Barkley Rosser — VSPs Get Their Way With Budget Deal: Social Security Benefits Are Cut

Military spending increases, SS benefits decrease. Who's winning?

Econospeak
VSPs Get Their Way With Budget Deal: Social Security Benefits Are Cut
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

Michael Lind — Take that, Paul Ryan! Elizabeth Warren beats back Social Security plot

The Overton Window has shifted! At least in the case of Social Security.

The Overton Window — named for the late Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — is the frame through which acceptable options for public policy are viewed at any given time. Options that are outside of the frame (or “outside the box,” to use another metaphor) are deemed unworthy of consideration or mention by the bipartisan establishment, no matter how compelling those options may actually be. The Overton Window tends to be positioned by the owners and bureaucrats of the major media, who tend to share an elite consensus with politicians and the donors who fund them.

Until recently, in discussions of the future of Social Security the Overton Window was positioned to exclude any discussion of raising, rather than cutting, Social Security benefits. For the last generation, the range of permissible opinion with respect to the program — which most Americans depend on for nearly all of their income in old age — ranged from conservatives who wanted to abolish Social Security altogether, to press-anointed “progressives” and token Democrats who merely wanted to cut Social Security benefits. The option of maintaining scheduled Social Security benefits, and paying for them with higher taxes, was considered unworthy of discussion by the guardians of Overton Orthodoxy, both in the press and in the two major parties. As for expanding Social Security benefits — why, that’s crazy talk!

It’s safe to say that, within the bipartisan oligarchy, the alleged need to cut Social Security remains the consensus. But the Overton Window has shifted just a little to the left, and the idea of expanding Social Security, hitherto invisible through the frame, is now in the public field of vision.

Salon
Take that, Paul Ryan! Elizabeth Warren beats back Social Security plot
Michael Lind

Too bad the debate is still completely out of paradigm with MMT.

Ryan Grim — Elizabeth Warren Calls Third Way 'Flatly Wrong' In Social Security Fight

Feisty lady. But too bad she is not in paradigm with MMT.

The Third Way is a combination of GOP lite, a combination of (formerly) GOP moderate and conservative Democratic policies in order to attract former GOP moderates by appearing "centrist." As a Progressive, Warren rightly rejects it as bogusly Democratic and liberal and calls the Third Way out for fronting for Wall Street.

The Huffington Post
Elizabeth Warren Calls Third Way 'Flatly Wrong' In Social Security Fight
Ryan Grim

Bill Mitchell — Chained-CPI COLAs – another conservative smokescreen

The conservatives are always dreaming up new attacks on the most disadvantaged people in our societies. in the US, the front line of the war on the poor is the on-going attacks on the Social Security system. As I’ve noted in the past this entire debate is based upon the around the’s claim that the system can go broke. I dealt with that issue in these blogs –Social security insolvency 101 and The time has come to tell the American people the truth – among others, and I won’t repeat the points. They are clear – the US Social Security Trust Funds are just elaborate accounting smokescreens that ultimately mean nothing if one comprehends the financial capacity of the US government. They represent a case of a government creating a farcical structure to administer some program and then elevating the structure to a false level of importance that actually leads them to introduce policies which undermine the initial purpose of the program – and all without any basis. The determinants of future standards of living will be the availability of sufficient real goods and services of an acceptable quality. If they are available the US government will be able to purchase them with the stroke of a computer key. But because the conservatives have everyone thinking the funds will go broke, they can then force ridiculous time-wasting concepts into the public debate. One such attack is the proposal to use Chained-CPI measures as the Cost-of-Living-Adjustment (COLA) index in social security pensions....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Chained-CPI COLAs – another conservative smokescreen
William F. (Bill) Mitchell |Professor of Economics at Charles Darwin University, Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle, and inaugural director of CofFEE

 Instead of "conservatives," I would say the fiscal conservatives, due to ignorance, and the neoliberals, due to perversity. The objective of neoliberalism as a political stance in order to undermine the welfare state and subvert it into the "market state," really the corporate state. 

It is not always clear who is in which camp, moronic or perverse. But ignorance is no excuse when it is culpable ignorance, and no economists can claim that they don't have the capacity to understand how the monetary and fiscal systems work. The bias is toward perversity due to normative ideology masquerading as positive science.

Ben Struble — Obama wants to cut Social Security

Along with most Republicans, many Democrats, and Wall Street, President Obama wants to cut Social Security. Here is what you need to know.

New Economic Perspectives
Obama wants to cut Social Security
Ben Struble

Stephen Rosenfeld — Sell-Out Alert: 9 Democrats Already Caving to GOP On Social Security Cuts

Illinois’ Dick Durban, Washington’s Patty Murray Virginias Sen. Mark Warner, California’s Dianne Feinstein, Montana’s Max Baucus, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Delaware’s Chris Coons and Tom Carper, and Colorado’s Michael Bennett have all said either that they support cuts to entitlements in letters to constituents, or have put "everything" on the table for negotiation — and this is for starters.

But the biggest Democrat of all—and the one not drawing a line in the sand but possibly leading a historic sellout—is President Obama. In September 2008, when the senator from Illinois appeared before the AARP, Obama attackedRepublican nominee John McCain for suggested cuts to Social Security. As President, he has embraced those kind of cuts.

Alternet
Sell-Out Alert: 9 Democrats Already Caving to GOP On Social Security Cuts
Stephen Rosenfeld

Mike Whitney — The “Debt Ceiling” Smokescreen

Here comes the Grand Bargain, if Boehner can sell it to the House when the extremists are set on defunding AFA instead.

Readers can see how the media is subtly shifting attention away from defunding Obamacare to negotiations on Social Security and Medicare. The two-party duopoly is using the faux “government shutdown” crisis to set the stage for a “compromise” on slashing vital safety net programs during upcoming debt ceiling negotiations. Obama will use GOP “hostage taking” as the proximate cause for caving in, saying that he had to give ground to prevent a catastrophic default that would have pushed the economy back into recession....

Obama has had his sites on Social Security and Medicare since he took office in 2008. It’s clear now, that he plans to use the cover of the stage-managed debt ceiling crisis to achieve his objective. 

Counterpunch
The “Debt Ceiling” Smokescreen

Mike Whitney