ENDURING ISSUES: Pay Back the Money Borrowed From Social Security

Sen. Don Riegle and Lori Hansen Riegle
[Originally Posted: 04/05/11 ]

Throughout its 75 year history, Social Security has provided critical economic security to millions of retirees, families, children and the disabled. Social Security is paid for by the dedicated contributions of workers and their employers, has administrative costs of less than one percent, and since it cannot borrow to fund its operations, Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. No wonder that Americans from all walks of life consistently and overwhelmingly support our nation’s most successful social insurance program — a level of support that is not achieved by other governmental programs.

Social Security currently has a $2.6 trillion surplus which has been building up since the 1983 amendments and is intended to help absorb the retirement of the baby boomers. This surplus is invested in US Treasury securities that are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. According to the Social Security Trustees 2010 report, Social Security can pay full benefits until 2037, at which time, if nothing were done to strengthen its financing, Social Security would still be able to pay about 78 percent of benefits. This quarter of a century means there is time to strengthen its financing without cutting benefits for future beneficiaries. The American people will insist that Congress do what is needed for the program to pay full benefits and protect these benefits they were promised and have earned.

Social Security Opponents Use Fear to Manipulate Debate

Opponents of Social Security have been working for many years to tell a much different story about Social Security in order to influence how the media and Washington decision makers view it. One example of this is Wall Street insider Pete Peterson who has dedicated $1 billion of his Wall Street fortune to the destruction of Social Security as we know it. Peterson is joined in his efforts by other wealthy special interests that have much to gain if Social Security is cut or eliminated.

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[Enemies of the people like the corrupt] House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) provided some insight to their Social Security views in a recent NPR interview when he was talking about Social Security and said, “We are going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want it to be.” [/pullquote]

Despite the overwhelming public support for Social Security and the critical retirement, survivors and disability insurance it provides to millions of Americans, Peterson and his Wall Street friends want to reduce Social Security’s protections and force average working Americans to put their future retirement, life and disability security in the hands of Wall Street — the same crowd that nearly caused a collapse of our economy and pushed the country into the Great Recession.

It would be very unpopular for the opponents to simply state that their goal is to reduce or eliminate Social Security, requiring politicians to eat from a poison apple. Instead, the opponents try to create false fear about the future of Social Security by making it seem as if the program contributes to the nation’s budget deficit and debt. The same Wall Street firms that needed the taxpayers to bail them out — and individuals like Peterson who took advantage of a tax loophole that enabled him to pay taxes on his Wall Street profits at the same rate as a janitor cleaning his office — are conducting a massive lobbying campaign to reduce Social Security protections for working Americans and their families by claiming it is a way to lower the federal budget deficit.

The opponents’ tactic of setting up Social Security as a false culprit in the deficit problem diverts attention away from the real causes of the deficit — two wars not paid for, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and the costs associated with the economic crisis, such as the Wall Street bailout. If the opponents of Social Security are able to cut Social Security’s benefits, they will accomplish two objectives: (1) reducing Social Security protections while driving retirees into the hands of Wall Street; and (2) hiding the real causes of the deficit and the debt from honest budgetary scrutiny. A look at their claims about Social Security and the budget reveals the falsehoods they continue to promote.

Social Security — the most fiscally responsible program

Social Security is self-financed, cannot borrow, spends less than one percent on its administrative costs, has a $2.6 trillion surplus which will continue to grow for a number of years, and is off-budget. It does not contribute to the federal deficit or the debt. The Social Security surplus is invested in US Treasuries which enables the federal government to borrow less from other sources. The government borrows these Social Security funds to pay for other government spending — but is obligated to pay interest on these borrowings — and pay back the borrowed funds in full when they are needed by Social Security for benefit payments.

Opponents of Social Security obscure the real facts, but they are easy to see in the graph below. The planned build-up of the Social Security Trust Funds since 1983 makes it clear that Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today that will continue to grow:

The Federal Budget — Red Ink

A look at the federal budget over the same time frame reveals a starkly different picture — many years of deficits, with only a few years of surplus — a surplus that disappeared during the G.W. Bush Administration. In 1993, a Democratic Congress and President Clinton, without a single Republican vote in either the House or Senate, enacted a budget plan that put it on a path to elimination of the deficits –and brought the budget into balance, and then later into surplus. In his 1999 State of the Union address, with the budget then in balance, Clinton called for the Social Security surplus investments to be held in a special reserve and not used for other government spending.

As a candidate for president, Vice President Gore made a central part of his campaign a plan to put Social Security’s surplus in a “lockbox” to keep its assets from being used for other government spending. When the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election in favor of Bush, however, a very different view of the Social Security surplus became operative.

During the same time period in which Social Security was building a surplus the federal budget was more often in deficit than not, as shown below:

The federal budget surplus of 2000 quickly disappeared when Bush took office, turning into a sea of red ink. Bush borrowed heavily from the Social Security surplus to help obscure the fact that federal taxes were not bringing in enough revenue to pay for the wars and his tax cuts.

Given this history and the fact that Social Security has not and does not contribute to the deficit, Social Security should not be “on the table” for deficit reduction now. In fact, it should not be part of the deficit debate at all.

The Costs Imposed on Social Security by Wall Street’s Failures

In a recent paper on deficit reduction for the Roosevelt Institute, Nobel prize-winner and Columbia University Professor, Economist Joseph Stiglitz noted about the Wall Street banks: “Even if the banks were to pay back every dime that they received, they would not have come close to compensating the country for the full costs (now in the trillions of dollars) that they have imposed on others. ”

These costs were imposed on Social Security as well — Wall Street’s failures have increased Social Security costs while also reducing revenues to Social Security. Social Security revenues were reduced by 1.13 percent of payroll from its annual balance in 2010 — more than $60 billion in one year — from what the Trustees projected last year “due to a deeper recession and slower recovery than had been expected.” This does not reflect the costs to Social Security in 2008-09, nor does it reflect future costs of continued high unemployment, which reduces revenue, and higher benefit payments to beneficiaries forced to take benefits sooner than they otherwise had planned.

As a result of the Great Recession triggered by the economic bubble Wall Street created, Social Security revenues were less in 2010 than benefits paid out. This required Social Security to use a portion of its interest earnings on the surplus to pay benefits — an event that would have happened several years in the future were it not for the recent economic downturn.

Opponents have used the negative impact of the economy on Social Security to make it seem as if Social Security was failing, as if it had fallen into a deficit of its own. These claims are false. The interest the government owes to the Social Security Trust Fund for the funds it has borrowed from Social Security represents a legal obligation of the government. Interest earned on Social Security investments has always been used to pay Social Security benefits.

But opponents pretend the interest should not be counted as savings that add to Social Security’s annual balance. This makes no sense. When Social Security claims the interest it has earned to pay benefits, the government is required to pay back the interest it owes to Social Security. This is what the opponents don’t like. Social Security did not create the economic problem or the budget deficit. Wall Street and other government spending did. But the opponents of Social Security don’t want to pay back all the money that was borrowed from Social Security, including the interest earned. Instead, they want to cut Social Security benefits.

The taxpayers of America bailed out the banks — wouldn’t it be fair now to ask the banks to pay back what they have cost Social Security? A tax on financial transactions and a tax on Wall Street bonuses, with revenues dedicated to Social Security, would pay back to Social Security and its contributors what has been taken from them.

Pay Back Social Security — The Government Has Borrowed More from Social Security than any Other Entity or Foreign Government

Another argument made by Social Security opponents to raise fear about the national debt is how much our government has borrowed from China. They never mention how much our government has borrowed from Social Security. In fact, the government has borrowed more from the Social Security surplus than it has from any other source in the world, including China. As a result, Social Security now “owns” nearly 18 percent of the federal debt, making it the largest single holder of US debt. The government owes almost twice as much to Social Security as it does to China and Hong Kong.

Why aren’t the opponents worried about paying back Social Security — why aren’t they talking about repaying this debt to the American people?

According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s “Monthly Statement of the Public Debt of the United States” (9.30.10), the total debt was $13.562 trillion and was held as follows:

US Holders of Debt
42.1 % — US Individuals and Institutions
17.9 % — Social Security Trust Fund
6.0 % — US Civil Service Retirement Fund
2.1 % — US Military Retirement Fund

Foreign Holders of Debt
11.7 % — Oil Exporting Countries
9.5 % — China and Hong Kong
6.3 % — Japan
1.4 % — United Kingdom
1.3 % — Brazil
1.6 % — All other foreign countries

House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) provided some insight to their Social Security views in a recent NPR interview when he was talking about Social Security and said, “We are going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want it to be.”

If the American public were asked about what priority should be placed on the debt owed to Social Security, we have no doubt that they would resoundingly say: “Pay Us Back — pay back the money borrowed from Social Security!”

Former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Democrat, represented Michigan for 18 years in the US Senate and 10 years in the House of Representatives. Lori Hansen served on the Social Security Advisory Board and was a Technical Assistant to Robert M. Ball, former Commissioner of Social Security, in his capacity as a member of the 1982-83 Social Security Commission.

Billionaires Against Social Security

By Robert Kuttner

Public enemy Peter G. Peterson. Even at 85 still trying to poison the future of the poor. Decency is an alien feeling to such people.

America’s very rich keep trying to start a movement among college students to blame senior citizens for the sorry state of the economy that kids will inherit. Specifically, the billionaires keep trying to scapegoat Social Security.

This is part of the public relations effort to create a “grand bargain” to cut America’s (fast-declining) budget deficit. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has spent about a billion dollars of Peterson’s own money to create faux movements to get students to take up this unlikely cause.

The latest of the billionaires to try this gambit is Stanley Druckenmiller, net worth estimated at $2.9 billion, former head of the hedge fund Duquesne Capital. Druckenmiller’s personal campus crusade has been the subject of two fawning profiles, one by Tom Friedman in Wednesday’s Times, the other by James Freeman in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

Druckenmiller’s campus crusade is based on such preposterous economics that I hereby challenge him to a college debate or series of debates. Freeman’s puff piece in the Journalbegins thus:

Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He’s a member of the 1% — make that the 0.001% — one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don’t hear out of Washington. It’s how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller’s generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.

“I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, ” his alma mater in Maine, he says. But he has since been invited to multiple campuses, and even the kids at Stanford and Berkeley have welcomed his theme of generational theft.

The Tom Friedman column, titled, “Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All.,” which I addressed in the American Prospect Thursday, Friedman wrote:

After we baby boomers get done retiring — at a rate of 7,000 to 11,000 a day — if current taxes and entitlement promises are not reformed, the cupboard will be largely bare for today’s Facebook generation. But what are the chances of them getting out of Facebook and into their parents’ faces — and demanding not only that the wealthy do their part but that the next generation as a whole leaves something for this one? Too bad young people aren’t paying attention. Or are they?

Wait! Who is that speaking to crowds of students at Berkeley, Stanford, Brown, U.S.C., Bowdoin, Notre Dame and N.Y.U. — urging these “future seniors” to start a movement to protect their interests? That’s Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary investor…

Where to start? If you itemize all the reasons why recent college graduates face a wretched economy, Social Security doesn’t even make the list. What does make the list are unreliable jobs that pay lousy wages, the aftereffects of a financial bubble created on Wall Street, and unaffordable college that leaves graduates starting life with more than a trillion dollars worth of debt.

The next generation, and the one after that, will have a shot at a decent life if we can get growth and a fairer distribution of earnings back on track. That project has nothing whatever to do with Social Security or the federal deficit. On the contrary, if we keep on the austerity kick and further cut social outlays that promote opportunities, growth will be even slower.

The biggest lie in Druckenmiller’s crusade is the premise that the income distribution problem is somehow generational and that he, as a billionaire, has anything whatever in common with most college students or most recipients of Social Security. One of his pitches to students is that Social Security is excessive because he, a very wealthy man, receives it but doesn’t need it.

But for the vast majority of the elderly, Social Security is a lifeline, and a meager one at that. Some two-thirds of all seniors depend on Social Security for half of their income. Fully 46 percent of elderly widows and other unmarried seniors depend on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income.

The entire projected 75-year shortfall in the Social Security trust funds that conservatives make such a big deal about is around one percent of GDP per year. We could make it up with modest tax increases on wealthy people like Druckenmiller.

Since Social Security is financed by payroll taxes — on wage and salary income — the real Social Security crisis is the crisis of stagnant wages. If average wages had continued to track average productivity growth during the past three decades, as they did in the three decades after World War II, Social Security would be in perpetual surplus.

The real crisis facing the elderly is not that Social Security is excessive but that it’s inadequate — especially with the collapse of traditional pensions in favor of far less reliable 401k plans (another counter-revolution made on Wall Street.)

There is a certain moral blindness and chutzpah of very wealthy people trying to enlist students in a generational movement against the alleged affluence of their grandparents. The real issue here is not generation, but class, specifically Druckenmiller’s class.

Contrary to the claim in writer Freeman’s opening sentence — that Druckenmiller makes “an unlikely class warrior,” his crusade is precisely class war, of the sort we have been seeing for decades — of the very wealthy against everyone else.

Happily, most of America’s students don’t seem to be taking the bait. None of Pete Peterson’s front groups has had much resonance on campus — not his “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” nor “Fix the Debt,” nor more far-fetched groups aimed a college students such as “America’s Promise Alliance,” nor the foundation’s poetry contest aimed at battling deficits in verse.

However, these crusades do have a certain resonance among media elites and even in the Obama White House. As we go into the next phase of a trumped up budget crisis, with Social Security and Medicare as targets A and B, the politics and economics could not be more perverse.

So how about it Mr. Druckenmiller? If you are so sure of the righteousness of your cause, how about defending yourself in a campus debate?

Robert Kuttner’s new book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior Fellow at Demos.

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Time to Bell the Obama Cat

By Norman Solomon

The story goes that some mice became very upset about the cat in the house and convened an emergency meeting. They finally came up with the idea of tying a bell around the cat’s neck, so the dangerous feline could no longer catch victims unawares. The plan gained a lot of enthusiastic praise, until one mouse piped up with a question that preceded a long silence: “Who’s going to bell the cat?”

In recent days, the big cat in the White House has provoked denunciations from groups that have rarely crossed him. They’re upset about his decision to push for cuts in Social Security benefits. “Progressive outrage has reached a boiling point,” the online juggernaut MoveOn declared a few days ago.

Obama’s move to cut Social Security is certainly outrageous, and it’s encouraging that a wide range of progressive groups are steamed at Obama as never before. But this kind of outrage should have reached a “boiling point” a long time ago. The administration’s undermining of civil liberties, scant action on climate change, huge escalation of war in Afghanistan, expansion of drone warfare, austerity policies serving Wall Street and shafting Main Street, vast deference to corporate power… The list is long and chilling.

For progressives, there’s not a lot to be gained by venting against Obama without working to implement a plausible strategy for ousting corporate war Democrats from state power.

So is the evasive record of many groups that are now denouncing Obama’s plan to cut Social Security. Mostly, their leaders griped in private and made nice with the Obama White House in public.

Yet imagine if those groups had polarized with President Obama in 2009 on even a couple of key issues. Such progressive independence would have shown the public that there is indeed a left in this country — that the left has principles and stands up for them — and that Obama, far from being on the left, is in the center. Such principled clarity would have undermined the right-wing attacks on Obama as a radical, socialist, etc. — and from the beginning could have gotten some victories out of Obama, instead of waiting more than four years to take him on.

Whether or not Obama’s vicious assault on Social Security is successful, it has already jolted an unprecedented number of longtime supporters. It should be the last straw, suffused with illumination.

That past is prologue. We need to ask: Do such groups now have it in them to stop pretending that each of the Obama administration’s various awful policies is some kind of anomaly?

From this spring onward, a wide range of progressive groups should be prepared to work together to effectively renounce Obama’s leadership.

We need to invigorate political options other than accepting the likes of President Obama — or embracing self-marginalization.

For progressives, there’s not a lot to be gained by venting against Obama without working to implement a plausible strategy for ousting corporate war Democrats from state power. Nor is there a useful path for third parties like the Green Party in races for Congress and other partisan contests; those campaigns rarely end up with more than a tiny percentage of the vote, and the impacts are very small.

This spring, there’s a lot of work beckoning for progressives who mean business about gaining electoral power for social movements; who have no intention of eliding the grim realities of the Obama presidency; who are more than fed up with false pretenses that Obama is some kind of ally of progressives; who recognize that Obama has served his last major useful purpose for progressives by blocking a Romney-Ryan regime from entering the White House; who are willing to be here now, in this historical moment, to organize against and polarize with the Obama administration in basic terms; and who, looking ahead, grasp the tragic folly of leaving the electoral field to battles between right-wing Republicans and Democrats willing to go along with the kind of destructive mess that President Obama has been serving up.

A vital next step is staring us in the face: get to work now to develop and launch grassroots progressive campaigns for next year’s primaries that can defeat members of Congress who talk the talk but fail to walk the walk of challenging Obama’s austerity agenda.

Who are those congressional incumbents who call themselves “progressive” but refuse to take a clear stand against slashing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits? I have a little list. Well, actually it’s not so little.

As of today, after many weeks of progressive lobbying and pleading and petitioning nationwide, 47 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have refused to sign the letter, initiated by Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano, pledging to “vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

After all this time, refusal to sign the Grayson-Takano letter is a big tipoff that those 47 House members are keeping their options open. (To see that list of 47, click here.) They want wiggle room for budget votes on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Most of them represent a left-leaning district, and some could be toppled by grassroots progressive campaigns.

By itself, lobbying accomplishes little. Right now, it’s time to threaten members of Congress with defeat unless they vote against all efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Click here if you want to send that message directly to your representative and senators.

The best way to sway members of Congress is to endanger their seats if they aren’t willing to do the right thing. In the real world, politics isn’t about playing cat and mouse. It’s about power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Norman Solomon is the author of many books, including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” which has been adapted into a documentary film. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

Extremely Rich Wall Street CEO Wants Americans To Work Longer

By Pat Garofalo, ThinkProgress.org

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

Lloyd Blankfein — evidently taking a break from doing “god’s work” as the CEO of Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs — told CBS News’ Scott Pelley that he believes the retirement age needs to be raised because “in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained“:

BLANKFEIN: You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations — the entitlements and what people think that they’re going to get, because it’s not going to — they’re not going to get it.

PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?

BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. … So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.

PELLEY: Because we can’t afford them going forward?

BLANKFEIN: Because we can’t afford them.

Maybe working until a later age is fine for a Wall Street CEO whose net worth is $450 million. But it’s simply nonsense to assert that the retirement age needs to go up because Social Security is no longer affordable.

For starters, Social Security can pay full benefits for decades without any changes at all. (Imagine the accolades that would received if any other federal program had guaranteed funding for that stretch of time.) One simple change, raising the cap on the payroll tax, can guarantee that the program will pay nearly full benefits for three-quarters of a century. In the meantime,

Social Security is statutorily barred from adding one dime to the federal deficit, so cutting it doesn’t change the nation’s deficit or debt picture.

Raising the retirement age, meanwhile, adversely impacts those workers most in need of a robust social safety net. While a year or two of extra work may not seem like much to a Wall Street CEO with his cushy corner office, for a factory worker or janitor, it can mean real problems. Life expectancy is only increasing for wealthier workers in non-physical jobs. Poorer workers doing physical labor have not seen the same gains. Overall, raising the retirement age to 70 would “cut benefits for the average retiree by 19 percent.”

Obama Prepares to Triangulate Himself

By BAR executive editor Glen Ford | Wed, 10/20/2010

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WHAT A GUY! Barack Obama has neutralized Blacks, the white left, and the majority of his own party in service to Wall Street, and some still call him “liberal” (The insane call him “socialist.”) With Social Security and Medicare in his sights, “the stage is set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master.”

With Social Security and Medicare in his sights, “the stage is set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master.”

“Obama invented the deficit reduction commission as his customized vehicle to subvert his own party’s cherished ‘entitlement’ programs.”

One thing is certain: the corporations will win and civilization will lose on November 2nd. The outcome is foreordained, since the dwindling electoral forces of civilization don’t have enough candidates in contention even to fill an effective caucus.

With 83 nominal members, the Progressive Congressional Caucus [5] is, on paper, the largest of the House ideological groupings, but has been neutered since Barack Obama entered the White House. The Congressional Black Caucus has not been a coherent force for progressive change for most of this century, and now behaves as if lobotomized by the presence of a Black chief executive. Having allowed themselves to be whipped, kicked and scorned by a White House concerned only for the president’s most narrow interests and schemes, “left” Democrats are at their nadir of legislative influence, despite their chairmanships.

Whether the GOP actually wins one or both chambers of Congress or not, the people’s interests are in deep trouble. The most immediate threat looms, not from the Tea Party, which will no doubt have its own little caucus in the next Congress, but from Barack Obama and his President’s National Commission [6] on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. When the right-heavy commission makes its recommendations in early December, the stage will be set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master.

Barack Obama will triangulate himself.

“’Left’ Democrats are at their nadir of legislative influence, despite their chairmanships.”

President Clinton skillfully triangulated his own Democrats, seeking to position himself between the party’s liberal-ish core and the Republicans, thus moving the center of political gravity rightward through the Nineties. Obama, whose first major act while still a candidate was to save the Bush bank bailout after it failed a first vote in October, 2008, has elevated Clinton-style triangulation to what he hopes passes for statesmanship. Obama likes to calls it “non-partisan,” “consensus-building” politics and other variations on the theme, but the result is always the same: the fundamental interests of corporations are protected at the beginning of the process, which can only end with the people in worse shape than before it started. This is how a broad and deep public demand for comprehensive health reform was transformed into a guaranteed, subsidized, central role in the national health system for the hated insurance and drug companies for the foreseeable future.

Obama, a genius at creating opportunities for himself while undermining the life prospects of others, invented the deficit reduction commission as his customized vehicle to subvert his own party’s cherished “entitlement” programs: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and others. Republicans didn’t force his hand or box him in. Instead, Obama set the torpedoes in motion against entitlements in the days before his inauguration, declaring, on January 8, 2009 [7], that an overhaul of Medicare and Social Security would be “a central part” of his presidency. Not long afterwards, he said that Social Security and other entitlements would be “on the table” for cutting. All this, before any Republican had blurted an angry word about Obama in congressional debate.

“Obama has elevated Clinton-style triangulation to what he hopes passes for statesmanship.”

Obama’s ambush of entitlements is premeditated. He was determined from the very start to succeed where George Bush failed – by gutting Social Security. That’s how Obama measures greatness.

The problem was, most Republicans remembered Bush’s Social Security debacle of 2005 [8], and were not anxious to relive the experience, while debating Social Security was the last thing on Democratic congressional minds. With Republicans in no mood to launch a legislative attack on Social Security, there was nobody for Obama to make one of his grand comprises with. So, in February of this year, he issued an executive order [9] creating his own anti-entitlement missile, the 18-person [10] panel that quickly became known as the “cat food” commission [11], harkening back to the pre-Social Security days when many of the elderly where reduced to eating cat food.

Obama’s trick was to conjure up a political demand for the gutting of entitlements when no serious movement in that direction existed in the Congress. The commission route allowed him to concoct a majority right-wing constituency in a bottle, so to speak, by weighting the membership with pro-corporate players.

No one doubts that the panel is rigged to recommend cuts that Democrats (and a few Republicans) would be prepared to fight tooth and nail if proposed by the GOP. Blood would flow in the halls of the House and Senate, and in the end the assailants would likely lose. But by packaging the poison in a commission, Obama is allowed to behave as if the entitlement debate has oozed from the ether, demanding to be made manifest.

“The commission route allowed him to concoct a majority right-wing constituency in a bottle, so to speak.”

Now comes the good part. In a classic triangulation, Obama would position himself as close to the Republican legislative position as politically convenient. However, that’s easier said than done, and full of risks, in the heat of debate on tricky congressional terrain. Instead, the presidential commission, acting as the supposed “deliberator” of the fate of the nation’s sick and elderly, will spew forth a range of recommendations from which Obama will pick and choose. He will vow to protect “the most vulnerable” from the more draconian ideas put forward by his commission. In the end he will stake out and occupy a “non-partisan,” “consensus” center as defined by the makeup of the commission, the president’s own creation.

Obama will have triangulated himself, and screwed us all. Mark my words.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [12].

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