Sunday Open Thread [12.15.13]

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.