In the past I’ve observed that, politics being a dirty game. When one has one’s opponent on the ground, the thing to do is stomp on his head, especially in this political clime, and especially if you are a Democrat, since you know that you’d get even worse treatment if you were down.
Obama had a different idea in 2009, which led directly to the massive defeat of 2010. Apparently, he remains convinced that he has a better way. He had Boehner backed into a corner. The entire non-crazy portion of the country (and it is still a larger number than the whackjobs)had pre-blamed the Republicans were we to tumble off the non-existent “fiscal cliff”. The Republicans were floundering for a way to please their base and not alienate the rest of the country, an almost impossible task. But Obama has apparently stepped up and saved their bacon, offering cruel, unnecessary and wildly unpopular social security cuts in exchange for..well, in exchange for less than he could have gotten by walking over the fiscal curb.
An economic case can be made for the “chained CPI” he has offered, but it’s unlikely Obama will hold out for the required protections. But even the best case that can be made yields rather trivial returns, particularly since there are perfectly effective ways to “fix” social security, something that should be deferred, in any event, until the Democrats (I know I’m fantasizing here) lay some groundwork for rational solutions, like raising the cap on the payroll tax.
But the political implications are even worse, particularly since it’s Obama that initially openly (it’s been under the national radar until now) suggested this benefit cut. Sure, the Republicans want it, and more, but they are always careful to put themselves into a position where they can implausibly argue (and implausible arguments work perfectly well for them) that it was the Democrats that did it. They did that with Medicare, and they would have done it again had the Democrats fallen for the push to raise the Medicare eligibility age. They’ll do it again in 2014 on Social Security.
Bad policy and bad politics. It’s a recurring theme in the Obama administration. What is really frustrating is that they so often verbalize awareness that they should not do something; and then they do it.
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