Sunday Open Thread [12.15.13]

Filed in Open Thread by on December 15, 2013

Third Way stalwarts Tom Carper and Chris Coons sniff at the ongoing tug-of-war between Progressive groups and the Third Way. While Senator Warren pushes back on the Third Way bamboozlement, we have Carper and Coons responding thusly:

Carper and Coons dismissed the flap, with Coons calling it a “tempest in a teapot.”

“This does not strike me as the kind of thing that deserves the sort of attention I understand it’s getting,” Coons said.

Carper agreed.

“There’s a lot going on that I am focused on,” he said. “This is not one of them.”

Right! Not focused on making sure Social Security is there for Americans — I think we already knew that they didn’t much care about this, largely for their endorsement of the Catfood Commission. Their recommendations are for cuts to the program — raising the age you can draw benefits and slowing cost of living increases. They completely ignore that too many Americans are having a tough time holding on to their jobs until normal retirement age, slowing the cost of living increases doesn’t actually slow the cost of living and (this is the big one) that the US is facing a retirement train wreck — where we’re going to find that too many of us haven’t been able to save for retirement, that the Pension Guarantee Corp (where many traditional pension funds have been parked in bankruptcy) is hugely underfunded and current pension promises are proving not to mean much to those who have made them. This is a Big Problem and needs some genuine leadership, rather than hiding behind the skirts of the financial players who will do whatever they can to get their hands on the biggest pot of money left for them to get — Social Security. Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan and a Democratic Congress raised the payroll taxes 30 odd years ago because they could see that the fund would not be able to deliver on its commitments in the future. The work they did is responsible for the fact that Social Security is going to be able to make its payouts for another 20 years or so (provide Congress pays back what it has spent from the Trust Fund) — even though many young people at the time (yours truly among them) never thought that Social Security would never live this long. It did, and not it is time for today’s leadership to step up and make sure that Social Security is OK for the next few generations. That this leadership is nowhere to be found in our Congressional delegation is a real dishonor.

Populists’ refusal to address a coming Medicare crisis is “even more reckless” than their approach to Social Security, Cowan and Kessler wrote.

“The movement relies on a potent ‘we can have it all’ fantasy” based on the hope Congress could expand entitlements and invest more in other Democratic priorities if it forces the wealthy to pay higher taxes, breaks up big banks and closes corporate tax loopholes, they wrote.

Notice how the Third Way has to lie about progressive’s policy agendas in order to make their point. Wonder if Carper and Coons endorse this? Social Security’s proposal is very specific — raise the cap on the payroll tax — the way Reagan did. This is the cleanest and easiest fix to Social Security and the solution that Americans say they want. Medicare is another story — but there is no doubt that raising the payroll tax will help (not close the gap) and there is no doubt the the progressive idea of letting people buy into Medicare (as a public option) would close the gap. But there aren’t any real magic proposals that progressives are endorsing. Just that we don’t let Congress get away with wringing their hands about “shared sacrifice” when the only people sharing the sacrifice are poor, working class and middle class people.

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

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  1. 2013: The Good, The Bad, the Ridiculous : Delaware Liberal | December 18, 2013
  1. puck says:

    Any outfit that advocates raising the Social Security age is NOT a “centrist” organization. Carper and Coons should resign from Third Way. Every time they speak in public they should be challenged on Social Security and Third Way.

    Carper’s commitment to Third Way goes deep. From the article:

    As noted in The Nation, Third Way’s annual report shows it received fundraising assistance from the consulting firm Peck Madigan Jones. The firm lobbies for Deutsche Bank, Intel Corp, the Business Roundtable, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association, MasterCard and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with AstraZeneca and the state of Delaware [WTF??].

    Jonathan Jones, a partner at the firm, is Carper’s former chief of staff. Another partner, Jeffrey J. Peck, was general counsel and majority staff director for the Senate Judiciary Committee when Vice President Joe Biden chaired the committee.</blockquote)

  2. stan merriman says:

    The absurdity of the Third Way’s concept of raising the age eligibility for social security retirees is that we have an economy early retiring, initiating pension/retirement reductions and laying off older workers. And an economy finding it difficult to create an upward mobility for young workers. If anything, one solution to this dynamic is to increase social security payments and reduce eligibility age into the 50’s from the current 60’s to create career opportunity for younger people. The Third Way, Coons et al are simply not understanding the trends and the eroding economy.

  3. Liberal Elite says:

    Wanting to raise is often a simple sign of rank racism.

    It’s well known that the fraction of SS dollar going to the black community is tightly tied to the eligibility age. Raising it, screws the blacks… and they know it.

    But they’re fine with blacks putting in more than they take back out later.

  4. jason330 says:

    “Notice how the Third Way has to lie about progressive’s policy agendas in order to make their point. Wonder if Carper and Coons endorse this?”

    Endorse it? Carper says directly that he is proud of it. They both need to be reminded of their connection to the Third Way on a daily basis.

  5. X Stryker says:

    We should call raising the tax cap “The Reagan Plan” just to mess with these guys. Clearly The Reagan Plan must be more bipartisan than whatever C&C Austerity Factory has cooked up.

  6. Jason330 says:

    C&C Austerity Factory LOL

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