They're Coming For Your Social Security Money

The NY Times on some of the Republican presidential candidates plans for Social Security:

Most Republicans, adamantly opposed to any tax increases, continue to offer proposals that focus on cutting benefits, in ways that critics say could harm the most vulnerable retirees, while doing little to overcome the system’s financial imbalance.

“Americans are living longer,” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is seeking the Republican nomination, said in a campaign speech in April in New Hampshire. “This is something to celebrate but, at the same time, we can’t ignore the real effect that has on Social Security.”

 

In the same speech, Mr. Christie called for gradually raising the retirement age for future retirees, a change championed by several other Republican candidates, including former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio. both of Florida.

Not all Americans are living longer - workers in lower income brackets have seen life expectancy go down.

In any case, here's the effect of the raise in age:

Each year the “full” retirement age is raised translates into a benefit cut of nearly 7 percent for future retirees who are affected. The full retirement age is already scheduled to rise from 66 to 67 — for people born after 1959 — which will hold down benefits for that group. 

Consider an individual who would receive a full benefit of $2,000 a month at age 67 under current law. She would receive $1,600 a month at age 67 if the full retirement age were raised to 70, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Instead of receiving $2,480 at age 70 under current law, she would have to wait until 70 to get $2,000.

 

That's a big change - and one Rubio, Christie, Bush and others are looking to bring us.

Something to think about this election cycle.

Chris Christie Gets Defensive Over His Social Security Plan

This will be a winner for Christie:

Gov. Chris Christie dismissed critics of his controversial entitlement reform plans Monday night as "people who don't care whether Social Security stays solvent and is really there for the people who really need it."

"Let's remember," Christie said on his monthly radio show on New Jersey 101.5. "Social Security was created as insurance against poverty for the elderly so that no one — no matter what their circumstance, would live out their years in poverty. That's the primary reason for Social Security's creation. The fact is, we need to get it back to its core mission."

Last week, Christie, who is considering a run for president, went to New Hampshire to unveil a reform plan that called for both means testing and raising the retirement age.

Here's how Christie dealt with criticism of the plan from one caller on his "Ask The Governor" radio show:

A frustrated caller named Jeff noted that he'd already seen his retirement age jump from 65 to 67 in his lifetime under President Reagan's 1983 reform. He angrily asked Christie, "How many times are you going to move the goal line?"

The caller asked if Christie would consider, if president, would instead consider raising the income cap on social security payments to tax income beyond the currently-taxed $118,000 maximum.

Christie quickly lost his empathetic demeanor.

"I love this 'gimme gimme gimme!' attitude," said Christie, "These are facts: If we don't do it, the money's not going to be there. And the solution of a guy like Jeff is: Raise somebody's taxes. Not his. Raise somebody else's. I'm sorry. We hear this all the time. But the math doesn't work, and somebody has to be willing to tell you the truth. And that's what I'm doing."

That's it, Chris.

Keep beating up on people who complain about your Social Security plan.

There are a lot of aging people in the Republican Primary who are going to feel the same way "Jeff" does when you tell them they have to go to 69 to get their benefits and they'll be subject to a means test.

That's going to be a real winner during the primaries - if you make it that far.

Greedy Geoffrey Canada: Privatize Education AND Social Security Too!

Geoffrey Canada has been going around the country with some Wall Street criminals to talk to the youth of America about how they're getting screwed by old people.

It started earlier this year (as announced in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by Canada), but WNYC just picked up the story and Gotham Charter Schools ran with it last night on their "Remainders" list.

The gist is this:

Canada says rich people do not need Social Security and that money should be used for other things:

The country's existing entitlement programs are not just unaffordable, they are also profoundly unfair to those who are taking their first steps in search of opportunity. Social Security is one example. According to Social Security actuaries, the generational theft runs deep. Young people now entering the workforce will actually lose 4.2% of their total lifetime wages because of their participation in Social Security. A typical third-grader will get back (in present value terms) only 75 cents for every dollar he contributes to Social Security over his lifetime. Meanwhile, many seniors with greater means nearing retirement age will pocket a handsome profit. Health-care spending through Medicare represents an even less equitable story.

The government has an obligation, of course, to support needy seniors. But this pension system is ripe for common-sense reforms, including changing eligibility ages and benefit structures for those with greater means, ridding the Social Security disability program of pervasive fraud, and removing disincentives for those who would rather work in their later years.

Powerful, vested interests portray reformers as avowed enemies of seniors. But, the status quo is, in fact, tantamount to saddling school-age children with more debt, weaker economic growth, and fewer opportunities for jobs and advancement.

Canada calls his Social Security reforms "common sense reforms."

As soon as you hear the words "common sense" in anything a politician or a political hack like Canada says, you know you should hold your wallet because they're coming for it.

In this case, that's exactly what Canada is doing - by adding a means test to the program and by raising eligibility, he is looking to undercut the universality of Social Security and turn it into another poverty program like welfare or food stamps, one that many Americans will not feel any investment in because they won't be receiving any of the benefits from it.

That so-called common sense reform is actually a seed of destruction meant to rid of us of Social Security, not a "common sense reform" meant to help young people.

More than anything, young people these days are going to need Social Security when they get older because very few of them are going to have pensions or be able to save money for their own retirements.

Here is what two commenters say about Canada's scheme:

Very troubling that WNYC aired this opinion without asking the obvious question - why not make a simple adjustment of the social security tax upper limit? The only way Mr. Canada's logic makes any sense is with the false ssumption that taxes on the wealthy must always continue to go down, until they are contributing almost nothing to the society which supplies their luxuries.

Means testing of these programs is a poison pill. If social security and medicare are not part of the financial goods of the wealthy and the upper middle class, they become welfare programs. It is easy to to take away from the powerless - look at the recent efforts to gut the food stamp program, for example.

And:

Did I miss the part where Canada demands that the uber rich and corporations pay reasonable taxes to fund quality public services? Oops--forgot that he gets all his funding from "charity" of said same 1%, so makes more sense to demand that the 99% give up what little they have to fund his priorities.

If Geoffrey Canada wants older, rich people to help the younger generation, he can start by calling for a return to the tax rates of the Reagan Era on rich people or, better yet, he can call for a return to the tax rates of the Eisenhower Era on rich people.

Then that money can be used to fund college education, job programs, universal pre-K, etc. - all those things Canada says he's worried about.

The reality is, greedy Geoffrey Canada doesn't care one whit about young people or poor people.

He is simply doing the bidding of his billionaire benefactors, the same ones who fund his privatized charter schools and his real estate ventures.

As the commenter at the NYC story mentions, it's a shame that the public radio station gives this criminal air time to sell his poison pills.

But these days, the "public" radio station is being funded by the same Wall Street criminals that fund Canada and his charter operations, so it all makes sense.

Nothing more than free marketeer propaganda.

The Positive Benefit To The Scandals In Albany And Washington

They can't do any more damage to public education in Albany.

They can't do any more damage to Social Security, Medicare or public education in Washington.

See - these scandals have a plus side to them!

Obama To Cut Social Security And Medicare Benefits In Budget Proposal

I was waiting for this kind of "Grand Bargain" sell-out to re-emerge from the Obama White House - and here it is:

President Obama will release a budget next week that proposes significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security and fewer tax hikes than in the past, a conciliatory approach that he hopes will convince Republicans to sign onto a grand bargain that would curb government borrowing and replace deep spending that took effect March 1.

When he unveils the budget on Wednesday, Obama will break with the tradition of providing a sweeping vision of how he would govern if he were untethered from political realities. Instead, the document will incorporate the compromise offer Obama made to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) last December in the discussions over the so-called “fiscal cliff” – which included $1.8 in deficit reduction through spending cuts and tax increases.

“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit,” a senior administration official said, “but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”

While Republicans are certain to be skeptical of Obama’s call for more taxes, the president also is likely to face immediate heat over his budget proposal from some Democrats and liberal supporters. Obama proposes, for instance, to change the cost-of-living calculation for Social Security in a way that will reduce benefits for most beneficiaries, a key Republican request that he had earlier embraced only as part of a compromise. Many Democrats say they are opposed to any Social Security cuts and are likely to be furious that such cuts are now being proposed as official administration policy.

“While this is not the president’s ideal deficit reduction plan, and there are particular proposals in this plan like the [cost-of-living] change that were key Republican requests and not the president’s preferred approach,” the senior administration official said, “this is a compromise proposal built on common ground, and the president felt it was important to make it clear that the offer still stands.”

Some people on the left start with the premise that Obama doesn't want to do these things, that he simply is a bad negotiator and cannot help himself by caving to intransigent Republicans.

I don't think that's right.

I start with the premise that Barack Obama is a corporatist neo-liberal happy to cut Social Security and Medicare for working people, take some of that money "saved" by those cuts and make sure rich people continue to suck up most of the wealth of this country through tax breaks, corporate welfare and other advantages.

BTW, some of the money from the Social Security cuts will go to a Race to the Top universal pre-K program for four and five year olds across the country.

That also is part of the corporatist neo-liberal agenda.

They want to socialize the kids very early on to expect very little out of life, to expect nine hour school days, diminished vacation time, the drudgery of the test prep they'll be engaged in for the rest of their school careers as mandated by Obama's Race to the Top program for elementary and secondary school children.

That way the kids won't grow up to be disgruntled adults who realize how badly they've been screwed by a system that, in the words of George Carlin, "threw them overboard forty years ago."

Why Is Obama Such A Bad Dealmaker?

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is about to sell out Social Security in another "Grand Bargain" with John Boehner that will chain cost of living increases for seniors in what amounts to a stealth attack on the program and a regressive tax on seniors.

Senator Jeff Merkely blasted Obama's plan this way:

We had an election, and the voters sent a message to Congress to focus on jobs and fairness — not cutting benefits for people who have worked all their lives and are now making ends meet on fixed incomes. The formula we use to adjust cost-of-living changes for seniors needs to reflects the real costs they face, not the budgetary fantasies of Washington.

 The NY Times explains how chained CPI works:

Democrats and Republicans are considering switching Social Security payment adjustments to a “chained” Consumer Price Index. The Consumer Price Index tracks the price of a basket of commonly purchased household goods. A chained index accounts for consumers’ tendency to substitute similar items for one another as prices fluctuate. A consumer might buy more apples when the price of oranges increases, for instance.

Though it sounds like nothing more than a technical fix, adopting a chained index would squeeze benefits over time. The chained index ends up, in a given year, about 0.3 percentage points lower than the unchained index. That difference accumulates, so after five years, it might be 1.5 percentage points lower. Using a chained index would cut Social Security spending by about $112 billion over a decade, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

AARP, the lobbying and research group for older Americans, immediately criticized the proposal. “We would rather see a broader discussion addressing retirement security,” said Debra Whitman, an executive vice president at AARP. “We object to the context in which it’s being discussed, which is a few weeks before Christmas, without people understanding what the change really means.”

Because the payment reductions would accumulate over time, AARP and other groups argue that they would hit the oldest Americans disproportionately hard. They might also unduly burden women, who tend to live longer than men, and the lowest-income older people, who are most dependent on Social Security checks, the groups warned.

David Dayen of Firedoglake puts the chained CPI scheme in perspective:

You will hear virtually nobody claim that chained CPI represents a more accurate way of determining the cost of living for senior citizens on Social Security, because if they were honest about it, they would tailor an inflation index to the real costs of seniors. The only benefit to chained CPI is that it saves the government money at the expense of senior citizens. That’s it. It’s a back-door way of lowering the benefit. Even if you agree with the methodology of the substitution effect, that people will manage the cost of living by purchasing less expensive products, you have to ask yourself if seniors have been getting away with murder all these years under the old rules. And considering they get an average annual benefit of just $13,000, and that almost half of them use that as their only form of income, without savings or anything else to fall back on, the very idea is preposterous.

It sure is - but Obama, who for some inexplicable reason has always hated the Social Security and Medicare programs, it's a great way to attack the viability of the program and save the government some money, which can then be used to grant rich people tax cuts.

And don't tell me Obama doesn't want to destroy the program because this isn't the first time he's attacked it.

When they decided a few years ago to do a tax cut for people, they took it from the Social Security fund in what amounted to a stealth attempt to underfund the program.

Here we are, a few years later, and Obama is proposing to cut real benefits for senior citizens so that he can raise the bar for tax cuts to millionaires, as Boehner wants.

I am sure President Obama's defenders will say the usual drivel: "Oh, it's all he can do because those mean, mean Republcians won't work with him, blah blah blah."

Horsehockey.

Ezra Klein says Republicans see weakness from the White House because Obama said he wouldn't negotiate or cave on certain things and, lo and behold, he negotiated and caved on them in a couple of weeks:

A few weeks ago, the Obama administration was firm that they wouldn’t budge on tax rates for income above $250,000 and that they wouldn’t budge on the debt ceiling. They’ve since budged on both. Republicans increasingly think the White House will concede more now, and that if they don’t concede more now they’ll definitely give Republicans a better deal if threatened with debt default. Whether or not that’s true, it pulls Republicans — and Boehner — to the right, as it makes it harder for Boehner to argue for a compromise now.

And so, expect as worse a deal on the "fiscal cliff" fake crisis as you can possibly get, with Obama selling out old people and working people so that rich people can keep their tax cuts.

The Republicans aren't going to compromise, but Obama surely will - as he has time and time again.

Just a few weeks ago, liberals and progressives who still defend this president were bumping chests and saying things were going to be different this second time around, that Obama had momentum and the country had clearly spoken about the importance of protecting Social Security and Medicare, about raising taxes on rich people.

Now we see Obama caving as usual on many of those things and in the end, we will probably see him cave on all of those things.

It seems the only people he can remain tough on is teachers.

You have to wonder, is he really such a bad dealmaker and he keeps getting taken to the cleaners by the GOP or are these the deals he really wants to make.

I am of the opinion it is the latter.

He is no progressive or liberal.

The fact is, he is a moderate Republican who likes to surround himself with rich white guys and his priorities tend to be, what do rich white guys need?

Time after time, from the refusal to push for a public option in Obamacare to the Grand Bargain of a few years ago to the current cave-in of the fiscal cliff nonsense, we see again and again Obama giving the rich white guys what they want.

Obama Sells Out Social Security

Ah, that didn't take long:

President Obama and House Republicans appear to be closing in on a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, but liberals are not happy with it.

Late last night, the White House offered a plan with two major concessions to Republicans. First, it would hike taxes on the wealthy, but only on income above $400,000, instead of the current $250,000 threshold. Second, and far more controversially, Obama offered to change the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits in a way that would cut outlays to seniors slightly while saving the program $225 billion over a decade.

The reaction from liberals, who have been demanding all along that social safety net programs be off the table, was swift and fierce. “This is a cut affecting every single beneficiary — widows, orphans, people with disabilities and many others.  It is a cut which hurts the most those who are most vulnerable: the oldest of the old, those disabled at the youngest ages, and the poorest of the poor. Perhaps fittingly, this will be done during the holiday season, when the American people are distracted,” Nancy Altman, the founding co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement.

“They will cut Social Security not openly but by stealth — through a cruel cut known colloquially as the chained CPI,” she added.

The CPI, or cost of living index, is used to make sure benefits keep pace with inflation, but there are lots of different ways to calculate it. The current measure, called the CPI-W, is generally accepted to overestimate inflation, but the liberals say the proposed alternative, the chained CPI, is too stingy.

The chained CPI assumes seniors will adjust their buying habits in response to price shifts (e.g., if the price of oranges goes up, they’ll buy more apples), so they should be able to afford to take a haircut on benefit checks. But liberals say that seniors often barely make ends meet with current benefit levels, so cutting them more would be devastating.

Obama has been looking to sell out Social Security since the last "Grand Bargain" with Boehner fell apart.

And now, unless liberals and progressives hold his feet to the fire as they promised they would before the election, he will sell it out.

Given their track record over the public option, don't expect much out of them.

The Next Four Years

Arne Duncan's next four years as the Secretary of Education Privatization look like they'll be as bad as the first four as he ratchets up the pressure for Common Core, national standardized tests, more cities with mayoral control of schools, more charter schools, more school "turnarounds" and the like.

Looking at this agenda  makes me wonder why very intelligent, very progressive people who care about education and public schools would support Barack Obama knowing what's coming the next four years.

I no longer buy the "lesser evil" argument.

Had Mitt Romney won and tried to push vouchers and other privatization schemes, people would have fought him on his plans.

Just as when George Bush tried to privatize Social Security, people fought him on that plan in 20005 and beat him.

But Barack Obama will not get the same kind of fight on Social Security privatization and public school privatization that Mitt Romeny would have gotten.

Just as it took a red-baiting Richard Nixon to go to China and "liberal" Bill Clinton to sell Dems on welfare reform and NAFTA, it will take the "progressive" Barack Obama to sell us out on Social Security, Medicare and public education.

And make no mistake, the sell out is coming.

Glenn Greenwald has already mapped out how it will work.

Get ready for an ugly four years.

At least this time I can keep my head up knowing I didn't vote for it.

Obama Plans To Dismantle Social Security Next

Tireless neo-liberal that he is, Social Security is next on his hit list:

Last week Barack Obama named the pair of white male veterans of Wall Street and the Clinton administration who will be replacing the pair of white male veterans of Wall Street and the Clinton administration who had largely defined his first two years in office. The Professional Left did not take the news well.

"The appointment of the obscene corporate hack William Daley should put to rest any and all illusions people have on the Obama administration," wrote progressive political consultant Joe Costello to his listserv of likeminded progressives within hours of the announcement that the JP Morgan executive would be replacing Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff.

Gene Sperling, who replaces Larry Summers as chairman of the National Economic Council, a post he also held during the Clinton administration, garnered similar reviews. "He's just totally oblivious to the issues facing our financial system and the economy," said the economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Analysis, who greeted the news of Mr. Sperling's appointment with a blog post lamenting his "horrible track record" during the 1990s. "But the bottom line is that that's just not their priority. They do know what they're doing, in that they don't really want to do anything."

"If you want to get some traffic on this one," a former senior House aide told The Observer, "make your angle 'Obama's Fixers to End the New Deal.' They are going to dismantle Social Security. I guarantee it. And he won't suffer any push-back. But Obama is the extremist here; he is the wing nut. There's been a total collapse of political power on the left. The left is not even at the table, and they don't even realize it. You can't blame the voters. In 2006 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts. In 2008 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts. And in 2010 they voted out the party of endless war and corporate bailouts."

"These people are as clueless as World War I generals," wrote Harper's Magazine columnist Thomas Frank to The Observer in an email. "They have no idea what's going on in the country or how to deal with it. They just take the advice of long-discredited Washington experts and political scientists. There is nothing original or inventive about them, and I am almost ashamed that I ever thought there was."

The Observer consulted the acknowledgments of Mr. Sperling's 2005 book, The Pro-Growth Progressive, and canvassed a few of the more than 150 people he thanks. From the random sampling, no positive responses were received. Mr. Baker weighed in, as quoted above. Another economist said he had nothing positive or negative to say about Mr. Sperling. A left-leaning lobbyist phoned to say that, although he did not want to be quoted for attribution, he had called in part out of curiosity. "Gene really named me in his book? I mean, I've known him for probably 20 years now, but I don't think we've ever worked together on anything I agreed with him about." He added diplomatically, "But you can't blame Gene or Daley or any of these aides for the administration. They're carrying out Obama's policy. This is him. He's not the guy we elected."

Oh, he's the guy we elected all right.

You don't collect the largest amount of Wall Street campaign contributions of any presidential candidate ever and NOT be at heart a corporatist.

And as the Observer piece notes, Social Security is next on Obama's list (actually education is next, but Social Security is right after that.)

The first salvo against Social Security was fired this week when the 2% Social Security tax holiday showed up in your paycheck.

For me, that means $51 extra a paycheck.

Whoo-hoo...

And down the road, it means Social Security concern trolls bemoaning the "insolvency" of the program after voting for and/or promoting a 2% tax holiday to the fund.

And then the Obamaicans will spring into action to slash the program, raise the age and otherwise do in Social Security.

Forewarned is forearmed.

If Obama gets his way, the end is near for what little is left of the New Deal indeed.

And what little is left of the working and middle classes too.

Obama Signs The Death Warrant For Social Security

This should kill the program in a few years:

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, said he feared the one-year cut in the Social Security payroll tax, to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent on income up to $106,800, would weaken Social Security because Republicans would insist on it being made permanent, and Democrats would relent. “We know that politically once you make that tax cut it will be impossible to restore it,” Mr. Nadler said.

Bush could only dream of the job Obama has been doing on public education and Social Security.

The same media figures and pols crowing about the tax cut deal today will be shrilly whining about Social Security's insolvency in a few years.

Heckuva job, Obama.

He really is a Manchurian candidate - for the corporate right-wing.

Where is Frank Sinatra when you need him?

Obama Sells Out Social Security

Leaving aside that Obama has broken a campaign promise by agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts for rich people, notice that the payroll tax cut that he plans to extend to everybody is coming not from federal taxes but from Social Security:

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced a tentative deal with Congressional Republicans on Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years as part of a package that would also keep benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, cut payroll taxes for all workers for a year and take other steps to bolster the economy.

...

It would reduce the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on all wage earners by two percentage points for one year, putting more money in the paychecks of workers. For a family earning $50,000 a year, it would amount to a savings of $1,000.

For a worker slated to pay the maximum tax, $6,621.60 on income of $106,800 or more in 2011, the cut would mean a savings of $2,136. That would replace the central tax break for middle- and low-income Americans in last year’s economic stimulus measure, White House officials said.

This will be the beginning of the end for the Social Security program.

Progressive economists have worried that a payroll tax break along the lines of the one announced tonight could come back to bite Democrats if it undermined the solvency of Social Security. But officials tonight insisted that its cost to the Social Security trust fund will be reimbursed with a credit from general revenue.

In the very near future, Republicans will claim Social Security is unfunded and insolvent.

Corporate Dems like Obama will likely agree.

And then that Bush private accounts plan we all fought back so hard on back in 2005 will come to pass.

Just another sellout of progressive liberalism by Barack Obama.

Heckuva job, Barack!

Woman Who Questioned Obama On Jobs At Forum Laid Off From Her Job

How ironic - the woman who offered some accountability to President Accountability at a CNBC forum back in October was laid off from her job:

Velma Hart, who burst onto the media scene after telling President Obama she was scared about her financial future, has been laid off. Hart was let go as the chief financial officer for Am Vets, a nonprofit Maryland-based veteran services organization.

Hart has become another casualty of the tough economy in which so many people have lost their jobs.

"It's not anything she did," said Jim King, the national executive director of Am Vets. "She got bit by the same snake that has bit a lot of people. It was a move to cut our bottom line. Most not-for-profits are seeing their money pinched." ...

Hart's comments to Obama became political fodder as proof that the president was losing his die-hard supporters - African American voters. Hart told me at the time that she still supported Obama but that she had expected more changes by now.

I dunno - I think there have been plenty of changes since President Accountability took office.

He renamed the federal bank bailout TALF (it had been named TARP under Bush.)

He renominated Ben Bernanke to the Federal Reserve instead of picking somebody who didn't, you know, help bring about the financial collapse of 2008.

He pulled troops out of Iraq and put them into Afghanistan.

He created a federal education policy that promotes testing in ALL subjects at ALL levels, not just in math and ELA as used to be done under the Bush policy.

He took unemployment from 7% and brought it to 9.6%.

And of course now he wants to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 69.

Come on, Velma, that's plenty enough change for me.

Frankly, I don't think the country can take any more of the kind of changes Obama brings with him.

Obama Deficit Commission Issues Report: Social Security To Be Destroyed

When I heard President Obama had created a deficit commission to look at ways to save money from domestic programs, I knew Social Security would be in trouble.

But I didn't think it would be this bad. Even Obama shills at TPM think it's essentially the destruction of Social Security as we know it:

Deficit Commission releases recommendations: the main one of which seems to be to decimate Social Security.

Late Update: We'll have a more detailed piece on this shortly. But I wanted to give people an overview idea of the key recommendation on Social Security: namely, changing the 'indexing' of Social Security benefits to inflation rather than wages. That sounds very technical. And most people won't even know what it means. But whatever the rationales and arguments, what it means is very clear. Significantly lower cost of living adjustments which are cumulative in their effect over time. Think of it as a chart where you either have the money number going up at a 10 degree angle or a 15 degree angle. Not that big a difference in the first few increments but once you get to the right side of the graph, it's a dramatic difference. I would say this is actually a much more significant change than the other recommendation to change the retirement age to 69. Much bigger.

More change we can believe in from the corporate-friendly president in the White House.

I can't see why the corporations don't love him.

He is succeeding at the privatization of education and the destruction of Social Security in ways that George W. Bush could have only dreamed of.