On Monday, December 13, the US Senate will vote on a bill that represents the destruction of Social Security. The measure reduces the employee payroll tax by 33% (from 6.2 to 4.2%). Social Security is in good shape right now but this reduction will starve the Trust Fund and give the excuse to say - "Look, it's broke. We have to privatize it."
Save Social Security - call or write your US Senators and tell them to vote no on reducing funding for Social Security - period. No compromises at all.
UPDATE: The Senate passed a cloture resolution limiting debate on the presidents proposal (aka sell out) to give millionaires huge tax breaks and hammer the people by putting Social Security at risk. That assures passage of the legislation in the Senate. Sen. Bernie Sanders has a Show Filibuster last Friday but it wasn't for real. Today - before the "cloture vote" - would have been the time. Bernie benched himself and his gal pal, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who helped last Friday, said that filibuster was only for the tax cuts for millionaires, not the entire package." We are nothing to them.
Michael Collins
We are at a unique moment in our history. The decadence of those in charge has reached menacing proportions.
(Washington, Dec 10) Bill Clinton showed up at the White House for an "impromptu" press conference to discuss the president's tax compromise with the Republicans. Clinton disclosed that "I make a lot of money now" and, as a result, he would benefit from the program. Then he endorsed the compromise calling it the best deal Obama could make. Clinton was particularly high on the Social Security payroll tax reduction. "According to all economic analysis, [this is] the single most effective tax cut you can do to support economic activity. This will actually create a fair number of jobs. I expect it to lower the unemployment rate and keep us going." (Image)
Across town, United States Senator Bernie Sanders was telling the simple truth that Obama and Clinton avoided.
Reducing the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2% as a one year tax holiday presumes that the normal rates will be restored at the end of the one year period. Who would restore those rates? The very same party that passed the Bush ten year "temporary" income tax reductions. That same party, the Republicans, now claims that ending the Bush temporary tax cuts represents the greatest tax increase ever. Just as they forgot that those tax cuts were temporary, the new Republican majority will forget the payroll cuts were temporary. Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Mike Johanns (R-NE) agree that ending the tax holiday will be portrayed as a tax increase.
Social Security has a dagger at its heart. In 2011, we will have a president who won't even fight for Social Security when he has a majority in Congress and a House of Representatives with a veto proof majority that won't repeal any tax cut until Hell freezes over.
The citizens of this country have been betrayed by the smoothest con artists around for the benefit of the ultra rich, with the ultimate demise of Social Security assured by a rock solid majority of Republican extremists waiting in the wings to occupy the 112th Congress.
Where's the opposition?
The nation's largest organization for seniors, AARP, endorsed the Obama payroll tax cuts. The organization did this despite the fact that the Obama compromise offers little in the way of benefits for seniors.
The allegedly liberal publication, Mother Jones, just ran a piece by Obama apologist Kevin Drum claiming that there's every reason to believe that the payroll tax holiday will be over in just one year promised in this deal. It's another example of tortured logic listing Republican avarice and concluding they'll honor their word.
The self styled advocates for a FDR revival, New Deal 2.0, ran two opinion pieces supporting the Obama deal. One argued it was that the president "probably did the best he could" while the other actually praised the deal claiming that this was the "best deal" that Obama could get. A third piece noted that Obama didn't know much about FDR's Social Security proposal but left the president untouched on the Trojan Horse payroll tax reduction. What would FDR do? Capitulate and equivocate. Hardly.
The largest organization representing seniors, 40 million strong, just caved. They and the president got some cover by two organizations that advertise as being of the left who also caved.
That leaves Senator Sanders, those who will support him for real filibuster, focused advocates for the program, and citizens of the United States. The House Democratic Caucus rejected Obama's proposal to some fanfare. But their objections were on how the bill was rolled out and specifics like a $5 million threshold for any estate tax.
Addictions 101
Two key features of the bipartisan political establishment are an addiction to stealing money from the people for their patrons, the corporate and ultra rich elite, and total denial that taking the peoples' money to satisfy this relentless craving is both harmful and morally unacceptable.
The Money Party is at the peak of its craving for more money earned their old fashioned way, through expropriation from the masses. They will not be denied. They are Hell bent on making their once false prophesies that Social Security is bankrupt into a living reality.
We are nothing to them.
END
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Comments
what they should be doing
is tacking onto social security a progressive tax above the cut off. But it's true, hiring people is expensive and there is a large underground economy, working off the books to avoid it. They need to scale it up so hiring people is cheaper yet funding it much more Progressively.
Also, notice they are out to destroy social security 100%, with even the CBO "warning" on social security when they should be warning on medical costs.
Yet, they cannot present easy remedies, even when we just saw, due to the denial of traditional pensions, most people won't have enough to live on and that's with current social security, in old age.
Your point is excellent, Democrats blew it by doing corporate and special interest bidding, so people are voting for conservatives because they are so pissed. They promised to do something about trade, nothing, offshore outsourcing, nothing, income inequality, nothing really and these are clearly the problems, not the financial crisis, causing another "jobless" recovery.
Voting as punishment
You're right on that. Voting is now punishment - a direct message by 55% or so of the 50% who bother to vote.
There are solutions that are not painfully ridiculous like the ones these people come up with. Senators Corker and Landrieu are their canaries in the cave. But this elite, the most useless in the world's history, doesn't have a clue. They've got a permanent Jones for that dough re mi.
Michael Collins
Excellent article, Michael.
Of course the Social Security "holiday" is temporary, just as the tax cuts for the rich were temporary, just as the war in Iraq was going to be over in six weeks, and the same way we're making "progress" in Afghanistan.
Clinton killed our economy by pushing through GATT and cutting social programs, thus ensuring that jobs would be outsourced and people cut off from welfare would be homeless, and Obama is going to kill off our elderly by destroying Social Security. And Democrats, as usual, will continue to blame the Republicans for everything they do. But they have a point. My guess is that shortly after leaving the White House, Obama will follow Joe Lieberman's lead, admit to being a Republican, and switch parties. Anyone who gets a Democratic Party nomination, has to be a closet Republican, or else the Democratic Party would lose the big corporate donors it needs in order to survive and share power with the Republicans.
I actually believe that Sarah Palin will switch parties and run as the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2012. Nobody is in a position to raise more corporate money for the Democrats than Palin, and liberals and progressives can be bullied into voting for her with a combined threat that the Republicans will win if they don't, and that anyone who doesn't vote for her is a sexist who doesn't want America to have a female President.
Anyone who voted for right wing neo-con extremist Lieberman because he ran as a Democrat, would have no problems voting for Palin if she had a "D" after her name on the ballot. They could even have Grayson, Kucinich, or some other fool as her running mate to provide her with Democratic cover. Palin has the name recognition, the corporate backing, and Democratic voters would vote for Beelzebub if he was a Democrat.
The only differences between Obama and McCain were skin color and political party affiliation. But since they had virtually identical voting records in the Senate, McCain couldn't have pulled off the "greater evil" thing by himself without Palin's help. But once the corporations have spent a few billion dollars rebranding, repackaging, and marketing Sarah Palin, she'll be every bit as acceptable to Democratic voters as Joe Lieberman was.
I don't understand why Americans vote. Poison, razor blades, asphyxiation, jumping off high buildings, and shooting yourself are much quicker, less painful forms of suicide.
compromise can be very, very bad
I don't want to hear any more junk like "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" when the case at hand is "don't let the marginally acceptable be the enemy of the atrocious"! (Take the "Missouri Compromise": how much "good" justified the extension of something like slavery?)
Amen - excellent
Those phrases are what's been called 'poisonous pedagogy.' I like your variation on the marginally acceptable.
Here's one of the worst nostrums - Obama got a much better deal now than he'd get with the new Congress. In that case, why did he ignore entirely the Democratic Caucus in the Senate (according to Landrieu's very public statement). Because the Democrats were never part of the deal. He sent Biden (MasterCard-DE) straight to the House and Senate Republicans because it was a deal they'd accept.
If Obama cared at all for the people, he would have rounded up the House and Senate Dems and done a Jim Jones on them - insisted that they fight and get it all. Pass the 13 months, pass the middle class tax cuts, let the upper level taxes revert back to pre-Bush terms and kill the rest of the garbage. He never did that, we know for sure, because he never talked to the Democrats.
The spinners are out in force as noted in the article. When you've got the "New Deal 2.0" FDR site without a word of specific opposition to a 33% reduction in payroll taxes (6.2-4.2%)AND the self proclaimed heirs to FDR won't fight it, you know that elements of the alternative press have been launched in service to HMS Obama and Co.
Michael Collins
The fifty state strategy.
The Dems got many Blue Dogs elected in 2006 and 2008 that was the first mistake. Then they had to cater to the likes of Ben Nelson. Obama does not seem to understand that compromising on every thing from financial reform to the public option is hurting our country. Keep trying to get the word out gentlemen. Maybe we will get a real choice one day. I'm not hopeful though. Once the corporate interests have a stranglehold on a nation its pretty much over.
A payroll tax holiday on social security? My god does the money class need anymore reason to call us hypocrites when they gut it? Obama is really blowing it or desperately wants to be one of the elite. I don't know anymore. Thanks for this article.
Compromise?
This was no compromise. It was a total and complete surrender to the minority terrorist party. I'm starting to think Obama was threatened a painful death for him and his family, either that or he was a wolve in sheeps clothing all along. We the people have been sold out. The economic crisis was manufactured by the same cabal who've been our shadow government since WWII. We're f*cked.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15949050/Collateral-Damage-911
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9421108/Collateral-Damage-Part-II26122008
Yes...
surrender I stand corrected.
Of COURSE You Could Always Just Let Them Expire
With bills ready to introduce on emergency basis January 3. Negotiating with a gun to your head is never good -- and the Republicans should remember it's aimed at theirs too. A political poison pill that they do not want to be blamed for. The tax cuts for the rich should be decoupled from the overall tax bill and have to pass on their own merit (??). Unemployment comp should not be tied to tax cuts for the rich.
God bless you, Bernie. I only wish you were president.
Frank T.
Democrats
They so blew this. It's just unbelievable. I'm positive most of America doesn't want a lack of financial reform, tax cuts for the rich, offshore outsourcing, bad trade deals and the list goes on and on. But instead, Demcorats do stuff like "amnesty" without even securing the border first or more bad trade deals or give subsidies to their special interest groups and that list goes on and on.
In other words, instead of doing what they say they will in campaigns, which is what got them elected in the first place, it's just the battle of the special interests but you can be sure multinational corporations, lobbyists, especially the financial sector will get theirs regardless.
They should have passed this ages ago. It's like listening to the claim your dog ate your thesis when you had 2 years to work on it sort of story.
Even worse, the press has made taxes such a dirty word and the Republicans just go on and on about the cure to everything is a tax cut.
They should be passing the Chinese currency manipulation bill or ban offshore outsourcing contracts using taxpayer dollars. Something that would really help...
notice how that one you cannot even get in the public sphere.