WASHINGTON — A top adviser to President Barack Obama on Friday slammed a House Republican maneuver aimed at forcing a showdown on Social Security as early as next year, signaling that it won’t fly with the White House.
“The House provision was un-constructive and at odds with how this issue has been addressed time and time again in a bipartisan manner,” Brian Deese, senior advisor to the president, told reporters at a breakfast downtown hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “It is just not tenable to walk away from what has been a very clear bipartisan approach to addressing the [disability fund] issue.”
The House GOP budget released this week included a provision to block a traditionally routine transfer of funds — known as a “reallocation” — from the Social Security retirement fund to the Social Security Disability Insurance fund, which is projected to be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2016. It affirmed a House rule adopted by Republicans in January to prohibit such a reallocation without reforms to improve the overall financial health of Social Security.
Deese said the president would welcome a conversation about Social Security but said the “right way to address this issue” is what Obama’s budget released in February proposed: a “clean” reallocation to shore up the disability fund, something congressional Democrats also support.
The remarks set up a potential battle if Republicans seek to pass binding spending bills that forbid a reallocation. Congress has transferred funds between the program’s retirement and disability funds 11 times, most recently in 1994.
The House Republican budget didn’t propose specific cuts to Social Security, a move that would be politically dangerous ahead of a presidential election. Instead it called for a bipartisan commission to recommend changes to the program. Democrats claim that the GOP is trying to create a crisis atmosphere surrounding Social Security in order to force benefit reductions.
“In short,” the House GOP budget says, “there should be no raiding of the Social Security retirement program to bailout another, currently unsustainable program. Truly what’s needed is a long-term solution to the problems facing Social Security.”
The Senate GOP budget, released Wednesday, does not include a similar provision calling for prohibiting a Social Security reallocation.
cause republicons are looking out for seniors and the disabled’s best intrest…hahahahahaah I couldnt get tru that with out LMFAO
Starting point for the democrats on Social Security should be eliminating the limit on income to be taxed. Then when the republican’s scream, and Fox News hosts heads explode, be “reasonable” and accept a limit of say $2M or even $1.5M in income to be taxed.
Get a grip and start being hard asses towards the Republican’s - especially the TeaParty bat$hit crazy ones.
[quote=“ProgressiveOldMan, post:3, topic:18225”]
Get a grip and start being hard asses towards the Republican’s - [/quote]
Good luck with that.
Once the battle starts, stand by for an avalanche of anecdotal stories about people gaming the system…people with back injuries going water skiing, guys out of work collecting paychecks at another employer.
The GOP is VERY skilled at this kind of thing…jackbooted IRS thugs threatening small business owners (followed by continual harassment of the agency, fewer agents, smaller budgets and far fewer audits of tax returns and lost tax revenue) and the infamous claims that family owned farms were being sold for inheritance taxes and threatening family farms (a Walton-family-funded effort to change federal inheritance taxes so successful that it saved the Waltons billions.)
Read more about the latter here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/04/25/205085/-Class-Warfare-18-Families-financed-Estate-Tax-Repeal-Campaign
In TPM’s report on the “grand bargain” in the House on Medicare, raising the premiums for higher income retirees is one of the proposals which both Dems and Repubs (so far) have accepted. Long overdue.