How hard would chained CPI be to reverse? If not very, why does it matter?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

My understanding is that chained CPI is a change not in the level of social security now, but in the rate of change of social security over time.

That means that if the country spends a few years under chained CPI, the level of social security payments (I guess, although I'm willing to be contradicted) would not be all that different; it would only matter if it lasted a long time.

And if it would be easy to reverse next time there's a democratic majority across the board, is it as worth spending political capital on as things that will matter even if they get reversed later?

[TheKentuckian]

1. Are you serious with the old "we'll fix it later" horse shit?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. I'm serious that it may be the least worst option.

Like it or not, the Republicans control Congress. Either the government will shut down, or the Democrats will have to offer them enough to persuade them not to do so, even though that means doing bad things.

I think (although I'm not confident) that offering things that will only do significant harm if not taken back soon may be a lesser evil than either offering things that will start hurting immediately or than governmental shutdown.

[Downwinder]

2. I find living on a SS budget to be challenging as it is.

Additionally I haven't seen much interest among Law Makers to let temporary laws expire much less change laws in my favor.

[Marr]

3. You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Fix it later. Yeah, right. How about don't break it?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. You already broke it, back in November (or, arguably, back in 2010).

Now, unfortunately, you *have* to pay for it, one way or another - either through the shut-down of the government, or through compromising with the bad guys and giving them some of what they want, even though it will hurt innocent people needlessly.

"Tough it out and it will all be all right in the end" is simply not an option.

Offering the republicans things that you can take back later may be the least evil.

[hfojvt]

4. you have a point

surely it won't be any harder to reverse than say, the Patriot Act, the war in Afghanistan, closing Gitmo, and getting rid of the Bush tax cuts.

All of which were accomplished in the first 100 days after Democrats took both houses of Congress and the Presidency in 2008.

Dude, given the whole 60 vote cloture thing and veto power, it is a whole heck of a lot easier to stop bad bills from passing than it is to pass new bills to undo the damage of the last piece of bi-partisan excrement that was passed.

edit: the dide abudes, or something.

2nd edit: t's. t's a ballroom bl tz. Apparently there is no "I" in teiam.

[LWolf]

14. +1

[myrna minx]

15. Well said. How do we unring a bell?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. What fraction of elected Democrats supported doing each of those things?

What fraction of elected democrats would support reversing chained CPI?

I suspect the answers to those two questions are significantly different.

[Cleita]

5. Because it's the camel's nose under the tent.

The intention is to weaken SS until it can be destroyed totally. Someone described it as death by a thousand cuts. In the meantime those seniors who live long enough will live a life of increasing impoverishment.

[whathehell]

6. +10 n/t

[boomerbust]

7. If you think liberals stayed home in 2010

Chained CPI means another Republican landslide in 2014 and 2016.

[Hoyt]

8. That's what I think too. If times get better, we can change it.

Last edited Thu Apr 11, 2013, 06:01 AM - Edit history (1)

If times don't get better, well welcome to payback time for our previous excesses. At that point, we'll wish we were only talking about the small reduction from a CCPI, with protection for those at lowest levels.

[jtuck004]

9. Because it's not the country living under it, it's our neighbors. If one's attitude is "well, fuck

them", then it doesn't matter. If one doesn't give a flying rat's ass that we are at a 20 year high in the poverty rate, that we have over 10 million families we call "working poor" and that number is increasing, or understand why they SS, that it came about when 30% of the people who worked for years to build and run the country were dying of malnutrition or freezing to death because they had no heat, then it doesn't matter. It can't matter if one doesn't get that this whole stupid game doesn't need to be played, except that the current administration's policies favor the bankers and the wealthy, (who contributed large amounts to the Democratic party in the past two national elections) over our teachers, firefighters, the people who used to work in our factories, the ones who pick up our garbage, the ones who sacrificed nearly everything in our wars, or the families of those who did, among others - in other words, our aging neighbors and some of the young children they left behind - while they try to live on what's left of the meager amount they were able to save (if any, after being screwed by employers and politicians for most of that time) during their working years, desperately needing every penny they can get from this pathetic supplement, and that any shortfall is because the wealthy, the owners of assets, were and are being allowed to pocket excess profits instead of paying fair wages from which the SS could be fairly funded.

On the other hand, if one realizes that we are talking very real pain for very real people, and not some abstract "country", then it might matter a great deal. Even for a "short" time.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. But is it a significant change in the quantity of that pain.

You've gone off on a tangential tirade about how awful everything is, without actually addressing my point: over a short time period, will chained CPI make a significant difference? If it's a change in the rate of change of the level of social security rather than in the level itself, the answer would seem to be no.

I only care about it costing your neighbours money if it's going to cost them non-trivial amounts of money.

[jtuck004]

23. If one has to choose between spending the only $25 they have on food or heat or rent

it's a damn significant thing. Someone not in that position may find it inconsequential, but the kid who can't eat until they get to the subsidized lunch program at school on Monday, or the senior who waits in vain for the Meals on Wheels volunteer who isn't showing up because they have no gas will likely find it vital.

btw - "your neighbours" ?

Do you live on Mars?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. No, I'm British. So possibly more alien to you... N.T.

[jtuck004]

25. Those same people live there, so not so alien as one might think. It does seem kind of trendy

for people to distance themselves from those in need, however. People who don't live in such conditions, such as bankers, or Presidents, seem to find it relatively easy to minimize the pain they force on such people, and perhaps that might be expected. What amazes me is the number of people who jump on that bandwagon, seeing some positive value in following along with such thinking that works to the detriment of everyone.

Yet they really aren't that different.

[Mnpaul]

10. Why does it matter?

Pretty easy to figure out

[MadHound]

11. Let's see, we have a Democrat proposing CCPI, we're going to have Dems voting for CCPI,

So what the hell makes you think that a majority of Dems will vote to revoke CCPI at some mythical later date? Or are you really speculating outside the box, thinking that 'Pugs will vote to revoke it?

[woo me with science]

12. In any journey toward a compassionate liberal future,

Last edited Thu Apr 11, 2013, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

a Very Important Step along the way is to impose as much predatory corporate legislation as possible, that can be fixed later.

You can't make this shit up.

[myrna minx]

13. Wow. We'll fix it later? After the death of a thousand cuts?

So the spinning has already begun.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Kinda like saying, "Don't worry, after we break your leg, it might heal."

[dflprincess]

34. or "We had to burn the village to save it" nt

[winter is coming]

21. Chained CPI is morally wrong and logically stupid.

For starters, we're once again expecting the poor and middle class to bear the brunt of the "solution". Chained CPI will undermine SS, which doesn't even contribute to the deficit. It's the Bush tax cuts and two off-the-books wars that ran up the deficit. We should be looking at raising taxes (which, historically, are not that high, despite all the screaming from the right) and reassessing the Pentagon budget.

And at a more fundamental level, austerity is exactly the wrong thing to do in our present economy, as it will almost certainly only make things worse.

As to your question: how hard was it to reverse the Bush tax cuts? Multiply by a factor of 100.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

22. So is having Republicans in government, but it's too late to change that. N.T.

[valerief]

26. Put down the bottle. No more waiting for shit. nt

[Honeycombe8]

27. You've seen in the past 4 years how hard it is to change laws, haven't you?

It's incredibly hard.

Besides, the reason this cpi thing is being proposed is because of LONG TERM MONEY GAINS. A few years won't make much difference in the coffers. It's designed to build the coffers over a long period of time. On teh backs of the most vulnerable.

What the cpi does is not keep up with inflation. It's sort of like putting a live lobster in cold water and bringing it to a boil. It slowly kills the lobster. It doesn't cut the CURRENT benefits right away, like throwing a lobster in boiling water. But 10 years later, grandma's benefit check will not have kept up with inflation, and her purchasing power will be less than 10 years earlier.

Like the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation.

[MrSlayer]

28. Once you give something up, you NEVER get it back.

Remember the arguments over the Patriot act?

"It's only temporary while we're under imminent threat."

Temporarily permanent.

You're nuts if you don't see this as anything other than the first step toward eliminating the program.

[enlightenment]

29. You live in the UK, yes?

Your system of parliamentary government, which depends on an ability to form (and reform) coalitions, is a more fluid structure than what the US has at present - although I admit your current leadership is in a pretty fine fix.

From your perspective, I can see where you might think that allowing CCPI now wouldn't be an issue, but if you look at the historic make-up of our Congress, examine the history of unpopular laws that have passed, and consider the loggerhead nature of our system - I think you can answer your own question.

It would be very hard to reverse it. Tax laws in particular have a peculiar staying power (probably why, printed out, our tax code could be used as ballast on a battleship).

Someone pointed out another aspect - this is the camel's nose under the tent. To put it in a different perspective, consider your current leadership and their attempts to largely privatise the NHS. How much headway do you think it would take, once the malignant camel of private profit stuck its nose under that tent before your really astonishing system (and it is, despite complaints) went belly up?

[ms liberty]

30. Thank you for replying to the OP...

by answering the question rather than reacting to it. You explained it well, too ...better than I could have.

[enlightenment]

33. I suspect your explanation

would be very good, indeed.

[MNBrewer]

31. Why then do we worry about the enactment of any OTHER Republican idea?

"Next time we have a Democratic majority...."

what if that never happens. Or the DINOS block it?

[Demo_Chris]

32. Who will undo it when both parties want it?