Unsilent Generation

Hopes for any pretense of liberal change from the Obama administration collapsed yesterday, and not only because of the election in Massachusetts. While the Massachusetts voters were casting their ballots to install the upstart Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, the White House was hammering out a closed-door deal to cut entitlements. Obama won the support of Democratic leaders for a plan to issue an executive order that would inevitably lead to reductions in Social Security, and especially Medicare and Medicaid.

The plan represents a capitulation to conservatives in both parties, and would leave Democratic liberals accepting unconditional surrender not only on health care, but on the most basic of all New Deal programs.  As hopes of even a tepid health care reform wane, the effect of this  plan, if accepted by Congress, will be to undermine the only single-payer health care programs this nation has ever known–Medicare for elders, and Medicaid for the poor. As an attack on entitlements, it has the potential to go beyond anything the Reagan and Bush administrations were able to achieve.

As the Washington Post explains this morning:

Under the agreement, President Obama would issue an executive order to create an 18-member panel that would be granted broad authority to propose changes in the tax code and in the massive federal entitlement programs — including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that threaten to drive the nation’s debt to levels not seen since World War II.

The accord comes a week before Obama is scheduled to deliver his first State of the Union address to a nation increasingly concerned about his stewardship of the economy and the federal budget. After a year in which he advocated spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a huge economic stimulus package and a far-reaching overhaul of the health-care system, Obama has pledged to redouble his effort to rein in record budget deficits even as he has come under withering Republican attack.

The commission would deliver its recommendations after this fall’s congressional elections, postponing potentially painful decisions about the nation’s fiscal future until after Democrats face the voters. But if the commission approves a deficit-reduction plan, Congress would have to act on it quickly under the agreement, forged late Tuesday in a meeting with Vice President Biden, White House budget director Peter R. Orszag, and Democratic lawmakers led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.).

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has long advocated creation of an independent budget panel, called the agreement an “understanding in concept” that holds the promise of at last addressing the nation’s most wrenching budget problems.

“This goes to the question of the country’s credibility with managing its own finances. This is essential for the nation,” Conrad said.

The commission is likely to form the centerpiece of Democrats’ efforts to reduce projected budget deficits, which have soared into record territory in the aftermath of the worst recession in a generation. Government spending to bail out the troubled financial sector and to stimulate economic activity have combined with sagging tax collections to push last year’s budget deficit to a record $1.4 trillion. The budget gap is projected to be just as large this year and to hover close to $1 trillion a year for much of the next decade. 

In other words: The national treasury has been driven into deep deficits by a financial crisis caused by Wall Street greed, compounded by two wars, tax cuts for the rich, and the high prices charged by health care profiteers. And where will we turn to make up for this loss? To the poor and the old, who cling greedily to their “entitlements.”

The claim is made that we need to make these entitlements “solvent” and “sustainable” in their own right, so they don’t “run out of money”–but that’s just political flim-flam. Social Security is in fact perfectly solvent, and the fiscal problems of the Medicare and Medicaid programs stem from the excesses of profit-based health care. If cuts are made to these programs, which have saved millions of Americans out of desperate straits, it will be because there’s simply no political will to do anything else to address the deficit.

All this represents a major victory for the corporate take-over mogul Pete Peterson whose foundation has put up $1 billion to lobby the proposal. His efforts have even involved  a financial news service that pushes this rich man’s plan, and that  has wormed its way into the Washington Post.  William Greider, who has long been covering the Peterson story, writes in The Nation:

The retired mogul has created a digital news agency he dubs “The Fiscal Times” and hired eight seasoned reporters to do the work there. “An impressive group of veteran journalists,” Peterson calls them. I hope they have shaken a lot of money out of this rich geezer. Because I predict doing hack work for him will seriously soil their reputations for objectivity and independence.

With his great wealth, Peterson could have also bought a newspaper to publish his dispatches, but he did better than that. He hooked up with the Washington Post, which has agreed to “jointly produce content focusing on the budget and fiscal issues.” (This media scandal was first uncovered by economist Dean Baker.) The newspaper is thus compromising its own integrity. It’s like buying political propaganda from a Washington lobbyist, then printing it in the news columns as if it was just another news story. Shame on the Post, my old newspaper. I predict a big stink like the one that greeted the Post when its publisher decided to hold pay-for-access “salons” for corporate biggies.

The deal is based on rickety interpretation of the country’s basic laws governing taxation.  Normally, any change in taxes must be passed first by the House, with legislation wending its way through the Ways and Means Committee up to the floor. This proposed arrangement short cuts—indeed appears to bypass—this procedure. The appointed commission is to make a recommendation on the budget after the election and that recommendation then goes straight to Congress where it might go through hearings,floor debate and a vote,or as some proponents of the idea would like, just get an up or down vote. To rub salt in the wounds, it was largely crafted not by members of the House, but by vice president and former Delaware senator Joe Biden along two senators–Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat, once considered heir to the Great Plains progressive tradition, and conservative Judd Gregg, from New Hampshire. The man behind the commission plan is Pete Peterson.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which has been fighting against the creation of the commission, recently sent a letter to Congress, saying in part: 

We appreciate the concerns of legislators who are looking for a means of reducing the federal deficit and slowing the growth in the debt. However, we have significant concerns about any process – including the Conrad-Gregg Commission – that would disenfranchise American voters and subject Social Security beneficiaries to harmful cuts in benefits. As supporters of Social Security, we are surprised to see the federal deficit and the federal debt cited as the reason a commission needs to be established to make cuts in Social Security. The truth is that neither the $1.4 trillion deficit nor the nearly $12 trillion debt has anything to do with Social Security benefits.   

For nearly three decades, Social Security has taken in more revenue each year than it has paid out in benefits. These excess funds have been invested in special issue U.S. government securities. Thus, Social Security has effectively been loaning its excess funds to the federal government to spend on other programs. Rather than increasing the federal deficit, Social Security’s annual surpluses have actually been covering up the true size of the deficit in the general fund.