"Real Democrats don't cut social security benefits, period[.]”

Greider on Social Security and the budget battle.

Will Voters Forgive Obama for Cutting Social Security?

Nothing quite like a very succinct summary of the bitter truth.

So who gets tell the folks that their FiCA deductions were a joke—only an accounting fiction?

The financial problems facing Social Security are easily fixed (as Obama himself has said) and are actually 30 years away.

When the Congressional Budget Office is required to “score” Obama’s so-called cost-of-living reform, it will be compelled to announce that whacking the old folks contributes not a penny to reducing the federal government’s deficits.

In fact, there is an even bigger lie concealed by the fiscal scolds and ignored by witless media, too.

Again and again, self-righteous critics have portrayed Social Security as the profligate monster borrowing from the Treasury and sucking the life out of federal government.

Guess what?

It's the other way around.

The federal government borrows from Social Security.

The Treasury has been borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund for 30 years, and the debt to Social Security beneficiaries now totals nearly $3 trillion.

The day is approaching when that money will be needed for its original purpose: paying Social Security benefits to the working people who contributed to the fund.

That is the real crisis that makes the financial barons and their media collaborators so anxious to cut Social Security benefits.

They would like to get out of repaying the debt—that is, giving the money back to the people who earned it.

The only way to do this is cut the benefits—over and over again.

Count on it.

If the president and Congress succeed in this malicious scheme, they will come back again and again to cut more and more.

If the politicians join this sordid conspiracy, voters should come after them with pitchforks and torches.

John Nichols is right, too.

And so are all the people he refers to.

2.3 Million Petitioners Urge Rejection of 'Chained-CPI' Social Security Cut

"Real Democrats don't cut social security benefits, period[.]”

And so is Alan Grayson.

Progressives Say They'll Primary Dems Who Vote for Chained CPI

In a conference call organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, co-founders Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor pledged to launch primary challenges against Democrats who vote for a budget bill that includes chained CPI.

"There needs to be accountability in 2014, and we're very serious," said Green. "You cannot call yourself a Democrat and support Social Security cuts."

Progressive member of Congress Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, warned that Obama's changes to both Social Security and Medicare benefits in his budget may drag down the whole Democratic Party.

"A Democratic President is proposing cuts to benefits, without receiving anything form the other side . . . that undermine the core Democratic accomplishment of the last 50 years," he said.

In addition to chained CPI, Grayson pointed out, the White House budget contains a two-tier approach to Medicare long favored by Republicans that treats new beneficiaries differently from current beneficiaries, imposing means-testing on incomes above $47,000.

"You may recall I lost my election two years ago because Republicans took a shot at convincing the public that ObamaCare was a cut in Medicare," Grayson said.

Now, he said, the President is handing the Republicans an issue they can use to win elections.