The Next Hurrah

Now is Not the Time for Social Security Reform

By Mimikatz

The rumors that Bush is willing to consider tax increases on upper income people to make progress on issues he views as important to his legacy gained credence yesterday.  In his press conference yesterday Bush as much as said so, per the WaPo:

Signaling a new flexibility on issues in the wake of the Democrats' wins, Bush said he is willing to discuss Democratic ideas for solving the Social Security problem, including tax increases. "I don't see how you can move forward without people feeling comfortable about putting ideas on the table," Bush said when asked about the prospect of tax increases to keep Social Security solvent. "I have made it clear that I have a way forward that can do it [without raising taxes] and I want to hear other people's opinions."

The deals most often talked about to secure Social Security's finances would combine an increase in the level of salaries subject to the payroll tax, set to rise to $97,500 next year, with some shrinkage of benefits for those retiring in a few years, either by way of increasing the age of retirement (with full benefits), now 67 for those born in 1960 or later, which also reduces the initial benefit for those who begin to draw benefits at age 62, or by so-called "progressive indexing," which ties the calculation of initial benefits to the rate of inflation, rather than to wage increases, ultimately resulting in a lower initial benefit for workers who make more than $25,000 a year (in today's dollars) at retirement.   

In the last two years the focus has been on Bush's insistence on private accounts.  Dems refused to even discuss the topic of changing Social Security so long as private accounts, funded by some percentage of payroll taxes, was on the table.  But even if Bush takes carve-out private accounts off the table, and agrees to consider increases in the payroll tax as part of a deal, Dems should still decline the invitation to tinker with this highly successful program.  Why?  Because so long as payroll taxes exceed benefits paid, which they will until at least 2017 under the current system,  and as long as Bush insists the Social Security Trust Fund is a phantom, any increases in payroll taxes will just fund the war and tax cuts for the very rich. They will not put Social Security on a sounder financial footing than it is now because there is no real mechanism to ensure that result.

What Should Our Agenda Be? (Economics)

By Mimikatz

Nancy Pelosi has her 100 Days Agenda, but we need to be thinking in terms of shaping the longer term agenda for the next two to four years.  Other than Iraq, the area where we most need to roll back the damage of the Bush years is in the economic sphere.  Max Sawicky proposes five issues for a populist economics, including Trade (least important), Deficit dementia (moderate deficits are better than none), Social Security (there is no problem, let alone a crisis), Health Care (there is no crisis here either, just rising demand for ever-expanding treatments that must be managed fairly) and The Imperial Fed (which has elevcated slow growth and anit-inflationary policies at the expense of labor growth).

To me the biggest issues are global warming and how to turn the tide on increasing income inequality and declining mobility.  On the latter, certainly the minimum wage increase will help, as would repealing any Bush tax cuts that have not yet taken effect (there are several, and they benefit only the wealthy), including freezing the estate tax.  Single-payer or some similar way to provide at least basic health care for all and equalize risk better would also help greatly.  Rising inequality and its effects (along with Iraq), are, it seems to me, the area where the Dems are going to fulfill their mandate and get reelected to run the government for many years, or not and not.

What do you think are the big picture economic issues for the next 2-4 years?

Exit the lame Duck, Stage Right

By Mimikatz

A month ago the lame-duck 109th Congress had a busy agenda planned, including cutting domestic spending, extending various expiring tax breaks and repealing the estate tax.  Now, not so much.  The Republicans have decided to punt the completion of almost $500 trillion in domestic spending bills to the incoming 110th Congress and the new Democratic majority and cannot agree on the other issues before them.  With a truncated agenda, it looks like they will reconvene on December 4th and adjourn December 8th.  What have they left undone?

Most of the budget for fiscal 2007, which began October 1.  Congress passed appropriations bills for Defense and Homeland Security, but left the rest of the 9 bills for domestic agencies umcompleted.  Moreover, by shifting $5.3 billion slated by the Senate for domestic programs into Defense and Homeland Security in October, they left a comparable hole on the domestic side.  Rather than own up to the shortfall and cut popular programs, the ever-courageous  GOPers are transfering the onus to the Dems.  Two further consequences of the failure to act are a 5% mandatory cut in doctors' Medicare reimbursements and a shortfall in the State Childrens' Health insurance Program.  Guess those doctors and poor patients should have increased their contributions to GOP candidates if they wanted action.

In a further indication of the bipartisan comity to come, another reason for the failure to act is to complicated Nancy Pelosi's widely advertised "100 hours" agenda.  If the Dems are stuck fininshing the 9 spending bills, they can't move so quickly on their 100 hours agenda, allowing the GOPers and the press to claim that the Dems can't deliver.

In late January, moreover, the process of developing the fiscal 2008 budget begins, and at some point Bush will present Congress with a request for somewhere between $130 and 160 billion for Iraq. Both will  be complicated by the need to make hard fiscal choices in early January.

It isn't a done deal, but watch for what happens when Congress reconvenes.  If they pass another continuing resolution simply extending funding at current levels, that means they haven't done the most basic thing that they were elected in 2004 to do, raise money and fund the federal govrnment.  Instead, as with so much facing our country, they will have simply passed the buck to the Democrats.

How the Wurlitzer Works: A Coordinated Attack On Social Security, Democrats And The AARP

Want to know how much work we have to do even if we take the House? Here's an example of how the Republicans use their house organs to frame and push debate, while keeping their fingerprints off the final product. On October 23, we wrote about how the AARP had caught the GOP distorting the non-partisan Voters' Guide:

AARP CEO Bill Novelli has sent a letter to several Congressional districts across the country that have been targeted by political interest groups mischaracterizing AARP's Voters' Guides and the positions of candidates on Social Security.

    AARP members in AZ-5 [see link], CO-7, FL-16, KY-4, PA-10, and TX-17 will be receiving this correspondence. The letter sent to these districts can be seen below. All political interest groups, parties, and candidates should cease using AARP's Voters' Guides in a misleading way.

The letter to members will say:

Unfortunately, one recent ad wrongly attacks candidate [candidate] for supporting the need for a bipartisan balanced plan. >The ad mischaracterizes the position taken in the AARP Voters' Guide as being in favor of specific options to achieve that goal.[raise taxes and cut benefits]  While AARP does not endorse or support any candidates, we do want you to have accurate nonpartisan information on where the candidates stand.  We believe that these attack ads are a disservice to the people of [state] and are counterproductive to the need to work together for real solutions that strengthen Social Security for the future. 

The thrust of this attack is that Democrats want to raise taxes and cut benefits on Social Security. This was made clear by an editorial in the WSJ on November 1, entitled AARP's Tax Trap (subscription), wherein the distortions were repeated and given credence by the WSJ editorial page.

The path to stem cells lies through Missouri

by emptypockets

Lost somewhere among the polling, celebrity advertisements, and talk-radio blowhards sits a ten-year-old diabetic. Lost somewhere among the debates, the donations, the down-to-the-wire phone banks stands a bright talented graduate student deciding in what field to build her career. And lost somewhere among abortion rights and national health care reform sits stem cell research, not as a political bludgeon but as a real policy that will affect the course of American science for a generation.

We've learned that when it comes to swinging votes, when it comes to revealing candidates' real values, when it comes to driving a wedge between hard-right fundamentalists and true compassionate conservatives, stem cells are important for this election. But the question remains: is this election important for stem cells?

After all, the House and Senate already passed a bill last summer that authorizes federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. That bill was vetoed by President Bush. Does the McCaskill-Talent Senate race in Missouri, where stem cells have become a battlefield issue, really make a difference? How many more pro-research Senators do we need?

The answer is 4. But only if we get another 50 Representatives in the House. That's what it would take to override the President's veto. Is that likely to happen? If we don't get those numbers, is there anything else an even stronger pro-research Congress can do? The answers are "probably not," and "ab-so-fucking-lutely."

What Democrats Would Do

by DemFromCT

"Democrats don't stand for anything." "Democrats don't have a plan."  "Democrats don't have spine". Actually we don't hear that spine transplant anatomy lesson advice much these days. We do hear a lot of "they're not doing the campaign the way I want", but hey, that's to be expected and encouraged on a political blog. Funny how winning makes a lot of the kvetching go away (temporarily). So, what if we win?

And, no, we are not overconfident (we're Democrats, and therefore are incapable of that). Some of the people that complain about talking about this too soon are the same people who bitch and moan about not standing for anything. How do you know what you stand for if you don't talk about it? Then, there's the rabbit's foot Democrats who think if you talk about it, it won't happen. Marketing-driven Republicans realize the opposite is true, and reality-based Dems know that as long as you do more than talk, no harm is done by planning for every eventuality (including winning). Not doing so is currently on display in Iraq.

In that vein, Harold Meyerson joins the small group of pundits and bloggers who writes about thinking the unthinkable - what if the Democrats win? He's not the first - Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) took all kinds of grief for refusing to be a cheerleader and reviewing why the Republicans might lose.

Meyerson's is more of a policy and procedure discussion:

In the House, the Democrats have made clear that there's a first tier of legislation they mean to bring to a vote almost immediately after the new Congress convenes. It includes raising the minimum wage, repealing the Medicare legislation that forbids the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices, replenishing student loan programs, funding stem cell research and implementing those recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission that have thus far languished.

All these measures command massive popular support. The reason they've not been enacted is that House Republicans have passed rules making it impossible for the Democrats to offer amendments to any significant legislation, thereby sparing themselves the indignity of having to choose, say, between the interests of their financial backers in the drug industry and their constituents.

And then there's Iraq:

Rotten Fruit From A Poisonous Bush

by emptypockets

Congressional Republicans last Friday, in between legalizing torture and shielding a child molester, sent a bill to President Bush that would build 700 miles of fence along the 2000-mile Mexican border at a cost of $6 billion, roughly what it would cost in today's dollars to build the Panama Canal. The cost of the fence, which leaves open two times as much border as it covers, comes to a little under $9 million for every mile of fencing. That's almost a half million bucks per city block, for 14,000 city blocks or about 150x the length of Manhattan. At that price the fence had better be covered in diamonds. That's some serious border bling.

Meanwhile, as Congressional Republicans whipped out America's credit card to buy this high-priced gadget, uncounted tons of pears and other fruits fell from the trees of California's orchards and began rotting on the ground because there were no workers there to pick it.

California farms employ at least 450,000 people at the peak of the harvest, with farm workers progressing from one crop to the next, stringing together as much as seven months of work. Growers estimate the state fell short this harvest season by 70,000 workers. Joe Bautista, a labor contractor from Stockton who brings crews to Lake County, said about one-third of his regular workers stayed home in Mexico this year, while others were caught by the Border Patrol trying to enter the United States...
Tons more pears that were harvested were rejected by Mrs. Scully's packing plant because they were picked too late. The rejects were dumped in a farm lot, mounds of pungent fruit swarming with bees, left to be eaten by deer. Lake County growers said that pickers' pay was not low -- up to $150 a day -- and that they had been ready to pay even more to save their crops. "I would have raised my wages," said Steve Winant, a pear grower whose 14-acre orchard is still laden with overripe fruit. "But there weren't any people to pay."

The fruit was one of the best harvests California growers have seen in their lifetimes, and it hung heavy on the branches and fell to the ground dripping juice. The orchards filled with that rank rotting stink. A steady flow of immigrants, now too frightened to continue to attempt border crossings and terrified of being "detained" with no recourse to the law, has for decades been the lifeblood of the California farming economy.

"I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind
California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Then its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine."
--Woody Guthrie

AARP Polls Boomers On Election And Social Security

I mentioned earlier today that drug prices will matter with seniors (the doughnut/donut hole comes due). Well, AARP released a poll today (.pdf) confirming this

Issue of the Week: The Cost of Prescription Drugs

Almost 65 percent of baby boomers and older Americans, ages 42 and older, consider paying for prescription drugs to be either a major (43%) or a minor (21%) financial problem.
The cost of prescription drugs is likely to be a voting issue in the November 2006 elections for nearly three-quarters of this age group, especially for minorities, the less educated and those with lower incomes.

and showing that boomers do not support private accounts.

AARP found that there is great resistance among likely boomer plus voters to use Social Security tax dollars in order to fund private accounts. Seven in 10 respondents oppose private accounts (71 percent). In fact, there is a great deal of intensity of opposition to private accounts. Those who oppose private accounts were more than four times as likely to strongly oppose private accounts (57 percent) as to somewhat oppose them (14 percent), while respondents who support private accounts were almost evenly divided between strongly support (9 percent) and somewhat support (8 percent).

If you're still not clear, see this from the press release:

Nearly two-thirds of likely voters (64 percent) said they are either not at all likely (38 percent) or not very likely (26 percent) to vote for a candidate who supports using the Social Security taxes to fund private accounts. Older respondents in particular report they are not at all likely to vote for a candidate who supports private accounts (43 percent ages 61 plus; 34 percent ages 42-50 and 35 percent ages 51-60).

Unfortunately, not all voters feel well enough informed. "Half of the voters we talked to believe the candidates have not been clear enough on where they stand on the issue of private accounts," noted Sloane. "We're urging people to find out where their candidates stand on the important issues."

Taking Away The GOP's Other Weapon

By Mimikatz

There has been much discussion here and elsewhere that the Republicans will run on terror in the midterms because that is all they have left.  But the GOP has another perennial issue that they intend to run on as well--lower taxes.  Just last night a smiling Tom Reynolds (R-NY26) told Chris Matthews this was so.  But just as the Dems are starting to attack Bush on national security, so too are they finally in a position to turn their attack boats head on into this other GOP issue and potentially neutralize it.

One way is to link tax cuts with the debt.  Imagine this ad.  A darkened House chamber, slightly ominous music, the usual deep-voiced man intoning, as the numbers flash on the screen: 

When George W. Bush took office the national debt stood at 5.7 trillion dollars.  Today, after almost six years of George W. Bush and the Republican Congress, the national debt stands at 8.5 trillion dollars,  That is an increase of almost 50%, over $28,000 for each of us.  Four times during the presidency of George W. Bush Congress has had to raise the debt limit, and Congress(wo)man X has voted for it every time.  At the same time (s)he voted over and over to eliminate the estate tax and reduce other taxes that the very wealthy pay.*   Who do you think is going to have to pay back the ever-increasing national debt?  Why don't you ask Congress(wo)man X?  After all, (s)he voted for it.

The chief cause of the burgeoning national debt is the Bush tax cuts.  Of course the Iraq War, now over $1 trillion, is also a cost, and support for the war could be included where appropriate.   But without the tax cuts we would not be running an annual deficit that adds to the cumulative debt (which is the real problem).  Moreover, the effect of the tax cuts is very uneven, and they overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.  Coupling the increase in the debt with the Bush tax cuts helps blunt the tax issue for Dems.  In fact, the Bush tax cuts are really only a tax deferral, and the difference will have to be made up one way or another.   

Maybe it wouldn't work, since there is evidence voters support tax cuts even when theydon't think they will benefit.  But the GOP is going to raise the tax issue against Dem challengers, and they had better be ready for it.

After Judge Taylor, DoJ shifts tactics

by Kagro X

In the first case testing the legality of the NSA's domestic spying program since Judge Anna Diggs Taylor declared it to be both illegal and unconstitutional, the "administration" has apparently decided to take a new tack on the the question of whether or not the program violates FISA.

Whereas the "administration" previously conceded that the program appeared to be a facial violation of the statute, they nevertheless argued that it was within the president's "inherent authority" under the Constitution to order the surveillance, nonetheless.

And today?

Well, sit down.