Obama! HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND MEDICAID

On July 24, President Obama was twisting arms to get Congress to agree to huge debt reductions that would cripple Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Angry defenders of these programs responded by staging a noisy demonstration outside the Obama Campaign’s Oakland California headquarters, where a training session was under way to organize volunteers into the 2012 campaign machine.

We tried to get inside to speak to the volunteers and explain that 80% of the people say they don’t want our programs cut, and that corporations and the rich should be taxed to solve the debt.  During the standoff, we got many leaflets inside. You can read the leaflet here. After we went outside and began our demonstration, one volunteer came out and said we were right, that she’d tried to talk with the people inside, and she was disgusted that the Campaign was determined to go ahead with their agenda and wasn’t willing to listen to why our programs need to be saved.

Fighting to save Social Security has been much harder this year than in 2005 when Bush tried to privatize it. A big reason is that now the proposed cuts, which are much worse, are being pushed by a Democratic president, causing many to be reluctant to fight back. We need to get over this hesitation, not only in word, but also in deed. Today’s small demonstration was a start.

short link to this post:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-sc

What is the Fiscal Commission Co-Chairs’ Plan About?

What is the Fiscal Commission Co-Chairs’ Plan About?

Starting in less than a year (Oct. 1, 2011) when unemployment is supposedly back to normal, the Simpson-Bowles plan reduces projected deficits through 2020 by nearly $4 Trillion.  Spending cuts are twice revenue increases. (Extending all Bush tax cuts over same period would do the same deficit reduction.)    Not bailing out banks would have reduced deficit $1.5 trillion.   Discretionary spending under Congress’ control accounts for only 10% of deficit.  This will throttle any chances of lowering unemployment.  Most of deficit is caused by the recession, which the Co-Chairs’ plan will make worse, causing worse deficits.

Here are some of the pieces of the Co-Chairs’ plan:

Permanently Shrinks All Government Services by capping federal revenues at 21 pct of the GDP. The sum of Health, Education, Housing, Jobs Programs, Infrastructure Rebuilding, Social Security, and even military spending could never exceed 21% of GDP. This is less than spending from 1980-2008, when no baby boomers were starting Social Security and Medicare.

No repealing of Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich, no tax on stock or bond transactions, no eliminating the cap on Social Security Payroll taxes, no end of wars.  Instead,

Tax cuts for corporations and the rich; Tax increases for the middle class and the poor. Corporate tax rate is reduced from 35% to 26%.   The Individual rate for the richest is reduced from 10% to 8%.  There is a permanent extension of corporate tax credits for research.   There is a reduction or elimination of Mortgage Interest Deduction (while the housing market is still in disaster), and elimination of deductions for State and Local Taxes paid, contributions to your private retirement account, for charitable contributions,  and elimination of the Child Tax Credit.   Students must pay loans while still in school,   There’s a 15 cent/gallon gas tax, As Krugman says, “”(it) clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans.”

Social Security: Raises Retirement Age, Reduce benefits for middle-income recipients, Reduce Cost-of-Living Raises,  Moves Social Security from a universal plan toward a welfare plan:

• Payroll tax cap raised to increase covered workers from 86% to 90% of workers by 2050! Even then, the rich don’t pay!

• Cut benefits of middle-income earners: Half of Social Security recipients, who had earned above ($34,500), would be considered “high-income earners” and would be have their benefits cut from 17-36% depending on income, for example a 25% cut for people who had earned $43,000.

• Raise Retirement Age: For full benefits, retirement age is raised from 67 to 69, an average 13% benefit cut; that discriminates against poor, who start working earlier and die earlier. To get partial benefits, retirement age is raised from 62 to 64, meaning two more years of poverty for seniors whose bodies are worn out or who can’t find jobs.

• Reduce Cost-of-Living Raises: Raises would be based on new “chained CPI” inflation formula, .3% lower than now,  based on our alleged ability to switch to cheaper alternatives for goods and services that get priced beyond our means. What about, healthcare, which rose 4.2% last year while the regular CPI rose 1% .  By 2030, the COLA cuts would be a benefit cuts between 5-20% depending on income.

• Means Testing, moving toward a welfare model of Social Security: Instead of raising the payroll tax cap so the rich pay the same as us on all their income, the Co-Chairs’ plan raises the payroll tax rate on the small portion of their income that’s taxed.  This undermines widespread support for the current, universal insurance model that has withstood 75 years of attacks.

• Deficit Commission admits Social Security doesn’t increase deficit, so “savings” aren’t counted toward deficit reduction.  “Cuts are being made for Social Security’s own good.”

Medicare: Accelerate and intensify the cuts to Medicare that are in Obama Health Plan. (Increases in Medicare and Medicaid costs, are of course, the real drivers of increased future government expenses, and  single-payer, improved, expanded Medicare for All, is the only solution.  The Obama Plan greatly increases healthcare costs, and shifts the cost onto working families, particularly on Medicare.)

• Federal health spending is supposed to be cut one-third by 2040, but no plan given.

• The “Cadillac Insurance Tax” (a tax on insurance plans without ruinous deductibles or co-pays) would apply to less adequate insurance plans also.

• Cuts in healthcare for veterans: “Modernize the Tricare health system” to increase premiums and co-pays for healthcare for vets.

• It speeds up Obama Plan’s cuts to Medicare Advantage plans and charity hospitals that will serve the 23 million remaining uninsured, including all undocumented immigrants.

• It strengthens the Independent Payment Advisory Board beyond its already-sweeping powers to cut Medicare payments to hospitals, doctors, equipment suppliers etc

• It pushes Malpractice Reform, “tort reform,” to limit the ability of people to sue for damages in cases of medical malpractice.

• Federal payments for Medicaid (Medi-Cal in Calif.) would be a fixed amount per year, no matter how much care was needed by poor patients in that state, making states cut their programs.  Old or sick Medicaid patients needing long-term care would have to pay more of costs.

Shortlink to this post:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-qf

Protest Pete Peterson Social Security Wrecking Crew in San Francisco

Pete Peterson’s Social Security and Medicare Wrecking Crew
is coming to San Francisco Thursday, Sept. 23 at 5 PM.
Let’s Give Them the Welcome They Deserve!

Thursday, September 23, 5 PM
595 Market St. (at 2nd St., Montgomery BART, see map)
More information: call CARA at 510-663-4086, or M. Lyon at 415-215-7575

Please join us for a rally outside the Commonwealth Club at 5 PM.  Bring signs and banners.  Those able to purchase a ticket to the presentation and go inside, please do so. The reception is at 5:30 PM, the program starts at 6 PM.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Concord Coalition, right-wing think tanks that have railed against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for years, are beginning a national “Fiscal Solutions Tour” to push their story.  “After our financial and policy wizards have whisked away the temporary problems of unemployment, deflation, and war, there will be new, deep fiscal problems that will threaten America’s economy and even its national security. To solve these problems, seniors, people with disabilities, and the poor must give up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”  Lies! These are the country’s most successful, popular, and life-sustaining social programs. We’ve already paid into them.  They are not failing. We will not give them up!

Peterson tried to stampede us into demanding these cuts last June, with “America Speaks,”  nineteen razzle-dazzle Town Hall meetings held simultaneously across the country, and inter-connected by closed-circuit TV.  It completely backfired. Though participants were given slanted background materials and slanted choices, they rejected cuts to social programs, endorsed higher taxes on the rich, demanded single-payer healthcare, and demanded huge military cuts.

Peterson’s “Fiscal Solutions Tour” is another try at pushing the same message under more controlled surroundings.  Let’s give him the same message: Hands Off Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid!

Speakers: Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition; David M. Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation; Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow in economic studies, Brookings Institution; Michael Boskin, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford economics professor; and Tom Campbell, former congressman (moderator).

Admission: $12 for Club members, $20 for nonmembers and $7 for students. For tickets, go to commonwealthclub.org or call (415) 597-6705.

See the Sept 17 SF Chronicle piece promoting this event.

Please forward this message.

shortlink to this posting:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-pD

Celebrate and Defend Social Security on its 75th Birthday (August 14, San Francisco)

Celebrate and Defend Social Security on its 75th Birthday
Saturday, August 14th, from 11 AM to 1 PM
At the New Federal Building, 7th and Mission Streets, San Francisco.

Join the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) and the San Francisco Central Labor Council to celebrate and defend America’s most successful social program.  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are under severe attack by business groups, deficit hawks, and the Obama administration. Social Security, the longest established and most financially secure of these programs, is under particular attack, with media promoting lies such as Social Security being the verge of collapse, draining the national treasury, and providing bloated benefits to undeserving seniors.

The facts of Social Security are:  (1) Its benefits have already been entirely paid by workers’ payroll taxes. (2) It has a $2.5 billion surplus.  (3) If nothing were done, it could pay full benefits until 2037, and 75% benefits afterward.  (4) If higher incomes were subjected to payroll taxes, it could pay full benefits indefinitely.   (5) The majority of seniors, disabled people, and surviving spouses are dependent on Social Security, particularly minorities and women.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are under immediate threat because (1) the President’s Fiscal Commission on the Deficit, heavily stacked against these programs, is due to make its recommendations to Congress the first week in December 2010, and (2) Congress has promised to prioritize an up-or-down vote the Commission’s recommendations without amendment. So Social Security celebrates its 75th birthday under fire.

This event is (1) to give the truth about Social Security, the most successful social program in the US for seniors, people with disabilities, kids, and low-income families, (2) to warn these communities of the dangers that Social Security faces, and (3) to mobilize these communities to pressure Obama’s Deficit Commission and Congress to not privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits, or raise its retirement age.

Representatives of Bay Area US Congresspersons and US Senators are invited to hear our message, and respond. Similar events are planned for Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

Contact Michael Lyon,  mlyon01@comcast.net

shortlink to this post:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-p8

America Speaks: Pushback in Palo Alto, CA

It was truly amazing how America Speaks worked to force us into giving us the answers they wanted: cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  They presented us with a 25-page doomsday 2025 budget scenario, where Obama’s defense budget and Bush’s tax cuts to the rich had been continued indefinitely. Even after our policy wizards ended mass unemployment and  the Iraq-Afghanistan war,  they said,  rapidly-growing health costs and senior population would drag the nation down to a second-rate power status unless we came up with $1.2 trillion in cuts or revenue increases.   Then they whooped us up, to get us dancing in front of the cameras waving over-sized dollar bills,  while the giant screen flashed to other Town Halls in city after city, where people were also dancing with dollar bills, all of us in a simultaneous paroxysm of debt-smashing enthusiasm.  Then they smothered us in smarmy togetherness, and inclusiveness, and earnestness, about making “our” nation a better place for our children and grandchildren.  It was like all of us were extras in Jim Carrey’s “The Truman Show.”

Given all this, I was amazed at how much pushback there was. Our group started out talking about how loaded the war budget and tax break assumptions were that led to the $1.2 trillion figure. Most people felt and said it was kind of outrageous to have a eight minute perfunctory conversations about 30 million unemployed or under-employed with no solution being proposed, and then have us dust off our hands and imagine in 2025 we’d gained full employment and put the wars behind us. The person next to me said this was about class war.

When the discussion of health care cuts came up, people were so disgusted with having to choose 5%, 10% or 15% cuts without being able to specify how the cuts would be made, that they refused to make any cuts at all. Even the table moderator had to admit it was a stupid way to do it. At least half the people said they’d be glad to cut health expenses if we had single payer or negotiated drug prices.

When the subject of military spending came up, there a big discussion about whether the military and the wars were making us safer, whose interest the wars were being fought in, and whether the cuts would hurt ordinary soldiers. We ended up agreeing on the highest possible cut (15%) with some wanting much higher.

In the revenue portion, everyone was emphatic that rich people should be hit heavily, and the arguments that this might discourage saving, or investment, or it might slow the growth of jobs got no traction. Everybody agreed on raising the cap on payroll taxes to the original 90% of earned income, and some said the cap should be eliminated, though this was not an option, of course. There was some debate over whether to raise the rate of payroll tax.

What amazed me was that much of the same feelings seemed to be expressed nationally. They had to admit on the national simulcast that there was a huge sentiment for single payer, and that people didn’t like the options of cutting categories of services like healthcare without saying how it was done. It made a complete mockery of their blather about our “empowerment,” and “taking control.” I felt like when they brought out Commission member Alice Rivlin, she didn’t know how to respond to the pushback, and just blathered herself.

About 2/3 of the way through, we had reached about $800 billion, and it was getting difficult because people didn’t want to make additional cuts, but the table moderator kept saying we needed to make our target of $1.2 trillion. By this time, we had all gotten comfortable with each other and beginning to feel bonded, so I ventured to say that we were like a jury faced with a judge’s instruction we didn’t feel was fair because it was based on continued war spending and tax cuts to the rich. But juries do disobey judges, and we had the option of disobeying our instructions, too. This made some impression on people, but there was a strong impulse to meet our goal, and more cuts were made up to $1 trillion.

When we were asked what we would commit to do to continue working on these issues, I said I was in the  California Alliance for Retired Americans and the SF Gray Panthers and we had already had a town hall to defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Another person said she was from Democracy for America and would continue to work to stop the war. Another said he was from the Coffee Party, and I think he said he said he wanted to work against economic inequality.

Our table did vote to raise the Social Security retirement age, which I was really disappointed about. I talked about my 35 year old son who’s done landscape work and shines shoes, and whose shoulders and back are already beginning to fall apart. He’s got a kid, and he’ll never earn enough to go to school for a career change, and he’s unlikely to get a job with a pension, and I don’t see how he’ll last to 65, let alone 69. It didn’t make a difference; they still voted for the age increase. I think off all the issues in the afternoon, this was the question that demanded the most identification with workers.

I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk afterward very much, but in the little talking I did with other California Alliance for Retired Americans and Move-On people, it seemed like they had the same kind of experience at their tables, and as I said, the pushback seemed to be reflected even in the simulcast. Of course, the America Speaks organizers are going to massage their message to the Obama Commission next Wednesday; they actually started doing it during the Town Hall, forming phrases like “legislators, do your duty,” “make the hard decisions,” “remember the people are powerful,” all of which which encourage the Commission to carry out the Peterson agenda. Still, I think our resistance to being stampeded was a well-deserved slap in the face to Peterson (and Obama.)  Now begins the work of talking to as many people as possible about the threats of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and to plan actions for when the Obama Commission submits its recommendations to Congress in early December.

Here’s a link to a Huffington Post article, “In Deficit “Town Meetings,” People Reject America Speaks Stacked Deck”

Or Suburban Guerrilla’s “America Speaks, Will the Politicians Listen?”

A video clip form Bucks County PA

short link to this page:  http://wp.me/p3xLR-oo

Senate Democrats propose a Task Force or Commssion to massively cut Social Security and Medicare

Medicare benefits, like Social Security and Medicaid benefits, have some legal protection because the program’s funding is supposed to automatically increase as the number of recipients increases. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been dead-set on overturning this protection for years, but overcoming the legal obstacle requires a high-power entity like a Commission.

New American Media, November 19, 2009

Bipartisan’ Purple Dogs Go Rogue with ‘Task Force’ on Social Security, Medicare

Progressive advocates for elders must be wondering, “With Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?”

Last week, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on the proposal by its chair Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and top GOP member, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., to create the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action. The Conrad-Gregg task force would have the power to “improve the long-term fiscal balance of the Federal Government, including the fiscal balance of Social Security and Medicare.”

Washington is littered with official commissions and their reports, but this one would be set on an unusually fast track. The 16 committee members would include key powers in Congress and the White House. Both houses of Congress would get the task force’s plan late in 2010 but only for an up-or-down vote—no debate or amendments allowed. Each house would have to pass the measure by a 60 percent supermajority.

The plot thickened last week, when four prominent Democrats, plus Sen. Joe (“I won’t wiggle on the health care filibuster”) Lieberman, threatened to halt approval of an unrelated but critical piece of legislation unless congress lets them have their way with the task force.

Progressive economist Dean Baker explained in a Nov. 16 blog on Huffington Post that Congress must pass legislation by the end of this year to raise the level of the national debt, a normal periodic process without which the U.S. economy would be in even more serious trouble. Accusing the senators of being “hostage takers,” Baker, who co-directs the Center for Economic and Policy Research, asserted, “This commission would be stacked with people who want to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

Conrad, Gregg and their purple cabal want to fast-track the task force’s recommendations, as Congress did with base closings, in order to force-feed unpopular choices through a presumably ineffectual national legislature. Proof, say some purple dogs, is in the failure of the health care reform to cobble together bills that would do anything to control medical costs. Therefore, we need extraordinary action to save the nation. From its representatives. Such as themselves. Those advocating for the normal democratic process in this case argue that Social Security and Medicare are not like local military bases that might never close otherwise because of tit-for-tat political horse trading over claims of lost jobs and so on.

One of the debt-limit bandits, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and others have proffered differing commission proposals, but all focus on social insurance protections that provide health and income security to America’s aging masses – you know, the ones conservatives call Greedy Geezers when they want to cut benefits and the Greatest Generation when they pander to senior voters.

All claim to skewer the presumed sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare, while none actually involve “responsible fiscal action,” that is, placing all U.S. spending priorities on the table. Cases in point: Wasteful military spending (especially but not exclusively related to two wars) and tax loopholes for corporate America. Take the $33 billion giveaway in tax breaks to the building industry – please! – that was secreted inside the extension of unemployment benefits passed last week, exposed in Sunday’s New York Times by business columnist Gretchen Morgenson.

In the Daily Kos last Thursday (Nov. 12), Mcjoan wrote that Sen. Conrad and his “unsurprising bipartisan ‘gang”—13 senators, among them Democrats Evan Bayh, Ind., Dianne Feinstein, Calif., Mark Warner, Va., and kosher dog Lieberman—have “put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.” Mcjoan urged, “Go for it, guys. Form your national suicide pact. Tell the country that you are demanding deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or else you will personally cause the United States debt to double.”

NYT reporter Jackie Calmes blogged (Nov. 10) that most members of Congress or budget analysts who now support the fast-track commission claim to be “reluctant converts . . . having concluded that Democrats and Republicans cannot reach the needed compromises on spending cuts and tax increases without some forcing mechanism.” Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) oppose sidestepping debate, but House majority leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, issued a statement strongly supporting the task force idea.

Respected progressive blogger Digby, opining for Campaign for America’s Future, warned Nov. 12 that in Congress “talk of cutting Social Security right now would be hugely popular, so all the incumbent Democrats should be intensely interested in getting that issue on the agenda in an election year.”

She added, “Seriously, this is Shock Doctrine lunacy of the most obvious kind. Conrad and Bayh are out there saying it right up front. The government has poured trillions into the economy to save the banks and run useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the old people and the poor are going to have to pay the price. That’s the way it works.”

The thin wonky line standing against the Senate elder abusers includes a group of eight veteran experts, who had prominent staff roles in the vaunted 1983 “Greenspan Commission,” credited with saving Social Security, sent a joint letter last to the Senate Budget committee, urging them not to pull an end-run around congressional debate.

“We all agree that social insurance programs have problems, especially Medicare,” said Nancy J. Altman, author of The Battle for Social Security (Wiley, 2005), who was a special assistant to Chairman Greenspan on the commission. However, Altman, serving as a “point person” for the distinguished group, emphasized that sidestepping the normal congressional process in the spirit of forcing “do-nothing” politicians to take necessary action could severely damage America’s already frayed safety net.

She noted that low-income elders, especially those of color, are particularly reliant on Social Security and Medicare. For instance, a recent report by the Hispanic Institute in Washington, D.C., notes that 50 percent of Latinas 65 or older in the U.S. rely on Social Security for 100 percent of their income, and 85 percent of them gain at least half of the income from Social Security. (Readers can see fact sheets on Social Securities demographic impact on different ethnic groups here.)

To justify suspending the normal legislative process, the quick-fixers point to a Government Accountability Office study showing that without change, the nation will hand the coming generations an “unsustainable” $63 trillion liability from federal entitlement programs by 2083. Others last week mentioned that amount as $37 trillion.

Reporters need to be wary about the scary numbers game. Not only are the figures suspect, but even the conservative think tanks (Heritage Foundation, Cato, etc.), which jiggered up the formula for these 2012 disaster-movie calculations, admit that most comes from projected Medicare costs. Medicare is absolutely in trouble – but because of overall rampant health inflation in the United States, not because too many baby boomers will have the temerity to grow old. (Note added: See Henry J. Aaron’s “There is No Entitlement Crisis; There Is a Health Care Funding Crisis”)

One might ask where or where to the purple dogs go so wrong. And who’s the mastermind behind this fiscal caper?

Altman observed that when Sens. Conrad and Gregg first introduced their bill in 2007, they included three letters of support from The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—all three them connected to and funded by Wall Street Pete Peterson.

The grandfatherly octogenarian Peterson, who was Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Commerce and went on to found the private equity giant, The Blackstone Group, endowed his Peterson Foundation three years ago with $1 billion. Cutting and partially privatizing entitlement programs for elders is one of three stated missions of the tax-exempt organization. Peterson promptly hired then U.S. Comptroller General David Walker to head the foundation.

“This is really the Peterson Commission,” said anti-task force committee of eight in a background release. Peterson has spent almost three decades militating against Social Security and other federal supports for elders, and last Tuesday one of the main speakers called on to testify at Conrad-Gregg hearing on the task force was Walker.

As Altman stressed that the bipartisan 1983 commission, chaired by and informally named for Greenspan, accomplished major reforms of Social Security – which was in far deeper trouble then than it is now – through normal congressional debate and floor votes.

How quaint. Democracy actually worked. Maybe our representatives should try a little constructive nation building right there under the Capitol dome.

—Paul Kleyman

Shortlink = http://wp.me/p3xLR-ix