Voting to let the country fall off the cliff was an audacious, even precocious, move by the Democratic golden boy and presidential pet - one that, oddly, put him on the side of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul rather than Obama and Joe Biden. "It is an interesting group," he deadpanned about the naysayers.
Rubio and Paul didn't have the chance to stake their careers on the Public Option. Bennet said he would, but demurred then, too, and let the Public Option die an unnatural, quiet death.
He also had to go against Majority Leader Harry Reid, who anointed the freshman to be the new leader of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Contrary to the highly successful Patty Murray, and, ummmm voters, who got more Progressives and Women elected last year, Bennet like the comfort of the Old Boys Club-style senate and is strangely trying revive Blue Dog Democrats from their slow-motion extintion.
I'm sure he still wants to banish true progressives, like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Al Franken, from the Democratic Caucus in the senate. At the least he'll be happy to oppose them:
Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, are part of a self-described centrist group of 15 Democrats meeting regularly "seeking to restrain the influence of party liberals in the White House and on Capitol Hill," according to an account in Roll Call (subscription required).
The group has a "shared commitment to pursue moderate, mainstream and fiscally sustainable policies across a range of issues, such as health care reform, the housing crisis, educational reform, and energy policy."
Not many ideas in those areas coming from Bennet lately.
Bennet, the future of his party, comes from the fertile territory of the Mountain West. Asked if his vote was a way to stake out some centrist and independent territory for a future White House run, he demurred, "No, no, no."
I think the Senate is much more amenable to Bennet's goals, especially now the he's following in Max Baucus' footsteps and joined the highly corrupting Finance Committee.
Appointed in 2009 (By Bill Ritter, whom I will NEVER forgive. -z) and little known in his state, he managed to survive the conservative wave that swept out so many Democrats in 2010 and his coalition of Hispanics and women became the model for the Obama campaign in Colorado in 2012. Democrats are counting on Bennet to recruit a new generation of candidates who will broaden the appeal and geographic reach of the party.
I don't have much hope for Bennet and think Triangulation is a dead strategy and the Blue Dogs are a dead caucus.
Unfortunately, this article virtually guarantees Bennet will continue what he's doing, Colorado's citizens be damned. Getting the blessing from Dowd can only be the beginning of stuff like that.
...cuz they are Screwing their Base - again, and Fucking the Middle Class with Chained CPI, talk of a Grand Bargainhttp://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2013/05/will-michael-bennet-be-as-bad-at-dscc.html, and their never ending quest to find common ground with a bunch of crazy, old, racist, ignernt White Guys.
And all those Gen X-ers who put Obama in office twice may never return to the voting booth after this.
When we polled Alaska in February Lisa Murkowski was one of the most popular Senators in the country with a 54% approval rating and only 33% of voters disapproving of her.
She's seen a precipitous decline in the wake of her background checks vote though.
Her approval is down a net 16 points from that +21 standing to +5 with 46% of voters approving and 41% now disapproving of her. Murkowski has lost most of her appeal to Democrats in the wake of her vote, with her numbers with them going from 59/25 to 44/44. And the vote hasn't increased her credibility with Republican either- she was at 51/38 with them in February and she's at 50/39 now.
Mark Begich is down following his no vote as well. He was at 49/39 in February and now he's at 41/37. His popularity has declined with Democrats (from 76/17 to 59/24) and with independents (from 54/32 to 43/35), and there has been no corresponding improvement with Republicans.
(#TriangulationFail - z)
60% of Alaska voters support background checks to just 35% opposed, including a 62/33 spread with independents. 39% of voters say they're less likely to vote for each of Begich and Murkowski in their next elections based on this vote, while only 22% and 26% say they're more likely to vote for Begich and Murkowski respectively because of this.
You'd think Alaska and Colorado voters were fairly similar in their attitude towards guns, hunting, and safety. Alaska's two senators went with their gut on this issue when they should've looked at the data, which is all around, and talked to their contituents, who are easy to see once you get all the lobbyists out of your face.
Everyone who was paying attention knows what the issue was and had a common sense view on the issue that ignored party ideology and expected their representatives to make that common sense decision.
I dare say the Social Security/Chained CPI issue is the same.
So maybe this social media thing ain't so bad after all, especially if it can force some accountability on those we hire to represent us in that far off universe called Washington, DC.
The country is broke and our grandchildren will all be beggars in the streets, but there's always millions to spare for bullshit propaganda isn't there?
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has announced a $1 million grant to the newly established Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.
The grant will support the establishment of a Fiscal Responsibility Institute at the center as well as an annual conference focused on national budgetary issues. The center, which aims to provide scholarship, training, and opportunities for a new generation of leaders who value public service, was formally launched this week by an inaugural conference on the topic of "The Federal Budget and the Law: Finding a Way Forward."
Another think tank on fiscal responsibility is exactly what we need. It's the highest priority for those least affected by the ebbs and flows of our nations' economy.
I expect all of Colorado's Loyal Austerians to be at the first conference...
Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we're paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn't that we spent too much in the past but that we're spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering - and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren't at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent.
But it's not just a matter of emotion versus logic. You can't understand the influence of austerity doctrine without talking about class and inequality.
Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face.
(This is where the influence of big donors, who can speak to their senators whenever they want, becomes the enemy of common sense and the Middle Class. -z)
And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security - that is, "entitlements" - while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.
You get the idea:
The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
So, they've crunched some real numbers and determined exactly how much money the average Social Security recipient can expect to lose if the Chained-CPI is implemented. I'm going to assume that if someone told you that the government was going to seize $15,000.00 from your 401k you'd think it was a cut.
...
To rich people, 15 grand amounts to tip money so they cannot see why average Americans shouldn't be willing to give up such a paltry sum especially if it will "save" Social Security for their grandchildren.
Funny thing about that --- it won't. Save Social Security, that is.
So Social Security's status will barely be improved by Udall and Bennet and Obama and Pete Peterson's solution. Though it will absolutely be felt by almost every recipient - young, old, retired, working, disabled.
And that $15,000 is a little over a month's pay for our esteemed senators who will soon make those "tough" decisions to cut Social Security and bless America's wealthy with another generation of low-tax, America the Beautiful living.
Thank God they are not average, for they all do so deserve their bounty...
Republicans can and will get away with this stuff all the time. They get their base distracted with Moslemen and Guns and Gays and go about their merry way.
Democrats shouldn't put up with it from their side. And with the boom in social media our Democratic Representatives and Senators will be less likely to get away with this kind of garbage in the future.
If someone knows anyone in either Udall or Bennet's offices who gives a crap what the people say they should pass this Baucus tidbit on.
It is the sound of progressives across America giving each other high fives as Senator Max Baucus has, according to the Washington Post, decided not to run for re-election in 2014 and will retire.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is retiring rather than seek re-election in 2014, according to two senior Democratic strategists familiar with his plans.
First elected in 1978, Baucus has been the top Democrat on the powerful committee since 2001. The likely Democratic candidate to succeed him would be former governor Brian Schweitzer, sources said.
Brian Schweitzer served as governor of Montana and would likely clear the field should he chose to run to take Baucus' seat. While Schweitzer may be more of a moderate Western Democrat there is no way he could be as destructive as Max Baucus to the progressive agenda.
If this is Baucus' definition of a dedicated public servant then he is truly hallucinating.
I believe he provided a great dis-service to his constituents.
And if this is the model that Michael Bennet plans to follow, the citizens of Colorado better keep a close eye on their "senior", huh, senator. He might just be playing the revolving door game that leads to a $1Million per year job lobbying a bunch of low-paid senators and their staffers.
Trying to think of a core Democratic principle that Barack Obama has stood up for, fought for, implemented, damn the political costs.
I can find none.
He stopped torture, thank goodness. But drone attacks that kill innocent civilians continue. He's wound down 2 wars, that we couldn't fight forever anyway (no matter the desires of John McCain and Lindsey Graham) and that should've ended years before they did.
Oh, wait, Afghanistan hasn't ended yet.
Health care "reform" was/is a disaster achieved with Michael Bennet's great flair, and nothing else. It's still on a slow roll with Republicans poised to repeal it at any minute.
The President certainly has evolved on LGBT issues and gay marriage, but boy, did that take some time and a "gaffe" by Veep Biden.
But now some say his convenient evolution on social issues gives him some further desire to cut social programs as a give back to the political center. This is to make Republicans less hostile and donors more amenable, though Republican hostility to this president is an ever-morphing beast who feeds on any statement, policy, utterance, thought emanating from the White House.
Will the beast ever be soothed? NO.
BP tried to kill the Gulf, they received a relatively mild slap on the wrist. Keystone pipeline seems a given, though its massive potential for polluting the environment will far outweigh its economic benefits of 35 full time jobs.
Coloradans praised Obama's interior secretary Salazar, a local yokel who opened up offshore drilling, had the Horizon and the Kulluk on his watch, yet did very little for the good of the environment to my eye.
And still Obama's supposed allies in the Senate never cease their calls for more and more bipartisanship. This quest has turned into a continuing win for Republicans who are given a mile only to take another mile on almost every issue. Obama has pre-negotiated with Republicans so much they only have to wait and watch for him to give them more.
The Republicans have won so many economic issues or so many years it seems impossible the Obama/Peterson/Third Way plan to cut Social Security and raise Medicare's eligibility age seems inevitable. Thanks, once again, to a compliant and weak-kneed and economically ignorant delegation from Colorado and to a Zombie Bowles/Simpson cyborg that nothing can kill, not even a simple spreadsheet.
If someone can name a core Democratic issue on which Obama has staked significant political capital (oh, and he had and has it yet) then please chime in.
I'll keep searching for one - and wondering what it would take for a Democrat to act like a true Democrat in this day and age in our nation's capital.
Polls tell us something about the characteristics of gun rights supporters and gun owners specifically. If we look at these categories, we see that they are disproportionately white, male and old.
"Disproportionately white, male and old" is a description that fits the Senate and, to a lesser degree, most other American political elites quite well.
For example campaign contributors are disproportionately white male, and old too.
Gun rights supporters are also more likely to be registered to vote than gun control advocates. So from this standpoint the cause of gun rights gets more of a hearing because it appeals to the kind of citizens who are already comfortable and used to participating in politics.
Mark Udall and Michael Bennet love them some bipartisanship. It seems every press release or interview mentions the thing.
They mention it more than the actual policies that they intend to make law, as if bipartisanship alone guarantees a good result. Op-Ed writers and DC press have the same flawed thinking.
After Cruz said that he objected to a bipartisan plan to extended background checks to gun shows and Internet sales because it "would put us inexorably on a path to a national gun registry," Schumer pointed out that the same background check system had been used for 17 years for federal fire licensees (FFLs).
"It's the same technique, it's the same entry into the book and everything else," the New York Democrat argued.
"But what is consequential," Cruz opined, "is extending it to private sellers, not licensed dealers because the argument surely would be -- if this bill passed, the argument would immediately become, 'Well, it can't possibly be effective because we don't know who owns those firearms.'"
Schumer pressed: "Just one more question, has my colleague in the last 17 years detected any move out of Washington for national registration, any specific substantive move by ATF, the Justice Department or any other federal agency to begin a campaign, a move to any kind of national registration?"
"It is not currently proposed, but if the bill that is being considered were adopted it would put us on that path," Cruz insisted.
At that point, laughter could be heard off camera. A Senate Democratic aide later confirmed to The Huffington Post that the guffaw had come from Schumer.
There is nothing here to disabuse me of my long-held notion that most economists reach their conclusions by cutting up a sheep on a rock and reading the entrails.
This error is needed to get the results they published, and it would go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible for others to replicate these results. If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
And are we at all surprised that a certain zombie-eyed granny-starver of our casual acquaintance was one of the delivery mechanisms into our politics for what may be one of the great public-intellectual blunders (or worse) of the century?
Why, no, we are not at all.
This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession.Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget states their study "found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth." The Washington Post editorial board takes it as an economic consensus view, stating that "debt-to-GDP could keep rising - and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth."
Only, the technique has lost its sizzle. Blue Dogs have been losing elections in droves.
Republicans have kept tacking starboard, but Dems have mostly given up trying to affect the dialog even though voters have given them every reason to curse the darkness and act as foes to their hyper-ignorant political enemies.
Melissa Harris-Perry had a good panel on recently to question the sanity of Dems who are determined to cut Social Security in a psychotic fit of triangulation:
Melissa HARRIS-PERRY: The budget plan President Obama presented this week makes another push toward a grand bargain with an inclusion of an enticement to Republicans that had so far been off the table in the deficit battle, a proposal to take a scalpel to Social Security. His plan would limit the benefits paid to seniors by charting the calculation for inflation -- changing the calculation for inflation, to cut the growth of monthly Social Security payments in the future. So instead of tying the increases to the consumer price index, the President's budget would change it to a different calculation called chained CPI.
And while his budget exempts the oldest and the poorest of Social Security recipients, it would cause 65 year old retirees to lose more than a thousand dollars a year by the time they reach age 85, which far more of them are now going to reach.
House Republicans for their part, have refused to take the bait.
But the plan has sparked resistance from within the President's own party as progressives launch an organized campaign against the proposal. So I mean, I mean I know what second term presidents are supposed do. They're supposed to touch the third rail that nobody else can. They're never run for election again. But this one has been tough.
ULRICH: Why are we picking on old people? Why are we nickel and diming our seniors who can't afford this? A thousand dollars a year, that can pay for prescriptions, prescription coverage that's not covered by the government, because in retirement, more than a third of your costs are going to be related to health care. $200,000 on average for seniors in their senior lifetime. It's crazy.
HARRIS-PERRY: And with baby boomers being where they are in their life cycle right now, we've got a lot of seniors, if everybody is going to stop smoking, even more old people, right, and so we know this is a huge population and I think part of the conversation has been, what are we going to do with all of these retirees, and this is one answer.
Dean BAKER: You know, it really is outrageous I think, because the presumption is that somehow seniors have too much money. And you know, Josh actually wrote a nice piece on this a little while back. Our retirement system collapsed.
We don't have defined benefit pensions any longer.
Most people have little by way of savings.
We know that a lot of people took a big hit on their homes with the collapse of the housing bubble. Social Security has been the one pillar of retirement income that's stood up.
If anything we should looking into expanding it. So, I mean, this is just you know, the Washington Post loves this. But apart from the Washington punditry --
You'll never see Mark Udall on a panel like this.
You'll never hear Michael Bennet talk of expanding Social Security.
You'll never hear Jared Polis stand up for the elderly against this plan.
They've Triangulated...as far away as possible from the Democratic base that put them in office.
They did it almost as soon as they were sworn in.
That's what you need to know about those Colorado Democrats who are determined to do the outrageous to Colorado's seniors and vets and disable.
This is a case of political malpractice on the part of state and national Democrats.
Senator Mitch McConnell is a leading symbol of the GOP and of what Democrats loathe about the GOP. And he is, on paper, the most vulnerable Senate incumbent.
In his fifth term now, McConnell has an approval rating in Kentucky of 36 percent. Silent but sullen, most of his own party doesn't really like him. The state's Democrats, who still control the governorship and the lower house, positively despise the man.
Yet out of a toxic mix of fear, self-interest and timidity, no credible candidate has stepped forward to challenge him.
Bennet says he took almost a month to decide whether to take on the role because in part he wanted confirmation, from Republicans in particular, that the job would not imperil relationships he has painstakingly built in four years on Capitol Hill.
"I wanted to make sure it would not interfere with my ability to work in a bipartisan way in the Senate," Bennet said in a short, guarded phone interview. "I talked to people on both sides of the aisle about that and became convinced."
Here's hoping Mitch McConnell gets the challenger he so well deserves. Maybe Michael Bennet and the DSCC will have something to do with it.
The War on Workers has been internalized by the Democratic Party.
Jared Polis and Mark Udall are both "Honorary Co-Chairs" of Third Way, a Pete Peterson front group that intends to cut the social safety net and cripple that pesky Middle Class.
Joining them are Michael Bennet, who actually voted down the sequester deal because it didn't cut enough, and Democratic President Barack Obama, who is the first Democratic President to propose cuts Social Security.
Despite the fact that many millions of elderly, retirees, and disabled rely on those meager funds, that both private and public pensions are less funded than required by law, and that the 401k retirement fund experiment has failed its primary purpose (oh, the banks and fund managers make their money) President Obama's budget also includes cuts to federal worker pensions:
Chained CPI would hit federal workers especially hard-under President Obama's budget, federal pensions as well as Social Security would be subject to the chained CPI cuts. That proposal comes at the same time as Obama's budget calls for increased pension contributions from federal workers:
Under that plan, a repeat of an administration proposal advanced last year, federal employees would pay an additional 1.2 percentage points of their pay, spread out over three years - 0.4 percent annually. Federal retirement payments and Social Security payments, among other benefits, would increase at a slower rate under an alternative inflation index Obama recommended.
So three years into a pay freeze and as furloughs under sequestration are starting, the president's budget has federal workers start paying more into their pensions and getting less out of them-but hey, he's proposing they get a one percent pay raise, so it's all good, right?
Despite clear electoral mandates in the last two elections, a Democratic President is coerced into playing by the Republican game plan: anti-worker, anti-tax-fairness, anti-democratic, anti-transparency.
I can link to all that crap if you'd like, but it's been in the news every day. And every day Democrats will tell you they're doing a great job fighting for their constituents.
But they'll be lying, just like a good Republican does.
It's quite obvious ColoradoPols doesn't give a crap what most D's do as long as there's a (D) behind their name. Maybe it's because they use the "don't get caught with a live girl or a dead boy" standard. Maybe it's that they're mostly insiders, the Professional Left of Colorado, and don't want embarrass the boss - even if he or she embarrasses the Brand.
I expect our side to uphold the ideals laid down by their Democratic forebears who made history: FDR, Harry Truman, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter even Progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt. If you dare to think you can lead, it should be with a purpose beyond your family's welfare and your own checking brokerage account.
That being said, I shall praise Colorado's Senator Mikey* Bennet for one act, and condemn him for 2 others.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is a Democrat's Democrat and it is very clear she will hold bankers and regulators feet to the fire for the profound responsibility the have in causing our current economic mess.
Here is some of what Mikey Bennet could have done if he gave a crap about what bankers did to you and me:
Now I condemn Bennet's egregious acts, committed in a way to curry more favor from bankers and further distance himself from ordinary citizens:
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) today welcomed Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who will join the committee for the 113th Congress starting in January. Senators Brown and Bennet will replace outgoing Senators Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), both retiring this year.
"Michael Bennet brings a wealth of practical, real-world experience to the Finance Committee. He has proven himself to be an up-and-coming leader who is always willing to reach across party lines," Senator Baucus said. "As a fellow Westerner, I know Michael has a top-notch work ethic and will deliver common-sense solutions."
This is a case of political malpractice on the part of state and national Democrats.
(Michael Bennet is Chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. It is his job to find a candidate that will defeat the man whose only goal was to defeat Barack Obama. -z)
McConnell is a leading symbol of the GOP and of what Democrats loathe about the GOP. And he is, on paper, the most vulnerable Senate incumbent.
In his fifth term now, McConnell has an approval rating in Kentucky of 36 percent. Silent but sullen, most of his own party doesn't really like him. The state's Democrats, who still control the governorship and the lower house, positively despise the man.
Yet out of a toxic mix of fear, self-interest and timidity, no credible candidate has stepped forward to challenge him.
So I thank Bennet for stepping down from a committee on which he did not care to perform his most basic responsibility as a senator. He could've stayed and gummed up the works.
I derisively call Bennet "Mikey" because this is just how he treats his constituents: as his lessers who should be seen and not heard.
I criticize his continued transformation into the Ultimate DC Insider: a man who'll use committee seats to boost his campaign accounts and as an employment agent for his staffers. Senator Bennet has been transformed from a green politico who saw the how broken DC was to an insider who makes every move political and who only sees how his own future can benefit fro his days ahead as one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, DC.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer has reported that the US Department of Justice secured a court order demanding that the state agency in Oregon that oversees the provision of medical cannabis to Oregonian patients who are suffering from serious, and in some cases, life threatening diseases to turn over records that personally identify patients, care givers and suppliers of the medicine.
The search warrant was filed in November of 2012 and requires the Oregon Medical Marijuana Project to turn over the names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, and driver's license numbers of "patients, growers and care givers in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program database files."
The state officials who register patients and suppliers were ordered by the US Department of Justice to not disclose the existence or contents of the search warrant.
It also shows what a bushel of ignorance mixed with a ton of concrete can get for a party that lives in the past yet won't die a normal death.
Republicans have pushed the debate so far to the right for so long that Democrats have now proposed to incrementally ruin Social Security so their Millionaire Donors and Billionaire Buddies can send a message to the riff-raff:
Over the last few years Wall Street has thrown every commission, gang, sequester and supercommitee they could come up with at our earned benefits. Each time, you have risen to the occasion.
Here's a rally of some who disagree with the current batch of Corporatist Dems and their imminent failure. Senator Bernie Sanders delivered over 2 Million signatures to President Obama.
I hope the pats on the backs makes all these chumps like Udall and Bennet feel good, because sending poor retirees and veterans further into poverty is something only a sociopath could do and they should be ashamed to show their faces in public if this comes to pass.
President Obama has, against all political common sense and economic history, decided it's time to cut the most effective social insurance program in history.
The Republican bargaining habit is well-established -- take Obama's "final" offer as the new starting point and demand further concessions. With this strategy, our president has let them take him to the cleaners for more than four years now, and is still hoping that sweet reasonableness will produce compromise. It never has and never will.
If Democrats stand for anything, it is defense of Social Security and Medicare -- America's two most broadly beneficial and most beloved government programs -- and the president just gave away this last bit of product differentiation. In the past, Republicans have saved Obama from himself by refusing to consider any tax hikes. Now, I'm beginning to think, it's time for Democrats save him from himself. And the Democratic Party. And us.
Mark Udall, who told Lawrence Kudlow on CNBC that he'd gladly lose his job for a Grand Bargain vote, may rue the day that lie was spoken.
The ultra-liberal AARP, representing all those private-jet-sharing, Vail-mansion living, Cavier-chugging (soon to be cat food) old folks has seen the president's proposal.
Congress and the Administration are considering, as a means of deficit reduction, a legislative change to the consumer price index - the so-called "chained CPI." This change would have a particularly negative impact on Social Security benefits - here's why:
1. Chained CPI compounds over time.
As a result of a chained CPI, there will be a 0.3% annual cut in Social Security cost of living adjustments (COLAs). Social Security loses $112 billion over the next 10 years.
(That $112 Billion is probably how much the Koch Brothers will be worth when this is over. -z)
2. The greatest impact will be on the most vulnerable older Americans.
As retirees age, they have less income, fewer financial assets, and are more dependent on Social Security. Specifically, women tend to live longer than men and tend to have lower incomes, so women and poorer households are more at risk of falling into poverty with any cuts to Social Security.
3. Benefits for disabled and retired veterans would be cut.
3.2 million disabled veterans and another 2 million military retirees would see their benefits cut if chained CPI is adopted.
(And here I thought everyone in Washington, DC, loved our veterans and vowed to uphold our nation's promise to them. -z)
4. Chained CPI is a less accurate measure of inflation
(Google it if you don't believe the AARP. -z)
5. Social Security does not drive deficits, and should not be cut as part of a budget deal.
(And has never been part of a budget deal. -z)
So now the questions are:
Can Michael Bennet find enough new and returning senatorial candidates who support these cuts that he can support as chair of the Senate Campaign Committee?
I firmly believe Coloradans didn't vote for this B.S. last November. It's quite obvious who wants to cut Social Security and thinks it's a good idea politically and will somehow fix the budget: The 1%, The Donor Class, The Third Way Co Chairs Jared Polis, Pete Peterson, every elected Republican since FDR, All 3 of the Koch Brothers, Jon Caldara, Mike Rosen, and the list goes on.
Oh, and Barack Obama, Jared Polis, Michael Bennet and Mark Udall.
Those big-time donors and Republican mouthpieces might have the ear of legislators by virtue of their gifts of gab and cash. But, unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, they still only have one vote to cast next time Polis and Udall and Bennet are up for a contract renewal to their cush jobs with killer benefits.
