Reich Blasts GOP Plans For The New Congress

This is the latest Facebook post of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. As usual, he cuts through all the nonsense and tells it like it is. I agree with every word he wrote, and I provide the post here for your edification. Reich said:

The Republican congress that takes over this week will try to drive a generational wedge through the electorate. They’re cooking up arguments that the nation can’t afford to provide our children adequate health care and education if we’re going to meet the demands of the baby-boomer elderly for Medicare and Social Security (thereby trying to justify cuts in all these programs even as they cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations). This is utter nonsense, for the following reasons: 

(1) Social Security’s pending shortfalls don’t begin for another 20 years, and they can be avoided entirely if the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes (for 2015, $118,500) is lifted. 

(2) Medicare’s costs are slowing, and they’d be even lower if the government allowed Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower prices from drug companies and other suppliers. 

(3) The best way to assure there’s enough money for our childrens’ health care and education is to raise taxes on the wealthy, who have never been as rich. State and federal taxes on the wealthy now take a lower percentage of their income than at any time since the 1920s. 

Don’t succumb to the Republican’s upcoming generational-divide tactics. The nation as a whole is wealthy enough to provide for both our children and our seniors in years to come, if the rich and corporations pay their fair shares.

Stop The Republican Effort To Damage Social Security

(The image above was found at the website of strengthensocialsecurity.org.)

The Republican Party has never liked Social Security. They voted against it when it was created, and as recently as the Bush administration they tried to privatize it (putting seniors at the mercy of Wall Street speculators). They have finally realized, at least for the time being, that the American people like Social Security and don't want it eliminated or privatized, so they are now trying a different tactic -- cutting Social Security benefits.

You may wonder why the Republicans would want to cut the benefits for Social Security -- a program that has worked exactly as designed and keeps millions of seniors out of poverty in this country. They are doing it to protect their only true constituency (the rich and the corporations). Republican administrations have borrowed billions of dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund, and they did it because they didn't want to have to tax the rich and corporations a bit more to pay for their excessive spending (military-industrial complex, unnecessary wars, etc.).

Now they don't want to pay all of that money back. They don't want to pay it back because that would require the rich and corporations to pay their fair share in taxes -- an idea that is anathema to congressional Republicans. They have a different idea -- to cut Social Security benefits, thus punishing poor seniors instead of asking the rich and corporations to pay taxes.

Of course, they won't admit that. Instead, they tell lies to the American people -- like Social Security is going broke, that it takes too much from federal spending, that the budget cannot be balanced without cutting Social Security, and that cutting benefits is the only way to save the Social Security program (which is laughable since they have done everything they can to destroy the program). These are nothing but lies told to justify their own hard-hearted greed. They are not true now, and have never been true. Here is the truth (from Social Security Works):

Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus and can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible person for the next 19 years. After that, even if we donothing, it will pay out 85% of benefits owed for the next 75 years.

Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit because it is independently funded by the FICA payroll tax.

Proposed “tweaks” to Social Security would hurt seniors, disabled veterans and people with disabilities.

All we need is to ask millionaires and billionaires to start paying into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us and we not only extend the life of Social Security, but we can expand benefits to the majority of Americans.

I would add one more point. The average Social Security benefit is slightly less than $1100 a month -- a pitiful sum considering the prices in our society. That means millions of seniors struggle to live on $13,000 a year or less. They simply cannot afford any kind of Social Security cut -- not even a small hidden cut like going from the inflation rate (CPI) for raises to a chained-CPI (which doesn't truly keep up with real inflation).

The Republicans have made it very clear that they don't care about America's seniors, and they are willing to toss seniors under the bus to reward the rich and corporations (the only entities in this economy who don't need any government help). We must stop their mean-spirited and misguided attempt to cut benefits and damage Social Security.

A Reckless Vision

A Majority Of Older Americans Are Now On The Internet

Maybe it's because I am a Baby Boomer myself, but I found these figures on internet use by older Americans fairly interesting. It seems that you can teach an old dog new tricks, because a significant majority of Americans over 65 years-old (59%) now use the internet (and 71% of those using the internet do so daily). That's pretty good for a group of people who were well into their adult years before home computers were even available to the public.

But while a majority of those seniors are online (using e-mail and searching the internet), only about a quarter of those over 65 use social network sites (Google+, Facebook, etc.), while about 90% of younger Americans do so.

I also found it interesting that there are three factors that influence whether a senior will use the internet or not. Note that those who are the youngest seniors, those with the most education, and those with the highest incomes, have the highest rate of internet use -- while the opposite is true of the oldest seniors, the least educated, and those with the lowest incomes.

These figures come from a Pew Research Center survey done between July 18th and September 30th of 2013. The survey questioned 1,526 people over 65, and has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Age Doesn't Look Any Better Than Race For The GOP

Yesterday I wrote a post on race and political party preference. It showed that while Republicans have a 9.5 point advantage over the Democrats among Whites, they have a 47.2 point disadvantage among Non-whites -- and Whites are a decreasing portion of the electorate, while Non-whites increase their percentage of total voters with each election. In short, it painted a pretty dismal picture of the future of the Republican Party.

Today, I want to look at the political party preference according to age. Like yesterday, the information comes from the Gallup Poll (which interviewed 18,000 nationwide adults in 2013 and the same in previous years to get their results, which have a margin of error of only 1 point). And the results according to age don't look any better than the racial results did for the GOP.

Note from the charts above that there is only one group that has moved toward the Republican Party in the last few years. In the top chart, the dotted red line is the cut-off point, and above the line favors the Democrats while below that line favors Republicans (with the chart numbers being gotten by subtracting Republican support from Democratic support). Note that seniors are trending toward the Republican Party -- even though seniors have traditionally been a group that favored Democrats.

In the past, seniors favored Democrats because they had lived through the Depression. They saw firsthand how badly the Republicans screwed the economy and they didn't want it to happen again. But there are very few of that generation left now, and this latest generation of seniors grew up in a different situation -- with segregation being a reality. They are the generation that fled the Democratic Party when President Johnson muscled the Civil Rights bill through Congress, and made the GOP the majority party in the South.

As a senior myself (born in the first wave of the Baby Boom), I hate to admit it but it looks like the current move by seniors to the GOP is racially motivated. Note that it did not happen until the Democrats nominated and elected an African-American president of this country. Whites make up a larger portion of seniors (85%) than any other age group, so it should not surprise anyone that racism would have more of an effect among seniors than other age groups.

But the charts also show something else -- that all the other age groups prefer the Democrats by varying margins. And the biggest margin is among the youngest voters -- and these voters are setting a voting pattern they will generally follow the rest of their lives. This means that the future doesn't look too bright for the GOP when it comes to age, because as the seniors (the group that prefers them) die off they will be replaced by younger and more liberal voters -- voters who prefer the Democratic Party (and who don't want to hear the racist message of the Republican Party).

Another Demographic To Worry Republicans - Age

It became clear in the last election that a couple of demographics were hurting the Republican Party. Minorities and women voted against Republicans in large numbers in 2012, because that party supports policies that discriminate against both of those groups. And this is not likely to change in the future (since the percentage of minority voters will grow in the future). Republican leaders of the national party know this, and urged the party's elected officials to moderate their policies toward both of those groups. But the party's teabagger/fundamentalist base didn't like that idea, and following their lead, congressional Republicans have just doubled down on those racist/misogynistic policies.

That would be bad enough for the Republican Party, especially in national elections -- and makes it increasingly unlikely they can reclaim the White House in the future. But now there is another demographic that will work against the Republican Party in the future -- the age demographic. This is illustrated in the chart above. Note that the younger the age group, the less support they give to Republicans.

Especially important for Republicans are the older voters. Elderly voters vote in a much higher percentage than voters of any other age group, and currently they favor Republicans -- especially those in the Silent and Greatest generations. Republicans have counted on these voters to offset their lack of votes in other demographic groups. But that is now changing. The members of these two age groups (born before 1946) are dying off, and they are being replaced by the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) -- and these Baby Boomers prefer the Democratic Party by a small margin. In 2012, these Baby Boomers made up 36% of the U.S. electorate.

That means, in a short time, the Republican Party will no longer be able to count on seniors to help them. In fact, those seniors will increasingly prefer the Democratic Party (as women and minorities already do) -- and when that happens, the demographic hurt to the GOP will spread from national elections down to state and district elections.

The chart above was made from information provided by the Gallup Poll.

Fox News Still Losing Critical 25-54 Age Demographic

There is both good and bad news for Fox News after the the ratings for the full year of 2013 were revealed. The good news is that Fox is still the leader among the cable news networks. The bad news is that their ratings are dropping, especially among the critical age demographic of 25 to 54 year olds (the demographic most sought by advertisers) -- and unless they can somehow turn that around, they will wind up on the bottom of the heap (both in advertising dollars and viewership).

According to the website TVNEWSER, Fox has 1,761,000 viewers for all day, and 1,097,000 in primetime. But only a very small part of those viewers are in the 25 to 54 age group -- 16.69% for all day and 20.23% for primetime. That means that 83.31% of all day viewers and 79.77% of primetime viewers are not in that prime demographic -- and almost all of them are over 54 years old. In fact, the average age of a Fox News viewer is now 65 years old.

Those are very bad numbers for Fox News, and predict a bleak future for the network. As their old viewers die off, there are not sufficient numbers of young viewers to replace them -- which means the ratings will continue to drop (until their numbers are even worse than CNN's). And the numbers in the 25 to 54 age bracket keep falling for Fox (indicating that their efforts to stop the bleeding are not working).

In 2013, viewers in that demographic dropped by 19% for the total day viewing. For primetime, it was even worse with a drop of 30%. And that was evident in all the primetime shows -- with Hannity showing a 16% drop, while Kelly and O'Reilly dropped 23%.

Younger viewers just don't like the far-right-wing political bent of Fox News. They are much more tolerant of the LGBT community, immigrants, minorities, and women, and believe the rights of those groups must be protected. They just don't like the hate toward those groups being spewed forth by Fox News. That is very good for this country as a whole, but it is very bad for Fox news.

The GOP Is Still Losing Older Voters

The age group that can be relied on to vote anytime an election is held are those voters who are 65 and older. A higher percentage of these senior voters turn out to vote than any other age group -- and not just for presidential elections, but all elections.

In the past few elections, the Republicans have been able to count on the senior vote going their way by a significant majority -- and especially in an off-year election, counter-acting the effect of GOP losses among minorities, women, and young voters (many of whom don't show up to vote in an off-year election).

One of the reasons the GOP was able to score big in the 2010 election (and seize the House of Representatives) was because seniors turned out in large numbers, and they voted for the Republicans by a whopping 21 point margin over Democrats. A reasonable person would think the GOP owed these seniors a debt of gratitude, and would take senior issues very seriously.

But reasonable doesn't seem to be a Republican value, and the GOP has been taking seniors for granted for the years since 2010. Seniors overwhelmingly support Social Security and Medicare, and many of them depend on those programs to keep them healthy and help them stay out of poverty. So what do the Republicans do? They vote to privatize both Social Security and Medicare, and when that fails they call for benefit cuts to both programs (which would hurt millions of seniors).

And it looks like those senior voters are finally starting to figure out that the Republican Party doesn't have the best interest of seniors in mind. In the last three years, that 21 point margin has been whittled down to nothing. By June of 2013, seniors preferred Republicans by only a single point (43% to 42%), and that razor thin margin was the same in October of 2013 (44% to 43%). But it gets worse for the GOP. By December of 2013, the margin had grown to 4 points, in favor of the Democrats (44% to 48%).

And making matters even worse, these are not national numbers. These seniors are those who live in the 50 most competitive Republican-held congressional districts. Democracy Corps polled 750 voters in those 50 Republican districts between December 3rd and 8th (and the survey had a margin of error of 3.58 points).

This should worry Republicans. There is a very good chance they could lose the senior vote in these competitive districts -- and that could seriously damage their hopes of hanging on to their majority in the House. All the Democrats need is to win 17 of these 50 districts to flip the House.

Social Security Works & Must Be Protected

Republican teabagger extremists would like for Americans to believe that government programs are just a waste of money, and should therefore be substantially cut or eliminated. That's why their only solution to the budget deficit is to cut these programs that help children, the poor, the unemployed, and seniors (while refusing to raise taxes on the rich & corporations, or cutting anything from the bloated military budget).

But they are wrong. While some social programs may not work as well as hoped, they do work to lift some people out of abject poverty. For instance, without the WIC program another 300,000 people would be in poverty (and the same is true of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program). The SNAP program (commonly referred to as food stamps) is even more effective -- keeping at least 5 million people above the poverty level.

But all programs pale in comparison to Social Security when it comes to keeping Americans out of poverty. Before Social Security was created about half of all the country's seniors were living in poverty. Now that figure is down to around 10%. And as the chart above (from the Economic Policy Institute) shows, without Social Security the number of people living in poverty in the U.S. would rise from 49.8 million to more than 76.2 million (an increase of at least 26.4 million, or about 53%).

Social Security works. It was designed to keep seniors out of poverty, and that's exactly what it does. And it does that without using a single dollar from income taxes. It is now, and always has been, funded completely through a payroll tax (FICA). Every worker pays about 6% of their income into the Social Security Trust Fund throughout their working life (except for the rich, who pay a much smaller percentage of their income), and then receive a monthly check from that Social Security Trust Fund when they retire.

Republicans want you to believe that Social Security is going broke, and will be bankrupt if they don't change it. They want to eliminate the program, privatize it, or substantially cut benefits to "save" it. They are LYING. Social Security has enough money to continue paying full benefits for at least another 20 years. After that, it could still pay benefits at a 75% level even if nothing is done. Obviously, it is not going bankrupt.

And the fix to the future funding problem of Social Security is an easy one. All that needs to be done is to raise the cap on the amount of income that is subject to the FICA tax, or eliminate that cap altogether. This would not affect those in the working or middle classes at all (since the cap is already set above $160,000 a year). It would just make more of the wealthy pay a little more into the system -- and personally, I think they should be paying the same percentage of their income as working people must pay.

Eliminating Social Security would throw nearly 27 million more people into poverty. Privatizing it would put seniors at the mercy of Wall Street, and a market crash (like the one at the end of Bush's presidency) would wipe out the retirement funds for many seniors -- increasing the poverty level by many millions when they retire. And reducing benefits (like going to a chained-CPI method of figuring the cost-of-living adjustment) would  also see millions of seniors being thrown into poverty -- it would just happen a little bit slower (as the real rate of inflation chipped away at their buying power year after year).

We do need to fix Social Security (by adjusting or eliminating the cap on income subject to the FICA tax), but the Republican solutions (elimination, privatization, or benefit cuts) are not the way to do that. They would just increase the poverty level, and do it at the expense of one of the country's most vulnerable groups -- seniors.

Social Security works. It does exactly what it was designed to do -- allow seniors to retire with dignity and without falling into poverty. We could improve it, but we must never damage it. We must protect it because it works.

Cutting Social Security Benefits Is Wrong

Bernie is right. We must stop this insane talk of cutting Social Security benefits. Those benefits go to workers who have paid into the Social Security Trust Fund all of their working lives through the payroll tax. They earned those benefits. But the Republicans want to cut those benefits so those who pay very little in taxes can pay even less -- and so they don't have to pay back the money they borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for their stupid wars and tax cuts for the rich. They must be stopped, because it's wrong to take from those who have paid to reward those who don't want to pay.

Virginia Election Verifies Seniors Trending Away From GOP And Toward Democrats

(This chart is from The National Memo.)

On October 31st, I wrote a post about a recent Democracy Corps Poll. That poll said the seniors are moving away from supporting the Republican Party, and toward supporting Democratic candidates. They surveyed seniors in the most competitive GOP districts and found this was true even in those districts. They found that seniors had moved away from the GOP and toward the Democrats by about 11% to 12%.

This is important because seniors are registered to vote at higher levels than any other group, and tend to vote more often. And with other groups having already moved solidly into the Democratic camp (women, young people, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc.), the Republicans simply cannot afford to lose a substantial amount of voters -- especially in their most competitive districts (since the Democrats only need 17 seats to tip the House to their control).

Now there is solid electoral evidence of that shift of seniors away from the Republican Party. Back in 2009, in the Virginia gubernatorial election, exit polls showed that senior voters had supported the GOP candidate by 60% (to 40% for the Democrat). The exits polls this year showed a rather dramatic shift. This year, even with a rather weak Democratic candidate, that margin of senior preference was much smaller -- 51% for the Republican and 45% for the Democrat, only a 6 point difference. That's a 14 point move away from the GOP in the last four years.

Much like the most competitive Republican House districts, Virginia is competitive. While it used to be a red state, it is now more purple (available to either party), and this remarkable shift by senior voters made a big difference in what turned out to be a close election. It could do the same in the House races next year, especially if the Republicans cling to their anti-senior policies (such as privatizing Social Security and abolishing Medicare -- or cutting benefits to both).

Gerrymandering will save many GOP House districts for them, but unless they staunch the flow of senior voters away from their party they could lose the House next year.

Seniors Putting GOP Districts In Play In 2014

These charts were made using information contained in a new Democracy Corps Poll, conducted between October 19th and 24th of 1,250 likely voters in the most competitive congressional districts (with the margin of error for the Republican districts being 3.58 points). The survey may actually be skewed slightly toward the conservatives, since the only voters surveyed were those who had voted in the 2006 and/or 2010 elections.

The top chart shows the current political preference in the 24 most competitive Republican-held districts. Note that the current political preference in those districts is a dead heat -- with the Republican incumbents at 46% and their Democratic opponents at 45% (well within the survey's margin of error). The Democrats don't need all of these districts. They could lose seven of them and still flip the House over to their control. While it is still very early, this now looks like a real possibility.

What has happened to make this a possibility? That's shown in the bottom chart. Note that 11% of moderates have shifted away from the incumbent Republican and toward the Democratic opponent. And among Independents and single women the shift has been even greater -- about 17%.

But the most worrying sign for the Republicans may be the shift among senior voters. More than 80% of seniors are registered to vote, and most of them vote in nearly every election. And these are voters that the Republicans depend on. When Republicans flipped the House in the 2010 election, these senior voters supported the GOP candidates by a significant margin (about 12 points). But there has now been an 11 point shift among senior voters in these Republican districts -- making the support for Republicans and Democrats about equal among seniors.

I have been puzzled by the support from seniors for Republican candidates -- especially since those congressional Republicans have shown they would like to abolish Medicare and privatize Social Security, or at least cut the benefits offered by both programs. Both of these programs are supported by most seniors, and voting for a Republican is counter-productive to the desires of most seniors.

It now looks like reality is starting to get through to senior voters -- and they are starting to realize that congressional Republicans don't have the best interests of senior in mind. They are finally beginning to understand that the Republicans represent the interests of the rich and the corporations -- not seniors (or any other Americans).

If the Republicans lose any more support from seniors (and Independents), these 24 districts (and maybe even a few more) will wind up in the Democratic column. And fortunately for Democrats, it doesn't look like the Republicans have any intention of moderating their views about Social Security and Medicare.

I Hope He's Serious

I do hope the president is serious when he says it is wrong to make seniors pay more for Medicare, while the rich pay less in taxes. Taxes for the rich are abnormally low in the United States, especially when compared to those of other developed nations. But the seniors, who get their Medicare payments taken out of their Social Security checks, are already hurting and can't afford to pay more (because those SS checks are already very low, averaging just over $1000 a month). It's just wrong to try and balance the budget on the backs of seniors (and children and the poor), while letting the rich go without bearing their part of the economic burden.

Seniors Are Turning Against The GOP

If there is an age group that has been pretty solidly Republican, it is those Americans over 65. In the 2010 election, seniors gave their votes to the GOP by a 21 point margin (59% to 38%). That's almost as big a margin as the Democrats have with young people, and what's better for Republicans, seniors always vote in large numbers (and with boomers now becoming seniors, those numbers are growing). Seniors even vote in off-year elections (when there is no presidential candidate). To say this is an important demographic for Republicans would be an understatement.

That makes it amazing to me that the Republicans in Congress have taken such an anti-senior path for the last few years. They have been trying to either privatize Social Security or cut its benefits since the administration of George W. Bush. And the budgets passed by the Republican-dominated House, both before and after the 2012 election, included a provision to abolish Medicare (putting seniors back under the non-existent mercy of the giant insurance companies). It almost seems like the Republicans are trying to rid themselves of senior voters.

And they might be succeeding at that. The folks over at Democracy Corps say the seniors are starting to turn against the Republicans, and they have some numbers from a recent survey of theirs to back that view. Back in January of 2011, seniors gave the Republicans an approval rating of 43%. Today, that approval rating from seniors has dropped to 28%. And the number of seniors who are willing to identify themselves as Republicans has also dropped (from 39% to 33%), while those who identify as Democrats has risen (from 29% to 39%).

And the views that many seniors have of the Republican Party is not positive. About 55% say the Republicans are too extreme, while 52% say they are both out-of-touch and dividing the country.

The Republicans are counting on the off-year 2014 election to be a good one for them -- a repeat of what happened in 2010. But to make they happen, they need to hang on to all of their senior voters. If they lose a significant portion of that vote, 2014 could turn into a disaster for them. And it looks like that may well happen.

Republicans Want To Punish The Elderly To Reward The Rich

The sequester is now going into full swing (the cuts imposed on the budget by Republicans instead of raising taxes on the rich or making corporations pay taxes) -- and it is going to hurt one of this country's most vulnerable groups -- the elderly. The cuts to Meals on Wheels ( a program that delivers nutritious meals to poor and/or shut-in elderly people) alone will total about $10 million -- and mandate the elimination of 4 million meals that would have been served.

This is both mean-spirited and will actually increase government spending. That's because those 4 million meals that are eliminated will harm the overall health of the elderly who will no longer get them -- and that will require about $489 million in extra Medicare spending. In other words, the GOP has mandated that $10 million be cut and $489 million extra be spent -- resulting in an increase in spending of $479 million. That makes no economical sense, and denying food to the elderly in morally reprehensible in addition.

It would have made much more sense, both economically and morally, to eliminate some subsidies or loopholes that let corporations pay little or no taxes -- or raise taxes on the rich just a little bit. But the Republicans would rather punish the elderly than make their rich buddies pay their fair share in taxes. But the mean-spirited policies of the GOP against the elderly doesn't stop there.

By the end of this year, the country will be facing the need to once again adjust the debt ceiling. And the GOP is already preparing their demands for cooperating on that. They are thinking big this time. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling, they are willing to again wage war on the elderly. They want to either abolish Medicare or privatize Social Security -- or both.

It doesn't matter to them that these are two of the federal programs that work exactly as designed to work -- by keeping most elderly people in America out of a devastating poverty. Unfortunately, keeping the elderly out of poverty is not as important to them as making sure the rich continue to have abnormally low taxes (the lowest taxes for corporations and the rich since World War II).

Those demands are not only unconscionable, they are insane. We must remember this war on the elderly (not to mention the GOP wars on women, minorities, and students) when the 2014 election rolls around. They have abdicated their right to power in our government.

Older Americans' Attitudes Are Improving

I wrote a post a few days ago on how the moral attitudes of all Americans are becoming more liberal and accepting. When I was a youngster, all of the things listed in the charts above would have been considered immoral by a huge majority of Americans. In those days more people thought they had a right to tell others how they should live their lives. Today, most Americans have a much better (and healthier) attitude -- that each person has the right to determine how they will live their lives.

One of the things I found interesting is that older Americans are now changing their attitudes on these issues -- and that the biggest change among older Americans has come in the last decade or so. I can't prove it, but I think that has a lot to do with the "baby boomer" generation starting to swell the ranks of the elderly -- the "do your own thing", free love, civil rights, anti-war generation.

The latest numbers are from the most recent Gallup Poll (taken between May 2nd and 7th of 1,535 adults nationwide -- with a margin of error of 3 points).

I know that some, including many right-wing fundamentalists, will view this as a nation sliding into immorality (and going to hell in a handbasket). I disagree. I view it as a good thing -- that more Americans are allowed to live as they please as long as they don't hurt others. And isn't that the meaning of freedom -- having the right to make your own choices?

Making A Bad Situation Even Worse

(The above image is from the website HubPages.)

The other day I wrote a post on America's poor children. Around 23.1% of the children in the United States lives in poverty. That means nearly one in four children live in poverty-stricken families in American -- families that rely on help to provide the basic needs like food. One would think a figure like that (along with the fact that over 43 million Americans currently are on the SNAP Program -- food stamps), the Congress would do something to improve this situation.

Maybe a reasonable Congress would, but we haven't had one of those in years. The United States Congress (both branches) have decided that they would rather make the situation worse -- and that is what they have now proposed. The Senate proposal is bad enough. The Senate Agriculture Committee has approved a new farm bill. And since the Agriculture Department oversees the food stamp program, that bill will determine the funding for food stamps -- and they are cutting that funding by slightly more than $4 billion. I would like to think this is a GOP thing, but nothing gets out of a Senate committee with at least some Democratic votes (and the bill was approved on a 15 to 5 vote)..

It is inexcusable to cut the vital food stamp program in this time when poverty is still growing -- and the program is needed more than ever. But if you think that Senate bill is bad (and it certainly is), then wait until you hear about the House version of the farm bill. The House Republicans have decided that the Senate is being too generous by only cutting $4 billion. The House wants to cut a whopping $21 billion form the food stamp program. The Republican cuts would kick more than 2 million people off the food stamp roles -- mostly senior citizens and the working poor with children.

I can understand the desire to cut the government budget, but there are much better ways to do that than to take the food out of the mouths of poor people (including the elderly and children). They could create a decent jobs program to put people back to work, or tax all income as earned income (which would only affect the ultra-rich), or put a small sales tax on large amounts of stock trading on Wall Street. But those things would not only reduce the budget, they would make sense -- and making sense is not something Congress is recently in the habit of doing, especially the GOP-controlled House.

It looks like this country is still in the grip of a "trickle-down" economic policy and a GOP version of austerity -- which says the rich need to be given more while the poor must bear the brunt of that giveaway. This is a shameful and disastrous policy, which has already resulted in a recession and the loss of millions of jobs -- but Congress never seems to learn from past mistakes. They remain convinced that all they need to do is make those same mistakes even bigger, and then everything will be OK. They are idiots (and so are the people who keep re-electing them).

Chained CPI -- Stealing From Seniors

The Republicans have never liked Social Security. They voted against it when it was proposed, and they have tried to get rid of it several times since then ( including efforts to privatize it, so their masters on Wall Street can profit from it). But it is extremely disappointing to see a Democratic president wanting to do something that would damage the Social Security program (and therefore hurt millions of seniors in this country). But that is just what President Obama is expected to do this coming week.

He is going to propose that Congress pass a law adopting the Republican plan to cut Social Security benefits for millions of Americans. That plan is to change how Social Security cost-of-living raises are figured. Instead of using the real rate of inflation to figure those raises each year, the raises would be based on something called the "chained CPI" -- which means those raises would not actually keep up with real inflation. This would cause seniors to lose a bit of buying power each year, until after several years they are experiencing a significant cut in the benefits they receive from Social Security -- a program they paid into all of their working lives and hasn't contributed to this country's deficit and debt problems at all.

This is illustrated very well by the chart above (from the National Women's Law Center). The Social Security program is one of the federal programs that actually works like it was supposed to work. It provides elderly Americans with an income after they retire and keeps millions of elderly Americans out of poverty. That was its purpose, and it has worked very well for many years. Don't let the Republicans (and this president) start down the road of cutting benefits for Social Security. Those benefits are not huge to begin with (averaging only about $1000 a month), and should never be cut. Cutting the benefits will help destroy one of the program's aims -- to keep seniors out of poverty.

I know I probably sound like a broken record on this issue, but it's very important. Wall Street CEOs may think cutting Social Security benefits is a good idea, but they don't depend on those benefits (and probably will never have to depend on them). But millions of seniors do depend on Social Security to live (and a lot of them depend on it alone). For them, the idea of going to a chained CPI is a terrible idea -- because that's just fancy Washington D.C. talk for cutting their already meager benefits.

Obama To Throw Seniors Under The Bus

(Image was found at the website called blindgossip.com.)

I had thought President Obama had learned his lesson from his first term in office -- when it became obvious that Republicans would not compromise no matter how far the president bent over backwards to give in to them. But evidently he is even more hard-headed than I had thought, because he is once more ready to give in to keep the Republicans happy -- in the vain hope of finally getting them to compromise.

And this time he is willing to sacrifice two programs that progressives are most proud of creating -- Social Security and Medicare. He wants a "grand bargain" with the Republicans, and has decided he's willing to make cuts in Medicare and in Social Security benefits. For Social Security, he is proposing to change the way the cost-of-living adjustment is figured. Instead of keeping it tied to the rise in real inflation, he wants to switch to a much more stingy way of figuring what a rise in the cost-of living should be -- a procedure called the "chained CPI".

This is nothing more than a backdoor way to cut Social Security benefits, since seniors will lose some buying power with each passing year (because their cost-of-living raises will no longer keep up with the inflation rate). And with an average Social Security benefit of only about $1000 a month, that is a benefit cut that most seniors simply cannot afford. With each passing year, more of them will slip down into poverty.

The president is doing this because the Republicans claim Social Security and Medicare must be cut to balance the budget. That's a lie though, since Social Security is not even a budget item (because it is completely paid for out of the Social Security Trust Fund, which is funded by payroll taxes). The truth is that Social Security has not added a single penny to the budget deficit or the national debt -- Medicare (which is mostly funded by payroll taxes and premiums paid by senior citizens) has contributed far less to the budget deficit than either the Republican tax cuts (for the rich) or their unnecessary wars (Iraq and Afghanistan).

It would make far more sense to raise taxes on the rich (and corporations) and stop the foreign wars, but the Republicans won't hear of that -- and it is the Republicans that Obama is trying to please with his ridiculous and hard-hearted proposal. He hopes to split the Republicans by giving them what they have asked for and get a budget passed, even if that budget is an austere GOP budget.

And it might actually get a few Republicans to vote for it. We just have to hope that more Democratic progressives will keep their word and vote against the Obama budget than Republicans who vote for it. It is time for those progressives in Congress to stand firm -- and stand in defense of America's senior citizens -- who did not create this economic mess and should not have to suffer to fix it(while the rich laugh all the way to the bank).

I never thought I'd see a Democratic president offering to cut Social Security benefits. But that is exactly what President Obama wants to do. He should be ashamed of himself. He is turning his back on not only millions of senior citizens, but also millions of progressives who were vital to his election and re-election. Personally, I feel betrayed.

GOP - Hurt Poor & Elderly To Help Rich

The Republicans would have us believe that this country is in serious financial trouble with the current budget deficit (which they caused after inheriting a budget surplus from President Clinton), and that the only way to fix it is to cut services and benefits for the needy and the elderly (and children) -- and then give the rich and the corporations more tax cuts. That's ridiculous. It's the same failed economic policy the GOP has been following for a while now (and the same policy that caused the Great Recession).

The truth is that there are a lot of things that could be done without hurting those who need government help the most -- and many of them are listed in the graphic above. In addition to those, the best thing the government could do is to put more money into the economy to increase demand and create jobs -- good jobs that will be subject to taxation. The easiest way to do this is to rebuild our infrastructure and raise the minimum wage (to at least $10 an hour).

The poor, the elderly, and the nation's children need government help. The rich and the corporations do not need any help -- since they are doing better right now than ever before. It simply makes no sense to cut funds for those needing help and give more to those who don't need help. But then the Republicans don't really care about what's good for the country -- only what's good for them and their Wall Street buddies. They don't like it when people call them the party for the rich, but that's exactly what they are.