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Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has not been traditionally opposed to a deficit reduction plan. The CBPP supports chained CPI, for example. So it’s quite something to see Greenstein, along with Paul van de Water and Richard Kogan, savage the Democratic opening bid in the Catfood Commission II, describing it as to the right of Bowles-Simpson, the Gang of Six and other deficit plans.
The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the “supercommittee”) marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.
CBPP rightly notes that none of this has led to Republicans embracing the plan. This calls into question why Democrats would make this kind of bid in the first place, with all the potential negative consequences down the road.
But back to the numbers. It’s mostly explained in this table:
As you can see, the Catfood Commission Dems’ plan has $92 billion more in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid than Bowles-Simpson, and $800-$900 billion less in revenue increases. Discretionary program cuts are comparable to Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six. All told, this is as high as a 6:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases for the Catfood Commission Dems’ plan, compared to 2:1 for Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six.
None of this is to say that Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six were at all good ideas. But the Catfood Commission Dems’ plan is really draconian. Here’s another excerpt from the CBPP analysis:
The Democratic plan has $200 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts, a level that exceeds the beneficiary cuts in Bowles-Simpson (the Gang of Six is not specific on this point) and is eight times the level of Medicare beneficiary cuts in the budget plan that President Obama released on September 19. Since half of Medicare beneficiaries have incomes below about $21,000, it would be extremely difficult to secure $200 billion in savings from increased Medicare beneficiary charges without requiring significantly larger out-of-pocket payments by beneficiaries with incomes as low as $12,000 or $15,000.
Again, this didn’t lead to anything approaching a deal from the Republican side. It just became the new “left” pole in the debate. And it’s a pole significantly to the right of plans that had Republican participation in the recent past.
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disgraceful
they just don’t get it
i can’t wait for occupy boston to camp out in lousiburg square in front of john kerry’s mansion
if you can’t find the mansion look for the place where the fire hydrant used to be before kerry had it removed bc it ruined his view
go to kerry’s house and make a lot of noise and stay there for a long time
maybe throw him some catfood to chew on
citizens united ring any bells?
Dems = McWhigs. Will the last person leaving please turn out the lights.
what are you, some kind of green peace the earth is getting too hot, liberal oil corporation hating comy?
The Democrats either secretly believe that those people aren’t poor because they own TVs and have air conditioning or they simply don’t care about you unless you’re a 1%er.
As soon as I saw Pelosi’s remarks, I wrote a letter to Dick Durbin, my A****** Senator.
Simply asked when the Democrats were going to quit slitting their own wrists to appease the Republicans.
Anyone with a tiny bit of experience in negotiations knows that you let your opposition come up with their proposal first. If advantageous to your side, you then make that the new starting point.
We’ve seen this time and time again with the administration and the Democrats.
I could understand this if the American people were hugely in favor of what the Democrats are proposing, this might make a little sense. As we’re all aware, the public is hugely OPPOSED to these types of proposals. More to the point, in the last 5 decades, any party that has made these types of suggestions for cuts has gotten killed at the polls.
I can not imagine what these folks are thinking.
Well somehow folks seem to think that we are in this mess cuz of the GOP.well once they wake up,they will find that the Dems helped to screw us over just as much as the GOP did.
Anyone remember “Whats the matter with Kansas”…..maybe next time it will be “whats the matter with average Americans who are members of the Democratic party”.
Hope they wake-up soon,some people however will never wake-up.
You can’t imagine what they are thinking ?…
It should be clear by now dogjudge they aren’t doing things for (y)our benefit ?
What more do you need to see ?
It is all smoke and mirrors. I think the real plan the one that is already written like the Patriot ACt is in the wings and will be whipped out when the stock market starts to implode as the euro bailout unravels and the US banks can no longer hide that they are broke. just my opinion.
You’re probably right on the Euro bailout unraveling triggering a huge crisis, and I have a feeling that plan-in-waiting is going to be one frightfully scary POS.
This was completely predictable.
You bet. They will terrorize the people with fear to go along with it. I only hope enough people are awake this time to see through it, not allow fear to take over, and tell them to F off
go to kerry’s house and make a lot of noise and stay there for a long time
maybe throw him some catfood to chew on
Well if its Kerry’s house, it really should be someone else’s catfood you throw:
Charles Gibson: Well, Senator, I, I was there 33 years ago. I-I saw you throw medals over the fence and we didn’t find out ’til later that those were–
Kerry: No, you didn’t see me throw. Wrong.
Gibson: –those were someone’s medals.
Kerry: Charlie, Charlie, you’re wrong…
[snip Kerry's attempted filibuster]
Kerry: And I threw them over ’cause they asked me to.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=3760
x2! People need to remember how
the bank bailout Fear-factor turned out!
“This calls into question why Democrats would make this kind of bid in the first place . . .”
This is exactly the right and quite puzzling question.
IF it is to set up a drama wherein the Repubs, again, reject this most far reaching, and ‘reasonable’ (to some very misguided ‘dems’), ‘proposal’ as another election prelude to painting the Repubs as unreasonable . . . Well, just give me a fucking break. What is more important: framing an election issue by selling out the numerical base of the dem party, or actually standing for something?
I’m really getting tired of seeing this duplicitous conduct by the dems and raising, yet again, the same questions, still maintaining the fast eroding fiction that the dems actually do care about the needs of their numerical base.
The alternative, even more cynical (realistic?) conclusion boils down to the ‘we suck less’ calculus. Either way, it seems, reelection trumps standing for something important to the base. If the dems want to shine a bright light on the irrelevance of both parties, embodied by OWS grievances, here is another example.
Put another way, how dare these dems even think about bartering away my benefits when they wallow in the lap of their own secure futures.
Why? because O wants a deal more than anything else. I’m sure that he thinks yet another “bipatisan” (i.e. capitulation to the radical right) agreement will bolster his bona fides with Wall Street and the rest of the corporate elite, while showing the idiot swing voters (all two of them…) what a reasonable centrist he is. That the corporate wing of the Democratic party is using the negatiations as an opportunity to stuff their pockets with money from the financial and insurance sectors by privately promising to continue the dismemberment of the social saftey net is just a bonus.
“reelection trumps standing for something important to the base.”
Puzzle solved!
you are trying to claim this is some kind of 11 dimensional chess and I assure you it is not
this is about corporate control of our once proud social safety net, that’s all it is, the we have seen the enemy and he is us.
the dems are now the republicans since citizens united, they are getting checks and they are doing the bidding of their puppet masters
I brought up the ‘eleventy dimensional chess’ business here recently myself. Just for the record, I don’t believe it either. I’m convinced of the craven corporate sellout explanation.
You know what is being lost here is that SS has zip to do with the deficit problem. So I guess those in power are staring to win the argument as with each passing day people forget this
The dems are no more repubs than the repubs. they are all puppets for the 1%
I don’t think they are. *g*
Bingo!
you’re making this less insidious then the facts and performance demonstrate
this is not about making a deal, this is about completing a corporate agenda planned even before he was nominated, he IS the enemy, he IS a republican dressed in blue
he IS the judas trojan wolf dressed in bendict clothing
cannot argue that point one bit
There is one thing our legislaturds are ignoring. We ARE the 99%. We don’t have any money, but we HAVE 99% of the votes. And we MUST use the power we HAVE and it IS substantial.
Where’d I put my three-corner hat????
Yet another sad example of how there is truly only one party, the “ownership” party. Every day brings another example of this and makes Sheldon Wollin look like a prophet with his book, “Democracy Inc.”. If this isn’t managed democracy and inverse totalitarianism, I don’t know what is.
Don’t forget carlin he nailed it.
obama will be the dem nomination, there will be no third party, there will be no green party and we are stuck with him or rom, me I am going to do whatever it takes to get obama fired, even if it means rolling the dice with romney
I always thought a hero would rise, i was fooled and thought that hero was the zero.
but alas, the zero is working for the other team.
I am one of those low-income seniors and I thank you for this. Just making my co-pays plus my gap insurance payments are problems for me. I think any Democrat who cuts entitlements should be challenged including Obama.
“The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats . . . marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions . . . [and] features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.”
Who ever could have guessed? Certainly explodes all that “lesser of two evils” bullshit.
They are in it for the money. They take bribes.
These POSs — including the jackass in the WH — are all millionaires with seven figure jobs waiting for them. They don’t give a big rat’s ass about the 99%.
The real enemy, once again, are the Barry ass kissers in the MSM and blogosphere. And the piss ants that show up here to try to insult us into bending over for Barry again.
Clearly they received their marching orders.
“The Democrats either secretly believe that those people aren’t poor because they own TVs and have air conditioning or they simply don’t care about you unless you’re a 1%er.”
The latter. They don’t give a fuck. They represent the corporate interests who provide them with enough bribe money to win reelection. And any social contract that might have previously existed between citizen and representative has been precipitously declining since the word citizen has been replaced with the word consumer.
It’s hard to see at present how the inchoate force behind OWS will generate change. Or in what timeframe. I’m just grateful a force has begun to work. Like others of the older, Vietnam generation, I’d begun to despair that resistance would be totally coopted, and any semblance of ‘people power’ snuffed out and crushed by government.
Resistance to the American oligarchy has been so slow in coming because the system has had decades of practice in seducing, threatening, and hypnotizing people into inaction, inattention, wishful/magical thinking and compliance.
Third. Party. Now.
The system is rigged. That doesn’t meant it can’t change — that we can’t change it — as a matter of fact, we must. But it will be nothing as simple as an election in 2012. And while I don’t think these dems do anything without Obama, to do it electorally, we’d need 51 votes in senate and 218 US Reps in addition to the President. (and hope for the best re. SCOTUS that elected one president, came to decision in Citizens United and decides on First Amendment issues). The 1% control voting hours and regulations and machines and airwaves and Internet and newspapers. They control our food our shelter our energy. They control the police, national guard, and the military. When in doubt they put swaths of citizens in jail (can’t vote), fund false “populist movements,” and more.
We need to end the democratic party and Obama. Neither helps anyone but themselves.
How are the people at the Great Orange Satan taking this? Are they excited that the Democrats have shown themselves to be even bolder and more imaginative than the Republicans?
So we have a contest on who can reduce our spending the most. Even Pelosi has signed on. Surely there is some economist from long ago who laid down the immutable law on deficits and debt and the need for austerity when the debt is too high. Personally, I missed that day in eco class so I can’t say how much debt or deficit is too much but judging by the extent of the hyperventilation around we must be about to turn into pumkins or something. After all it’s holloween.
Joan McCarter at Kos:
Does anyone think that the Dem’s tactic is to propose something so outrageous that even the Rethugs can’t vote for it and get re-elected in order to force the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts that will include military/defense cuts but not include major entitlement programs?
And commenter Cybrestrike:
*G*
*rowr*
The corporate media are willing co-conspirators in linking SS to the deficit. It’s not surprising that it’s a common misconception.
I think the first problem we have is in buying into the idea that we need to cut spending. WE DO NOT NEED TO DO ANY SUCH THING.
You are correct, with the exception of MIC and empire spending. Those should be severely cut post-haste and shifted over to safety-net and infrastructure spending.
Agree.
No.
This is not 11 dimensional chess.
Obama was as “left” as Hillary on domestic, as in the center on defense as Hillary, and to the left to her on anti-Iraq war because as a state senator he gave a speech to a dinner, and it worked for the primary.
Since then he has been to the right of the GOP on every issue. I thought he was “blue dog” but I find he is more to the right than Reagan and indeed more “tea party” than the GOP clowns running in the pres. primary.
The various funding folks for the Democrats call for money, and each time I express my disgust with the direct the D’s are going, and the place where they current are – but they still kept calling.
I didn’t think so either. Just thought of it and thought I’d put it out there.
The Wall Street speculators used the Clinton administration’s ever so brilliant tactic of “triangulation” to repeal FDR’s Glass-Steagall banking regulations thereby creating worthless trillions of dollars of unregulated derivative securities. This treachery is what sunk public finances. Now Wall Street demands fascist austerity and the toady “Democrats” rush to implement it in lockstep, why should any but the most gullible mush-headed Pollyannas be surprised?
perris (comment 24) was right:
“this is not about making a deal, this is about completing a corporate agenda planned even before he was nominated, he IS the enemy, he IS a republican dressed in blue
he IS the judas trojan wolf dressed in bendict clothing”
Ah … I remember the good old days. When the price of gas and food and medical care all zoomed, but somehow Social Security recipients got no raise at all … and that was with the old, not the “improved” CPI.
The good old days, when the first grand bargain put out there chained the CPI but promised that only provider cuts would be made to Medicaid and Medicare.
The good old days … 2008, when Obama promised David Brooks that when he took office he WOULD FIX SOCIAL SECURITY … meaning fix it so that it never would pay back that $2.6 trillion borrowed. The only part of the national debt that fake lieing Democrats and greedy conservatives want to not repay, everyone else owning government bonds having that debt treated as sacred.
The good old days, when Obama sounded exactly like the kind of Democrat we wanted in office and it was only his lack of actual experience we had to concern ourselves with. Whereas the other Dem had all that experience as a first lady .. whatever that was good for.
Back before the lies and backstabbing piled up. And it turned out Obama only keeps some promises, but thinks promises made when campaigning are jokes.