CNBC.com joined the smoke-signal gang early last week, passing along remarks from another Democrat, Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. “I would want to put Bowles-Simpson in place immediately,” he sai, contending that it would cut spending, simplify the tax code, and fix Medicare and Social Security. Neither Udall nor CNBC told us how it would do all that.
On NBC’s Meet the Press in early May, former Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw signaled acceptance of Simpson-Bowles even more. “There’s something to keep your eye on, Brokaw announced. “There’s a kind of nascent movement at the moment to dust off Simpson-Bowles. To get it back on the table again.” He continued:
“Nancy Pelosi said the other day that she could probably live with it. This was a big miss on the part of the president, even among his admirers, when that bipartisan commission worked very hard, came up—a lot of tough medicine involved there.”
Brokaw also told NBC viewers: “Jamie Dimon, who is the head of Chase Manhattan Bank, who was a big supporter of the president the last time around, he came out and said, ‘Simpson-Bowles.’” Brokaw noted that Nancy Pelosi had also said “Simpson-Bowles.” “A number of people are finding that as maybe the kind of nexus so you can break the gridlock,” he reported.
Such signals raise important questions: Are cuts to Social Security and Medicare part of a grand bargain, modeled on Simpson-Bowles, now within reach? Have political elites agreed on solutions to the deficit problem?
All of which brings me back to the public: What about the ordinary people those solutions would affect? What might those effects be? And what do ordinary people have to say about them? On such questions, the media have been mostly silent.
It may be acceptable for media to act as a conduit for politicians and business moguls. Their announcements and pronouncement fit some definitions of news. And it is certainly a press job to air debate and discussion about a proposal as momentous as Simpson-Bowles.
It’s not acceptable, though, to merely pass along the notion that the Beltway elites are warming up to something as important and far-reaching as the Simpson-Bowles plan without cluing in the public about what’s in store for them if it were to pass. Sound bites don’t do it. Neither does explanatory shorthand that describes the proposal so benignly as a “mix of tax hikes and spending cuts.” Right now Simpson-Bowles is a solution without explanation. (In coming days, we’ll post a Simpson-Bowles explainer on CJR.org that might help reporters and editors.)
Simpson-Bowles is big. In the end the public may well decide that the specific benefit cuts and tax hikes it calls for are fine. And presumably they’ll eventually make their feelings about those cuts and hikes, one way or another, known at the voting machine—if they understand them. Udall himself said: “If I couldn’t be reelected because Bowles-Simpson made some people mad, I could live with that.” That’s what democracy is about, isn’t it.
"And presumably they’ll eventually make their feelings about those cuts and hikes, one way or another, known at the voting machine"
Until democrats get primaried by OWS or some other movement, there is no way for the public to express themselves at the voting booth.
The DLC "third way" democrats support cuts and hikes to entitlements, the republicans support more cuts and no hikes.
As I tried to point to here the only thing saving social security from compromise is the republican insistence on avoiding it. The Democrats are precompromised because of the malignant advice they get money for following.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 06:56 PM
What the press needs to do is to stop heightening the differences between conservative and conservative-lite,
Obama and Mitt Romney are different in that Mitt is scared of the Morlocks who make up his base and wants to do more to increase the fortunes of his Gekko-like buddies.
The differences between neoliberal and libertarian philosophy do not make up for their similar beliefs in finding ways to empower market actors to achieve policy goals.
Which means finding ways to reduce the tax burden on market actors by cutting their tax rates, making the country more investment and enterprise friendly by reducing their regulatory burdens, making their labor market more flexible (read desperate) by reducing government support for citizens and labor. There is a bipartisan consensus for appeasing the market gods.
What the press needs to do is talk about alternatives to conservative and conservative-lite
They exist:
http://schakowsky.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2777
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70§iontree=5,70
but if all the press is going to talk about are proposals in the range of Ryan and Bowles Simpson, then the electorate are not going to be aware that alternatives exist,
And god, We have got to have an alternative to BS because their tax cut ideas and their 21% of GDP cap on government revenue will be disastrous in times of crisis.
Fiscal responsibility involves more than finding ways to make old people suffer, not that you'd know it from the guy who spent $458 million of his private equity fortune feeding the line "We will no longer be able to afford a system that equates the last third or more of one's adult life with a publicly subsidized vacation." into our elites' ears, eh Petey Peterson?
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 07:32 PM
Trudy is absolutely right here. I want to see all news organizations ask ordinary Americans and their congressional representatives how they feel about the Simpson-Bowles proposals on Social Security and Medicare -- raising the eliibility age, cutting the cost of living adjustment, cutting Medicare spending increases to the rate of inflation, etc. Just on the SS eligibility age issue alone, what will ordinary people say when they realize that raising the age to 69 means that if they sign up for SS benefits at 62 or 65 because they can't work any more or can't find a job or whatever, their benefit will be sharply less than what it is now. And I want to hear what ordinary Americans say when asked if they would prefer that kind of cut or if they would prefer to see the payroll tax cap for SS raised, which would largely solve the SS long-term shortfall problem.
#3 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 09:31 PM
And just think: all of the BS could have been avoided if the federal govt had simply obeyed the Constitution all these decades.
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 02:16 AM
So Udall supports raising Medicare premiums, cutting Social Security benefits and raising gas taxes ...
If must be tough sitting around Aspen, Colorado mansions with his millionaire buddies making these "tough" decisions.
#5 Posted by Albert, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 06:04 PM
Is there any legislator concerned with preserving Social Security and Medicare? Is there a trustworthy legislator? I do know wthat my Congressional Representative, Gary Ackerman, has fought to preserve these domestic programs, but he is leaving Congress-perhaps because he can't trust the House either.
#6 Posted by Naomi Feldheim, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 03:32 PM