All Things ProCain

[Balta1701]

there is no need to raise SS taxes. It was proven during the primaries that simply changing the indexing of increases from wage inflation to general inflation would make the system completely solvent for at least the next 75 years. Why give the government more money, when they simply don't need it?

The system is solvent for 75 years anyway if you use slightly more reasonable estimates of growth and productivity than the Social Security trustees administration uses (basically, you assume that somehow we either figure out the energy issue or it destroys our nation to the point that Social Security is the last thing on people's mind anyway).

 

Raising the SS Tax right now does 2 things. First, it prevents the Republicans from being able to destroy the program with a privatization plan, and second, it helps balance out the general fund in 2020 or so if no steps have been taken to control the vastly greater than inflation growth in health care spending.

[lostfan]

lol, somehow both of our posts got doubled at the same time.

[Balta1701]

Glenn Beck was saying something similar to this a few weeks ago. Everybody keeps passing the buck from administration to administration and if we don't do something about it, it's going to eventually slap us all in the face.

Honestly, no it won't. The Social Security program is so close to solvency anyway that the country can wait until 2025 or 2030 and make a small tweak if necessary to the rate of growth of payouts and that's all it will take.

 

The real crisis is in the general fund, specifically associated with Health Care's expenditures. By the time Social Security becomes a concern, medicare will be the entire U.S. economy.

[southsider2k5]

The system is solvent for 75 years anyway if you use slightly more reasonable estimates of growth and productivity than the Social Security trustees administration uses (basically, you assume that somehow we either figure out the energy issue or it destroys our nation to the point that Social Security is the last thing on people's mind anyway).

 

Raising the SS Tax right now does 2 things. First, it prevents the Republicans from being able to destroy the program with a privatization plan, and second, it helps balance out the general fund in 2020 or so if no steps have been taken to control the vastly greater than inflation growth in health care spending.

 

 

If the plan is solvent, they have no reason for privatization in the first place.

[Balta1701]

If the plan is solvent, they have no reason for privatization in the first place.

Yes they do...because it makes a hell of a lot of money for some specific, important people, and because it is the first, obvious step towards dismantling the program.

[southsider2k5]

Honestly, no it won't. The Social Security program is so close to solvency anyway that the country can wait until 2025 or 2030 and make a small tweak if necessary to the rate of growth of payouts and that's all it will take.

 

The real crisis is in the general fund, specifically associated with Health Care's expenditures. By the time Social Security becomes a concern, medicare will be the entire U.S. economy.

 

Also if the plan is that close to solvent, why does Obama want to increase taxes in the first place?

[southsider2k5]

Yes they do...because it makes a hell of a lot of money for some specific, important people, and because it is the first, obvious step towards dismantling the program.

 

Increasing the taxes on the plan will only increase the desire of the taxpayers to see it dismantled. To me that is shooting yourself in the foot.

[Balta1701]

Also if the plan is that close to solvent, why does Obama want to increase taxes in the first place?

Because it shuts up all the people who say Social Security is headed for bankruptcy and so we ought to destroy the program now

 

Honestly, it's totally the wrong move. But there's this strain out there that keeps saying "oh our entitlement programs are $15 trillion in the hole, we must do something about Social Security" that is either motivated by ignorance of which program is responsible for the gigantic hole in entitlement spending (it's almost entirely medicare) or by a desire to fund a private account program regardless of the merits that keeps pushing this issue back to the front.

 

I have no urge to see Social Security touched at all, a minor tweak in where the cap is or in the growth rate relative to inflation "Fixes" everything. Deal with health care spending. It has to be done or it bankrupts the country in the next 15 years at current growth rates. There's no reason to worry about Social Security right now.

[Cknolls]

If the brain trust cannot fix the AMT, what makes anyone think that a fix is coming for SS and Medicare?

 

 

[NorthSideSox72]

If the brain trust cannot fix the AMT, what makes anyone think that a fix is coming for SS and Medicare?

Like I said, it doesn't have to be complicated. AMT is complicated. Doing two very simple things - removing the SS cap and banning use of SS funds for general purposes - would be a clean, complete way to address the problem (at least for the next 75 years). It also provides something that this government is allergic to - SUNLIGHT. The deficit numbers will be closer to reality, if Congress isn't allowed to raid SS.

 

[southsider2k5]

Like I said, it doesn't have to be complicated. AMT is complicated. Doing two very simple things - removing the SS cap and banning use of SS funds for general purposes - would be a clean, complete way to address the problem (at least for the next 75 years). It also provides something that this government is allergic to - SUNLIGHT. The deficit numbers will be closer to reality, if Congress isn't allowed to raid SS.

 

How many other programs actually operate completely separate from the general fund?

[NorthSideSox72]

How many other programs actually operate completely separate from the general fund?

I am not sure, but SS should be one of them. More than any other program, it is a trust, and should function as such.

 

[kapkomet]

Like I said, it doesn't have to be complicated. AMT is complicated. Doing two very simple things - removing the SS cap and banning use of SS funds for general purposes - would be a clean, complete way to address the problem (at least for the next 75 years). It also provides something that this government is allergic to - SUNLIGHT. The deficit numbers will be closer to reality, if Congress isn't allowed to raid SS.

Good post and good points to all of you that talk about raiding SS for the general fund. THAT is the problem, but, if they remove the caps, and some of that additional revenue goes toward the general fund, fine. I don't even care what they call it. Most of us will never even reach those caps anyway.

[southsider2k5]

I am not sure, but SS should be one of them. More than any other program, it is a trust, and should function as such.

 

Most programs should be transparent and pay for themselves. But then again most programs don't have the AARP voting block lobbying for them either. Social Security is the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of mankind.

[southsideirish71]

Welcome to the Clinton model. Attacks by surrogates.

 

The swiftboating of McCain continues.

 

 

"If Barack Obama's campaign wants to question John McCain's military service, that's their right," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said after Clark's appearance Sunday. "But let's please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he's proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain's military service record."

Edited June 30, 2008 by southsideirish71

[lostfan]

Wait, wait... time-out. Gotta clear some things up here.

 

1 - Wesley Clark isn't an Obama surrogate and wasn't doing the interview on behalf of Obama, their campaign had nothing to do with that

2 - Clark was asked a leading question from the interview, the words he used were almost verbatim what the interviewer said except his reply was to say "that's not relevant" (to be honest, as crass as it sounds, I don't see how it is in and of itself especially when you see how the question was framed to him)

3 - Clark was wounded in combat in Vietnam too and is the last kind of person to disprespect McCain's war record, not that this means he wouldn't, but he didn't

 

My point in saying this is that the response to this "controversy" is manufactured and the "attack" by Clark is non-existent. It's just more political bulls***.

Edited July 1, 2008 by lostfan

[EvilMonkey]

Wait, wait... time-out. Gotta clear some things up here.

 

1 - Wesley Clark isn't an Obama surrogate and wasn't doing the interview on behalf of Obama, their campaign had nothing to do with that

2 - Clark was asked a leading question from the interview, the words he used were almost verbatim what the interviewer said except his reply was to say "that's not relevant" (to be honest, as crass as it sounds, I don't see how it is in and of itself especially when you see how the question was framed to him)

3 - Clark was wounded in combat in Vietnam too and is the last kind of person to disprespect McCain's war record, not that this means he wouldn't, but he didn't

 

My point in saying this is that the response to this "controversy" is manufactured and the "attack" by Clark is non-existent. It's just more political bulls***.

What Clark said was almost verbatim to what several others have said on blogs, interveiws, etc. It has already become unofficial talking points, so I would have to disagree with you and say that I believe that Clark fits the very definition of an Obama surrogate. The question is, how long until he also gets thrown under the bus like everyone else.

[lostfan]

What Clark said was almost verbatim to what several others have said on blogs, interveiws, etc. It has already become unofficial talking points, so I would have to disagree with you and say that I believe that Clark fits the very definition of an Obama surrogate. The question is, how long until he also gets thrown under the bus like everyone else.

Surrogate in the sense that he's a Democrat and wants to see a Democrat get elected maybe but it's not like everything he says can or should be attributed to Obama any more than what prominent Republicans say being attributed to McCain.

Edited July 1, 2008 by lostfan

[Cknolls]

Wait, wait... time-out. Gotta clear some things up here.

 

1 - Wesley Clark isn't an Obama surrogate and wasn't doing the interview on behalf of Obama, their campaign had nothing to do with that

2 - Clark was asked a leading question from the interview, the words he used were almost verbatim what the interviewer said except his reply was to say "that's not relevant" (to be honest, as crass as it sounds, I don't see how it is in and of itself especially when you see how the question was framed to him)

3 - Clark was wounded in combat in Vietnam too and is the last kind of person to disprespect McCain's war record, not that this means he wouldn't, but he didn't

 

My point in saying this is that the response to this "controversy" is manufactured and the "attack" by Clark is non-existent. It's just more political bulls***.

 

 

I saw a Dem spokesman say the Obama camp gave Clark talking points before he went on the air with CBS.

[Cknolls]

Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace report for ABC News:

 

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction.

The rest of the story provides lots of quotes that portray Obama's election conversion in a remarkably unflattering light. Davis and Wallace add:

While campaigning for president in 2007, Obama refused on two occasions to say if he would have signed the same welfare-reform bill approved by the husband of his top rival.

 

After addressing the International Association of Firefighters on March 14, 2007, Obama told ABC News, "I tend not to look back to what would have been done 10 years ago. We’re talking about what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years."

 

When ABC News posed the same question four months later, Obama again refused to answer.

 

"I’m not going to re-litigate what happened back in the 90s," said Obama at a July 17, 2007, press conference in Washington, D.C. "I'm talking about what's going to be happening going forward."

 

"Bill Clinton isn't on the ballot," he added.

 

Once he had become the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, Obama signaled that he had always backed the 1996 welfare reform.

 

Asked if he would have vetoed the reform measure, Obama told The New York Times in a story published on April 11, "I won’t second guess President Clinton for signing."

 

Now, with the Democratic nomination firmly in hand, Obama is going one step further. In an ad airing in 18 states, including 14 carried by President Bush in 2004, Obama is celebrating a reduction in the welfare caseload made possible by legislation he originally opposed.

 

Obama's new ad "Dignity" is accessible here.

 

UPDATE: Having viewed the ad, Dr. Girish Patel comments:

 

Please listen to the ad carefully. [ABC's] sentence “slashed the rolls by 80%” leaves out the first part of the sentence “He passed the law that slashed….” This, my friend, is much larger than simply slashing the roll – Does he claim to have passed the welfare reform law?

In fact, the ABC story reports on Obama's stated opposition to welfare reform in the Illinois state legislature:

When implementation of welfare reform came before the Illinois state senate in 1997, Obama cited a lack of job training, insufficient oversight, and provisions blocking legal immigrants from receiving benefits as his reasons for opposing a federal welfare overhaul imposing work requirements and time limits.

 

 

[Cknolls]

From Obama's Patriot Speech yesterday:

 

I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, I listened to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

 

 

Only problem Barry, these are not the first lines of The Declaration of Independence. Surely someone with your background as a Law professor, ooops, lecturer, would know this.

 

How about this.... When in the course of human events........

Edited July 1, 2008 by Cknolls

[lostfan]

I saw a Dem spokesman say the Obama camp gave Clark talking points before he went on the air with CBS.

There's nothing wrong with the talking points themselves and what he was saying. That's why this whole thing is a god damn joke. There's all this fake outrage at something that they know never happened, it's all so scripted (Granted the Democrats do the exact same thing). They seized on that one line and acted like that's all he said, and he intended it to insult or belittle McCain. Um, no.

[Cknolls]

There's nothing wrong with the talking points themselves and what he was saying. That's why this whole thing is a god damn joke. There's all this fake outrage at something that they know never happened, it's all so scripted (Granted the Democrats do the exact same thing). They seized on that one line and acted like that's all he said, and he intended it to insult or belittle McCain. Um, no.

 

 

I agree. Hopefully McCain won't comment and the whole thing will just fade away.

[lostfan]

I agree. Hopefully McCain won't comment and the whole thing will just fade away.

I don't think McCain has commented has he? He usually doesn't. He wouldn't have anything to gain if he did.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I agree. Hopefully McCain won't comment and the whole thing will just fade away.

Well, the campaign wont let it die...

McCain Surrogate Demeans Wes Clark's Service

The McCain campaign, keeping up the pressure over Wes Clark's comments, is holding its second conference call on this topic in two days -- but now the story has taken a new turn, with a McCain surrogate demeaning Clark's service.

 

Here's what Orson Swindle, a fellow POW of McCain's, said on the call, in a reference to generals, admirals, and other officers who back the Arizona Senator:

"General Clar

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Clark's last service was as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

 

So does this count as demeaning Clark's service? This McCain surrogate actually lodged a direct criticism of Clark's service itself, whereas Clark's comments about McCain were, well, not this at all.

 

So does McCain himself agree with this? Will this be covered as an "attack" on Clark's service, as Clark's non-attack on McCain's service was?

 

Say being being a POW does not qualify you to be president... demeaning and bad.

Saying someone did a $hitty job while in charge.. totally ok.

Edited July 1, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000