Kennth Griffin, the founder of a $3 billion hedge fund, tells VandeHei and Allen that “the critical problem is entitlement reform.” He doesn’t mention income inequality, oddly. The reporters go on to write:
Nearly every lawmaker and staffer will tell you privately that they know the Social Security retirement age needs to go up, the rate of growth of benefits needs to be slowed on a sliding scale that protects the poor, the cap on income subjected to the tax that finances the program needs to rise and the rich should get smaller or no payout from the program.
The meme continues to roll through the media. When Simpson gave a speech in New York to a group called The Common Good, CNNMoney gave a rundown of what he said, beckoning readers with this alarmist headline “Alan Simpson paints dire market outlook.”
Sometimes the meme takes the form of getting the pols on board with need for a quick fix. An editorial in USA Today challenged the Democrats to be brave and cut entitlements. “How exactly do Democrats expect Republicans to bend on their destructive refusal to raise taxes if Democrats won’t bend on their destructive refusal to trim unsustainable benefit programs,” the editorial argued. Even the reliably moderate Eleanor Clift seemed to be on board, writing in The Daily Beast that the president faces a daunting challenge “to convince liberal groups that they too will have to yield.”
In recent weeks, pushback against the urgency to fix the deficit and cut entitlements has come from the AARP, an organization of some 35 million seniors. Through TV ads, the group is challenging the wisdom of raising the Medicare eligibility age and changing the COLA formula for Social Security benefits, while arguing that Social Security should be omitted from a “last minute budget deal.” The Washington Post attacked AARP’s credibility a year ago, in an editorial
and did so again last week in a news story that quoted—or misquoted—a leading Medicare expert, leaving an incorrect impression about Medicare cuts.
Post reporter Jerry Markon, whose beat is political accountability, penned a piece that looked at AARP’s business interests, notably selling Medigap insurance. The media have examined AARP’s businesses before during periods when some lawmakers feared the organization would block their bills, so Markon’s piece hardly broke new ground. He was trying to make the case that any changes in Medigap policies—which people buy to cover Medicare’s benefit holes—that shift more costs to seniors would lower premiums because they wouldn’t have to cover as much. That in turn, he reasoned, would lower AARP’s revenue.
Among the people he interviewed was Marilyn Moon, a former Medicare trustee and a longtime board member of an advocacy group, the Medicare Rights Center, who once worked at the AARP. The Post quoted her saying: “Any way you look at changes in Medigap that people are talking about, I think it’s good for beneficiaries, and anybody who is opposing that who claims they are looking out for beneficiaries, you have to wonder why.” But Moon says she wasn’t talking about Medigap; she was talking about changes to Medicare.
Moon told me, “He twisted my remarks about benefit improvements and equated them with proposed changes in Medigap policies.” Moon protested in an email to Markon that she shared with CJR. There are a lot of changes being proposed to Medigap that would be “very bad for beneficiaries,” she said in the email. “I deeply regret that you did not understand the distinction.”
If you are going to push a meme, maybe you should get the details right.
Follow our coverage of the coverage of politics and policy on Twitter @CJRSwingStates. And follow the author @Trudy_Lieberman.
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Trudy, fine bit of work but it suffers from the same problem I mentioned here:
http://www.cjr.org/swing_states_project/why_the_fiscal_cliff_needs_better_insider_reporting.php#comments
"First Principles!"
You need to emphasize the fact that the "fiscal cliff" is a deficit reduction problem which is scaring certain people because raising taxes and cutting the military is economically contractionary. The fiscal cliff reduces the deficit.
But the people who claim the deficit should be reduced don't want to reduce it in that way. They want to shift the contractions to 'entitlements'. That is why they are mixing deficit language and fiscal cliff language in their meme making.
They want people confused and off balance by this complex crisis which is 'so hard to explain' but 'something must be done'. Cutting social security and medicare is something (not to borrow a line from krugman) This is a shock doctrine tactic.
You need to explain that the fiscal cliff could be fixed tomorrow - pass the Clinton taxes on the rich and cancel the sequester - if the conservatives (in both parties) wanted to. You need to explain that the only reason why entitlements are being out on the table is because conservatives won't agree to tax increases in general and want to hurt the democrats and the American people by forcing them to cut back on the New Deal instead of the military and tax expenditures for the rich.
And you gotta explain that if their justification for averting the fiscal cliff is that it reduces the deficit in a contractionary way, then the same justification can be applied MORESO to entitlement cuts.
You have one party, supported by the business elite, that is demanding the sacrifice of the firstborn. They are using the fiscal cliff - and will use the debt ceiling - to cut back the state in a recession. Medicare and Social Security sacrifices are being offered up in the hope to appease the conservatives and disuade them from using the tools of government to take hostages and blow us all up.
NOBODYCARESABOUTTHEDEFICIT. It is a tool to beat back the state during more popular administrations which is put away and locked up when republicans act on behalf of the .001% percent. Nobody wants to reduce the deficit, they want to shift the burdens of a functioning society onto someone poorer.
Tell us about the fiscal cliff, about how it's an austerity program, and how in order to avoid the contractionary effects of an austerity program the elites are proposing an austerity program. We've got to make sense of this intentional complexity.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 02:39 PM
Interesting collection of fiscal cliff thought here:
http://billmoyers.com/category/fiscal-cliff-group-think/
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 12:43 AM
No, if you want to push a meme, it's important to get the details WRONG. See Simpson, Alan. Getting the details wrong creates chaff, and the impression that "oh, it's all political. there is nothing that is really objectively true." Because objectively, truthfully entitlement reform as proposed would have no appreciable effect on the deficit.
#3 Posted by jayackroyd, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 09:22 AM