re at war with Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11 and will be for a long time to come.

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress’s Ben Armbruster notes, the Bolton-Lieberman plan is “is basically a reverse Robin Hood scheme: robbing the poor to pay the rich, or really, the Military Industrial Complex on steroids.” As Ambruster points out, a “recent Reuters poll found that Americans would rather cut defense spending than raid social services in order to solve the debt and deficit problems.” Americans do not appear to have the priorities of these two war hawks.

Health

How Boehner’s Debt Plan Produces ‘The Greatest Increase In Poverty And Hardship’ In American History

By Igor Volsky on Jul 26, 2011 at 9:04 am

John Boehner’s debt ceiling proposal would add $1 trillion to the current $14.3 trillion debt limit (which would be expected to allow the government to continue borrowing into April of 2012), reduce spending immediately and cap future spending to save $1.2 trillion over 10 years, and establish a 12-member joint committee of Congress charged with reporting back to both chambers by Nov. 23 with recommendations to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.8 trillion over 10 years. The plan also calls for a vote on a constitutional balanced budget amendment before the end of 2011.

It’s a plan that the usually “mild-mannered” Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is describing as “tantamount to a form of ‘class warfare’” that “if enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.” Since Boehner’s blueprint contains no tax increases and his first round of cuts targets discretionary spending, the joint committee will have no choice but to achieve its $1.8 trillion in budget reductions by cutting entitlement spending, Greenstein explains:

– As a result, virtually all of that $1.8 trillion would come from entitlement programs. They would have to be cut more than $1.5 trillion in order to produce sufficient interest savings to achieve $1.8 trillion in total savings.

– To secure $1.5 trillion in entitlement savings over the next ten years would require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties (including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan) have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years. [...]

In short, the Boehner plan would force policymakers to choose among cutting the incomes and health benefits of ordinary retirees, repealing the guts of health reform and leaving an estimated 34 million more Americans uninsured, and savaging the safety net for the poor. It would do so even as it shielded all tax breaks, including the many lucrative tax breaks for the wealthiest and most powerful individuals and corporations.

Congressional Quarterly’s Richard E. Cohen also reports that Boehner’s powerful panel has “no precise parallel” and will have to overcome severe logistical hurdles. “The panel would then be required to complete its work before Thanksgiving — a period of less than four months that includes the monthlong congressional August recess, two additional weeks of scheduled House breaks and three other weeks when the Senate is slated to be gone.”

It would also “have to work with existing House and Senate committees with longstanding jurisdictional claims on the issues in play and build majority support in both chambers of a divided Congress. The GOP has already cautioned that it “will not appoint any members who will approve tax hikes,” a selection criterion that “Reid and Pelosi would most certainly not follow.” The committee’s recommendations would then face up-or-down floor votes in the House and Senate without additional amendments.

Politics

McConnell: Sure I’ll Work With Obama, As Long As He ‘Is Willing To Do What I And My Members Would Do Anyway’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 25, 2011 at 2:40 pm

Despite spending the past two years reflexively obstructing President Obama’s agenda, in the wake last November’s elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said he wants to look for common ground and “areas of potential cooperation” with the president and Senate Democrats. During the previous Congress, McConnell expressed little interest in cooperating with the White House, so Democrats cautiously welcomed McConnell’s newfound willingness to compromise.

But at a breakfast event hosted by Politico’s Mike Allen this morning in D.C., which ThinkProgress attended, McConnell expressed a vision of cooperation that looks more like capitulation. McConnell said he is willing to work with Obama, as long as the president “is willing to do what I and my members would do anyway”:

MCCONNELL: If the president is willing to do what I and my members would do anyway, we’re not going to say no and –

ALLEN: But that’s not much of a concession. That’s not bargaining, to just give you what you want.

MCCONNELL: Um, I like to think I’m a pretty good negotiator.

McConnell’s comments seem to confirm what many have suspected; that the GOP leader — who recently said that the “single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” — isn’t actually that interested in cooperation or governance.

But while McConnell wants Obama to cave to his agenda, he’s hesitant to even reveal what that agenda is, particularly on entitlement reform. Because Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to making major cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare to trim the deficit — something many Republicans support — McConnell is insisting that negotiations on this key policy issue be kept behind closed doors:

MCCONNELL: Well look, if we’re going to do anything serious about entitlements, we’re not going to negotiate it in public.

Watch a compilation:

Asked what his party could do to avoid the pitfalls that befell former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich after he lead the GOP to major victories in the 1994, only to resign in disgrace a few years later, McConnell said his part must avoid “acting like they [are] in charge of the government when they’re not.” Indeed.

Politics

Pawlenty Inadvertently Explains How House Republicans Are ‘Lying To You’ About Spending Cuts

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Nov 4, 2010 at 3:30 pm

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, despite their professed commitment to cut government spending, most Republicans in Congress refuse to propose specifics that would actually cut spending in any significant way. Recognizing the extreme unpopularity of cutting Social Security and Medicare, and the aversion of their base to military cuts, these self-styled fiscal conservatives often take entitlement and defense spending off the table, removing nearly 60 percent of the federal budget from scrutiny. Of the remaining spending, another sizable portion goes to debt payments — which are untouchable — and most Republicans also take homeland security and other security spending off the table, leaving only a small fraction of the total federal budget from which to find cuts.

Despite this stark reality, Republicans still try to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility, and are forced to fumble, hem and haw when pressed on how they would actually cut spending. But at least one Republican leader is willing to be honest. Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) essentially called his party’s congressional leaders liars, saying anybody says they want to cut spending but won’t touch entitlements or defesne is “lying to you”:

HOST: What are you going to cut?

PAWLENTY: If you look at a pie chart of federal outlays, discretionary spending being the red, non-discretionary being the blue. The blue is already over the over the half way mark and it’s growing in double digits. Anybody who comes in here and tells you they’re not going to cut anything other than waste fraud and abuse, they’re not going to touch entitlements — they’re lying to you. If you want to deal with the spending issue, in terms of total federal outlays, you got to deal with interest on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — if you have the time I can walk you through my ideas. But that’s the truth, you got to do entitlement reform, particularly if you’re going to hold defense harmless.

Watch it:

Pawlenty called out this “lying” because he openly favors cuts to entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. This is an unpopular position, so Republican congressional leaders often attempt to claim that no one in their ranks wants to cut these programs. However, this is patently false; ThinkProgress has identified 104 Republicans in Congress who support privatizing Social Security. Progressives have alternatively proposed defense spending cuts, eliminating corporate welfare elimination, and responsible revenue increases.

If these congressional Republicans are serious about cutting spending and want to make cuts to Social Securiy or Medicare, they should have the courage to say so honestly, as Pawlenty seems to be calling on them to do, instead of hiding behind phony claims that they can make meaningful cuts without causing significant pain.

Yglesias

Ben Smith Says the Left Won’t Object to Entitlement Cuts

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 12, 2009 at 8:45 am

social_security_626_article_1.jpg

Politico‘s Ben Smith claims that Barack Obama can get a free pass from the left if he moves to gut Social Security and Medicare:

President Barack Obama plans a busy February. The new administration hopes to have a stimulus package passed by Congress, a new plan in place to shore up ailing banks and, by month’s end, to hold a “fiscal responsibility” summit.

If the stimulus and banking bailout weren’t controversial enough, the summit fills some entitlement reform critics with dread, as they fear it could speed calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Strikingly, however, Obama appears to be getting unusual room to maneuver on entitlements by most of his liberal allies. On the subject of entitlement reform, in fact, Obama’s honeymoon continues — at least in the unlikely precincts of the Democratic left, a counterintuitive development that has buoyed the spirits of reformers who would like to see drastic changes in the way Social Security works.

I’m not sure what the administration’s thinking is, but certainly I wouldn’t be silent if he were to propose draconian cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare. On the other hand, if Obama wants to get the long-term public fiscal situation in check by tackling its main root cause—runaway cost inflation in the health care sector—I would applaud that:

entitlements_1.png

I have some reason for confidence that Obama will, in fact, do the right thing. That’s because the liberal perspective on this is espoused by, among other, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag. The chart above comes from his Congressional Budget Office days when he produced a masterful slide series entitled “Health Care: Capturing the Opportunity in the Nation’s Core Fiscal Challenge” which defines the “fiscal challenge” correctly as less an “entitlement” problem than an “health care” problem. You could solve the entitlement problem fairly easily, if brutally, without tackling the health care problem—just pair back benefits. And then instead of a bankrupt state you’ll have bankrupt families and you won’t have achieved anything. But if you can solve the health care problem, you’ll have done most of what needs to be done and set the stage for tackling other issues.

Yglesias

Happy Birthday Social Security

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 14, 2008 at 7:05 am

It was 73 years ago today that President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation establishing the Social Security program. For each and every one of those 73 years, Social Security has been a pay-as-you-go public pension scheme in which the current generation of workers’ taxes go to pay benefits to present retirees and, in exchange, future generations of workers will pay for current workers when they retire. It’s been effective at meetings its goals and broadly popular:

Or, as John McCain would have it, the whole thing is a complete disgrace.

Politics

GAO: If Gov’t Were A Business, ‘Our Stock Would Be Dropping’ And We’d Need A ‘Major Shake-Up’

By Faiz Shakir on Dec 18, 2007 at 11:47 am

Yesterday, the Treasury Department released a troubling financial report that revealed the federal government’s “total liabilities and unfunded commitments for future payments” related to Social Security and Medicare are now estimated at $53 trillion, up from $20 trillion in 2000.

In a speech yesterday at the National Press Club, GAO Comptroller General David Walker said:

If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and some people would be talking about whether the company’s management directors needed a major shake-up.

“The federal government’s total liabilities,” Walker explained, “translates into a de facto mortgage of about $455,000 for every American household and there’s no house to back that mortgage. In other words, our government has made a whole lot of promises that, in the long run, it cannot possibly keep without huge tax increases.”

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/gaowalker.320.240.flv]

In his speech, Walker said, “I have become increasingly frustrated by the widespread myopia, tunnel vision and self-centeredness in Washington DC.”

Illustrating Walker’s point, President Bush — while discussing the economy yesterday — did not reference the Treasury Department’s new report. “Rather, he touted the economic merits of tax cuts. ‘I’ll veto any tax increase,’ he said.”

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan writes, “The Cost of Bush: $32 trillion.”

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