Gibbs: Prez could do Bush Tax Cut for Rich. Orszag: “Save” SocSec by Cutting It

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

More post election incompetence.

They forgot.  In the good cop, bad cop routine, one of them is supposed to be the “good cop.”  

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs starts off the Lame Duck post election session:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“He would be open to having that discussion and open to listening to what the debate is on both sides of that,” said Gibbs, during an off-camera gaggle with reporters. “Obviously… making those tax cuts for the upper end permanent is something the president does not believe is a good idea.”

The issue, Gibbs said, will be a topic of discussion when the president convenes a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers at the White House in two weeks. Included in that meeting (and working dinner) will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.), incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

At his press conference on Wednesday, the president expressed his first openness to date with the process of negotiating on the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, right wing neocon, concern troll “deficit spending hawk,” Wall Street mouthpiece, and former Obama Administration head of Office of Budget and Management (OMB)  writes in the New York Times the day after the election, November 3, that the harvest of the last of the middle and working class entitlement programs can’t begin fast enough for his new right wing think tank benefactors at the Council on Foreign Relations.  


“Saving Social Security” by Peter Orszag 11/3/10

http://opinionator.blogs.nytim…

The silver lining is that the election could make Social Security reform more likely – if the administration chooses to jump at the opportunity.

Isn’t it amazing this guy was in the early Administration and now he’s happy the Republicans won ?

He also says that if the President did some Social Security reform, maybe he could get some more stimulus money through.  Everything is just cutting deals with these people.

I hate it when neocon concern trolls like Orszag, and their fellow pandercrats try to paint the actual fiscal conservatives who see through their routine phony bullsh*t as “strident leftists.”  Orszag and Peter Diamond have written a book which when studied, everyone reading it will think to themselves, “I don’t like this.”  That was intentional on his part.  You have to kill the program to “save it,” by proposing very distasteful solutions,  just like Grover Norquist wanted to make government small enough to drown it in the bathtub….   If he was intellectually honest about supposedly restoring “actuarial balance” to Social Security he knows there are different ways to do it other than the regressive, punitive crap he and the Republicans want, like raising the age of eligibility so there will be fewer people able to collect on it at all, making more payees contribute then excluding more payees in from being able to collect on it,  or those private savings accounts he’s lying about the politicians not wanting to do for now.  Republicans are pushing the play the stock market savings accounts as a way to “fix” social security.   Orszag’s  book:   “the bottom line is that individual accounts that are above and beyond Social Security can be substantially improved.  But such accounts are inappropriate within Social Security itself.”  

If one is saying that future payees into the system are going to see reduced benefits as part of your “plan,” then they have to be getting part of their retirement needs from somewhere else, yes ?  Wouldn’t that function be taken over by private, for profit investor advisors, pushing private savings retirement accounts ?

(a pdf summary of Orszag and Diamond’s Plan is here  www.brookings.edu/views/papers/orszag/200504security.pdf  )

also on google documents  http://bit.ly/c53NRF

Commenter under article sums it up:


Why can’t 100% of everybody’s income be taxable for Social Security including those making over $103,000? Why is this so hard to pass this by congress?

Because they don’t want to actually restore solvency.  They are merely interested in putting some “financial advisor broker middlemen” between you and your Social Security payments, and diverting them into playing the stock market and into the hands of more Wall Street Bankers who are going to offshore them on risky investments while paying the millionaire/ billionaire insiders and the crooked politicians investing in hedge funds most generously.  

21 comments

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  1. …. and then Steny Hoyer will give an interview to Politico implying he could trade it for something else.  

    • Xanthe on November 4, 2010 at 22:16

    why the hell are they getting a salary?  I’m tired of paying their salaries –

    I read about this many weeks ago when William Greider wrote there would be a “deal” SS for tax cuts.  

    Dear God – it’s awful to watch the demise of a democracy!

    • Mu on November 4, 2010 at 22:22

    .

     I’m trying to think of fitting words that properly and adequately express my degree of contempt of the Obama Administration.  Nothing that I conjure up does the job.

    .

    • Xanthe on November 4, 2010 at 23:43

    when the Fonz told Richie after he got beat up in school that he had to act tough.  Well Richie did and got beat up again and the Fonz said:  Oh, year I forget – you gotta be tough too.

    Well, what kind of pathetic situation are Americans in when their president neither knows how to act and as far as I can see be tough.

    You know what my dad told me when I was a kid and got picked on in school ’cause I got good marks and was always raising my hand (you know that kid) – you go right in there tomorrow and talk back to those kids that are bothering you – right up in their faces.  Because if you don’t they’ll torture you for the 3 years you got left in that school.  I can’t do anything for you – you gotta do it.

    And I did and they eased up.  

    I think he doesn’t know what to do and so he’s just ignoring the situation – in the meantime, we’re dying out here.  

    And don’t tell me his behavior doesn’t empower the teapartiers.

    Unfortunately I got home from errands in time to hear McConnell talking smack about a lot of stuff including Paul Krugman and Robert Reich.  

    By the way, who is Megan McArdle – she wrote a very misleading letter in Atlantic Monthly about SS – health care lobbyist?  She was wrong but in a slimy way that she can wriggle out of.  Typical.

    • banger on November 5, 2010 at 00:57
  2. they’re just moving the goal posts so the “bad cops” can go totally Justin Volpe on us.

  3. …on the official timing of the attack on social security, and i should have the full story up in about 24 hours.

  4. …. for the stimulus plan’s middle class tax cuts ( “Making Work Pay” tax credits ) which also expire a the the end of this year.

    And of course they will go after Pelosi.  No surprise there. Pelosi is currently saying no on extending the tax cuts for the upper 2% and says she spoke to the President Wednesday and as of then he was still on board. Now notice on Wednesday he had changed his rhetoric on that by just omitting the old speech parts.


    http://www.politico.com/news/s

    Obama didn’t mention his tax credit Wednesday “but I’m sure that will be part of the endgame,” said a GOP House aide. He said that renewing the stimulus plan’s middle class tax cuts would cost about $62 billion a year, close to the yearly cost of $70 billion to extend the upper income tax cuts.

    Concerned that the sluggish economic recovery might slip back into recession, the Fed Wednesday announced plants to pump $600 billion into the financial system by buying Treasury bonds.

    They are basically blackmailing the Democrats and threatening to tank the stock market and blame it on Obama if they don’t get what they want.

    Mr. Busy Bee Peter Orszag also did a piece on Nov 3 about how “they” (the Republicans ?) should keep the health care reform passed in the last congress.  Hell yeah Wall Street and the Insurance companies do love them Medicaid customers they anticipate getting, altho clever Petuh doesn’t mention that.  But today Nov 5 he just turned loose his opinion on what is going to happen with the American Economy in general in this at the rt wing think tank Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/publication


    In addition to that, a bunch of temporary factors are now headwinds against the economy, including the Recovery Act and the stimulus bill–which did add to economic growth–coming offline. State and local deficits need to be closed; the inventory cycle, which was adding to growth earlier this year, is slowing down; and we’re going to hit neutral by the end of this year, early next year.

    So there were forces actually adding significantly to growth the first half of this year that will reverse by the first half of next year. All of that suggests that, at least for the next twelve and maybe for the next twenty-four months, the best expectation is very sluggish growth that won’t dramatically reduce the unemployment rate. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the world will turn out much better than those expectations, but that’s the most likely outcome at this point.

    Shorter version, sh*t’s gonna hit the fan, I’m so happy I’m out of there.  

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