Queasy
by digby
One hopes this worry is misplaced:
When House Republicans signaled last week that they would provoke a fight over Social Security in the next two years, progressive stalwarts like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren decried the action, with Brown alleging the GOP wanted to "set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”
But notably silent on the Republican stance, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds, upping the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016, was the Democratic official who might actually be at the table if conservatives succeed in forcing negotiations in the next Congress: President Barack Obama.
TPM asked multiple times last week for the White House's position on the House action, but never received a formal response, a stark contrast to the loud public pronouncements of Brown, Warren, and others. It also invokes the uneasy relationship between the White House and Social Security advocates, who were dismayed by Obama's willingness to accept cuts to the program during the 2011 grand bargain talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).
"Advocates do not trust the president on Social Security," Monique Morrissey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told TPM last week. "If he blinks and they message this right, it could be something."
Yes it could.
I have been encouraged by the administration's YOLO (you're only lameduck once) attitude since November. But with all the talk about "tax reform" and "entitlement reform" coming from the Republican majority in both houses you can't help but recall that those two items were the 2nd and 3rd stools of the Grand Bargain (the 1st being Health Care, of course.) I would hope that idea has been successfully deep-sixed for all time, simply because the underlying conceit --- Big Bipartisan Deals --- has been shown to be a fool's errand.
I am not personally wringing my hands over this. I suspect the White House understands that its legacy will not be it's success at bringing the two sides together to do Big Things. These are different times and the legacy will depend upon a different analysis of the administration's achievements. But you never know. Social Security represents the most successful anti-poverty program in America's history and it's a simple, Big Government solution. The right sees it as a repudiation of all their hold dear. It also represents a whole lot of money, a piece of which certain capitalist sharks would love to bite off. It's always going to be a target. Vigilance is required.
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