It’s difficult to get Republican candidates to provide straight talk about Social Security and Medicare during an election year because both programs are immensely popular with voters and the candidates would rather not be too specific about possible reforms. They remember the dismal failure of George W. Bush to build support for privatizing Social Security in his second term. These […]

Back in January, I wrote a piece called The very real attack on Obama’s mythical attack on Social Security where I talked about lefty pundits attacking President Obama for slashing Social Security, something he has never done and will not do. I was attacked myself in various venues for this piece. Those that I have described as “preemptive whingers” knew, […]

Looks like the Frank Luntz focus groups showed that old people don’t want coupons for health insurance. They want something easy to understand, reliable and non-risky. Apparently, the Republicans finally got a clue. Senior Republicans conceded Wednesday that a deal is unlikely on a contentious plan to overhaul Medicare and offered to open budget talks with the White House by […]

You might think the GOP hates the poor and the elderly and, really, all of those that rely on entitlement payments of one sort or another. But I’ll bet you didn’t know how much they hate them. They hate them enough to introduce a bill that prioritizes paying off our debt to China over their monthly checks. That’s right. Congressman […]

As I predicted last weekend, the President proved last night he isn’t going to cut benefits for the poor and others on Social Security. From his second State of the Union Address: To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. We must do it without putting at risk […]

Updated to correct a mistake regarding Medicare vs. Social Security. It all started when somebody over at Firedoglake (FDL) derisively labeled President Obama’s deficit reduction study committee “The Catfood Commission”. The complete asinine nature of such an offensive characterization is epic. I assume it’s called that because they believe it will lead to old people eating catfood instead of human […]

You may recall my blog a few weeks ago titled Tim Walberg is for privatizing social security WHILE he’s against it. MI-07 Republican candidate Tim Walberg wasn’t for privatizing social security BEFORE he was against it, he is for privatizing security WHILE he is against it. Seriously. First, we have this press release from the Walberg campaign which came out […]

MI-07 Republican candidate Tim Walberg wasn’t for privatizing social security BEFORE he was against it, he is for privatizing security WHILE he is against it. Seriously. First we have this press release from the Walberg campaign: I have always opposed privatization of the Social Security system Then we have this quote from an interview Walberg did with the tea party-type […]