Obama Has The Sense To Dump a Really DUMB Idea!

Above Obama discusses a possible "Grand Bargain" with John Boehner in 2011, which would have included the "chained CPI".

The Populist Left can now rejoice after the news has been released that  President Obama's forthcoming budget plan will not include a proposal to cut cost of living expenses from Social security, the dread "Chained CPI". Of course, this was always a dumb idea. Considering Social Security is a legacy of perhaps the most venerable Democrat, and serious cuts to it would harm seniors, the whole thing was a non-winner for Obama and the Dems and likely would have cost them both houses of congress in this year's mid-terms, as opposed to just the House.

Why would a Democratic President propose such nonsense at the outset anyway, when there was no need for it?  One plausible reason was because he wanted to act in "good faith" with a "Debt Commission" he'd appointed, headed by Alan B. Simpson and Ernest Bowles. By at least offering up cuts to Social Security he'd show he was acting in earnest with the Debt Commission, i.e. that he really wanted to do something about the deficits that the Reeps were endlessly squawking about.

In this manner, his aim was to strike a "Grand Bargain" with the Repukes which would have eliminated nearly $3.7 trillion in deficits over ten years. Never mind that a) the Reeps had generated more than 60 percent of the deficits from their unpaid for wars and tax cuts, and b) the same deficit savings could have been obtained relatively painlessly by simply not extending the Bush tax cuts for anyone, back in 2011. (A solution proposed by assorted writers, e.g. Clive Cook, Martin Wolf  in The Financial Times, and by many Left populists. But alas, the Bush tax cuts for the middle class proved too tempting an apple to exploit by the Dems, for the upcoming 2012 election.)

Since then, many Neoliberal mouthpieces (e.g. Robert Samuelson, Bob Woodward, Fareed Zakaria, Joe Klein etc.) believed the best option was to reach a big fiscal accord, built up from the baseline of higher taxes on rich people, from which Obama would agree to some entitlement cuts, Republicans would agree to close some tax loopholes, and the parties could put sequestration and budget brinkmanship behind them for years.  Obama seemed to agree with this, although again, no part of Social Security was responsible for the deficits, and higher taxes only on the rich would almost ensure having to try to gouge seniors with "entitlement cuts.'

Thus the penultimate stage led to the proposed 2014 budget, as dozens of liberal groups mounted a campaign to oppose any renewal of the Chained CPI. This included online petitions, as well as a full press mail campaign launched by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.  One of the White House’s most poorly kept secrets concerns Obama’s economic advisers - who have supported Chained CPI on the merits, or believed it to be the least-bad benefit cut Obama could offer Republicans.  But why support it at all, when the costs against Democrats in elections would be severe, and it was REEPs that ran up most of the deficits?  To many on the Populist Left this weasly sort of move imitated coughing up lunch money to the school bully before he even demanded it.

It showed political cowardice, and also contempt for the people that helped put Obama back in office in the 2012 election.   Hence, we who opposed it were pleased that Obama has decided to leave it out from his budget proposals to be announced in 2 weeks.  We were also quite aware there was little need to even keep it on the table given that deficits have plummeted from sequestration, and an additional $1 trillion in deficits can easily be avoided by the simple expedient of pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan at the end of this year (and not leaving  7,000- 10,000 there until 2024, a foolish move if ever there was one, given nothing will stop Afghanistan from falling back into Taliban hands -- no matter how long we remain. And Karzai doesn't want us there anyway!)

The spin, of course, is that Obama pulled back from the brink because the Republicans offered nothing in return.  According to a New York Times report from yesterday:

"White House officials said on Thursday that since Republicans in Congress have shown no willingness to meet the president’s offer on social programs by closing loopholes for corporations and wealthy Americans, the proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not assume a path to an agreement that no longer appears to exist."


  So be it. We can live with it.   The main thing is that Obama has avoided what would have been a whopper of a mistake, not only to Democrats up for election, but to his own legacy. Let us also hope the idea has finally been put to rest- like a vampire that's had a final stake driven through its heart.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/54446/yes-the-left-killed-the-chained-cpi

As Usual - Dems Good At Posturing, Not Delivering!

The news that the US economy is losing up to a billion dollars a week because of the “fiscally irresponsible” decision to end long-term unemployment benefits,  ought to have any sane American's attention - especially those still invested in the bubble (stock) market. What it means is we are looking at a likely major impetus for a new recession and financial meltdown given the current market status is not disposed to any stability.


The news comes from a Harvard economist, Professor Lawrence Katz, who said his assessment is based on official forecasts of the impact to the economy of 1.3 million jobless Americans losing benefits. The benefits, which apply to people who are unemployed for longer than six months, expired last week after a bipartisan budget deal on federal spending for the next two years failed to include a reauthorization of the program.

As I earlier noted, this deal  (named the 'Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013')  was only "bipartisan" in the sense that it provided another opportunity for the Gooprs to do a "date rape" on the Demos - as anti-tax stooge Grover Norquist defined it. The misbegotten deal reduced the blanket sequester cuts by $63bn over two years, split equally between defense and non-defense spending, although Republicans also succeeded in negotiating a further $20-$23bn in  domestic deficit reduction.  In other words, the Reeps succeeded in raping the Demos to the tune of an additional $20-23b on their side, while not paying any new taxes!

Much of this comes by their refusal to extend unemployment benefits at the end of this month - leaving millions in the lurch at the worst time of year. Kids have done without Xmas presents, and now also food - since the SNAP program was cut, and  more food stamp cuts loom over the next ten years (amounting to $40b ). Reepos haven't budged from that.   The purpose was clearly to enable the Reepos to keep an additional $20-23 b for their pet defense projects while kids go hungry.

Of course, those who yap and complain that "any unemployed person who doesn't find work in 6 weeks doesn't want it" are certified idiots. They lack the necessary IQ to grasp that if there are 2.9 people chasing every job there won't be enough jobs to go  around. These are the sort of mentally backward people who can't process that 9 gallons will not fit into a 2 gallon container.

They'd also likely laugh at the plight of one letter writer to the press, who wrote:

"As one who lost his benefits I can tell you one thing, I will be homeless and spiraling downward without an extension. Place as much blame on me as you feel but remember the end result. Just because somebody gets themselves stuck in the mud, it does not mean somebody can't help them out! I've never in 38 years been on unemployment and I am shocked by the hard time I'm having getting a job. NO one will even hire me to dig ditches, collect garbage or clean sewers! What am I to do, starve?"

Needless to say, stupid pig GOOps would merely dismiss the guy's worries and insist he still "isn't trying hard enough".  (Interesting that many who say so are themselves sitting fat and pretty - gorging on gov't benefits!)


And what are Democrats doing about it? 

Democratic leaders in the Senate are planning to fast-track legislation to extend unemployment insurance, a move that would provide a lifeline to more than a million jobless Americans who lost their benefits five days ago.

The bipartisan bill provides a three-month extension the the federal benefits program, a temporary fix designed to allow Congress to work on a solution for the long-term unemployed, who have seen their support vanish.

And what are the chances of passing? Slim and None!

Though Democrats have launched "a sustained push"  to reintroduce the federal program, and a Senate vote on a bipartisan bill to restore the benefits for three months is expected early next week, there  certainly will be no passage in the Tea Party -contaminated House. The time to have fought for preserving the benefits was when the sequester and budget deal were being hashed out LAST month. What the Dems propose is roughly equal to trying to close the barn door after the cows have escaped.

It's stupid, and merely amounts to posturing after the fact, to try to show the unemployed that  this other corporate party still cares for them.  Meanwhile, on Friday, Democrats in the House of Representatives released a state-by-state breakdown of Labor Department figures, showing the number of people who lost federal benefits when they expired on Saturday. The 1.3 million affected Americans are losing on average $305 per week. In total, Democrats said $400m had been “taken out of the pockets” of job seekers across the country.

Dems should have fought for the little guys, the unemployed who likely will now lose homes and reap heartaches when they had the leverage to deal- LAST MONTH.

Now, all they have is  cheap, fulsome rhetoric - and that won't put food on the table!

  .

The Austerity Barbarians At the Gate: And What's with the Chained CPI Still in Play?

John Boehner blubbered and huffed all through his interview with Scott Pelley yesterday. "We need the Senate to stop sitting on its ass and pass that bill!"

Huh? WHO was taking a vacation the past ten days, Mr. Speaker? Are you still in a parallel universe? Anyway, Mr. Boehner still demands more spending cuts in order to appease his austerity Barbarians, now salivating at the gate.

But I don’t get it! We’ve already had by proportion two dollars of spending cuts for every increase in revenue, despite the fact it was a revenue implosion (via unpaid for ‘wars’, tax cuts) that dug us into this mess. So why are even more spending cuts being demanded as a way to preserve the existing small growth economy?


Even this morning (MSNBC), Pat Toomey (R-PA) was bleating nonsense about closing loopholes to then be able to LOWER marginal tax rates and “unleash the power of the economy”. NO! NO! NO! You aren’t going to unleash anything but larger deficits and debt as you grind the economy to a halt. The evidence has already been manifestly shown that NO tax cuts of ANY kind work for enhancing growth!

Matt Miller showed this in spades in his ‘The Tyranny of Dead Ideas’ (tax cuts being a ‘dead idea’ still retained out of a long held supply side mythology). Meanwhile, The Financial Times in its issue of 9/15/10 showed the Bush tax cuts to be the frauds they are by not even having achieved the most modest growth objectives. Their main conclusion? "The 2000s were the weakest decade in U.S. postwar history for real, non-residential capital investment. Not only were the 2000s by far the weakest period, the tax cuts did not even curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures. Rather the slowdown accelerated to a full decline".

So why do Repuke tax cut fetishists hold on to them? Because they are a convenient means of “starving the Beast” along with unpaid for wars. In this way they believe they can ensure cooperative Dems will cut domestic spending, when they ought to be increasing it!


Flash forward to the current situation and the coming “sequester”. Barring an unlikely last minute deal, here's a short list of some of the massive, national bi-partisan-created austerity cuts arriving by Friday, according to the New York Times:


-600,000 food stamp recipients will be cut from the program

-Massive education cuts


The first will be murderously brutal given 1 in 3 kids in marginal income families ($24,000/yr for a family of 4) is already going to bed hungry and the mean benefit is only $3 /day with food stamps running out for most families within 3 weeks. A new documentary film, ‘A Place At the Table’ will highlight this abomination in the alleged “richest nation” on Earth. The sad thing is now these people will be in worse straits, all because the Repukes don’t want to even close one tax loophole for the richest hedge fund managers, or stock brokers, traders. See my earlier blog ( http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/02/scarborough-bwwaaaahaha-we-cant-have.html) on why the Rs are wrong, dead wrong on not increasing taxes!


Meanwhile, we learned this morning (‘Morning Joe’)that  most college students don’t even want to hear the word “sequester” and they flee from any subject tag for a blog, or tweet bearing it. Well, I hope not! The fact is they will be adversely affected in terms of being able to secure further (government-based)  college loans if this thing goes through. When your future interests are at stake you do pay attention, and you try to learn how your own welfare is threatened. In addition, thousands of teachers will be laid off as the federal support purse strings dry up, including for ‘Head Start’ and ‘Race to the Top’.

Other impending cuts:

-12 billion in Medicare cuts (more to come after 2013)

-Millions receiving unemployment will see their checks cut by 11% (an average of $132 a month)


So don’t tell me that the amount of the cuts ($85b) is ‘trivial’ or regurgitate the Repuke line that “Obama is using scare tactics”.

Note this is just for 2013. The current plan for the austerity "sequester" cuts is $100 billion of federal cuts every year for ten years, equaling massive cuts to jobs, Medicare, education, and completely destroying federally funded social programs.

We will be laid waste as never before, and left as a marginal Third World nation, perhaps even worse than Barbados.

Now, WHO is to blame? Despite the finger pointing in Washington, D.C. and the sequester being described as “stupid” (e.g. no targeted cuts) in many quarters, in reality both Democrats and Republicans created these "sequester" cuts (back in 2011 with the really stupid debt ceiling increase and Obama unwilling to invoke the 14th amendment instead) , and they can just as easily undo them with a snap of the finger. But both parties are choosing not to delete the cuts. They just don't want political responsibility for the fallout, which many economists have predicted will push the U.S. economy over the edge into official recession.


Obama could also just as easily appeal to the American public —over the heads of congressmen — to demand that the cuts be shelved forever. Instead, he's still proposing a "grand bargain” deal that he knows the Republicans won't go for.  What's in Obama's grand bargain deal? According to the White House website :


-$130 billion in "savings" [cuts] to Social Security, by implementing a ‘superlative CPI'
-$35 billion in "savings" [cuts] to the retirement of federal employees.

- $400 billion in health care "savings" [cuts], much of it Medicare cuts.


Obama (cynically, in the minds of some) fails to mention the words Social Security or Medicare in the above plan, choosing instead to write in code "superlative Consumer Price Index". But there’s nothing ‘superlative’ about prolonged, corrosive cat food cuts that demeans seniors, especially those who do not have the wealth to sustain lowered adjustments to inflation over time. Already Bernanke and his Beltway Club of “serious people” (e.g. assholes) are pushing the BS there’s “no inflation”, despite fuel, food, and medical costs soaring. Seniors even with moderate incomes therefore will be shafted as the chained CPI kicks in and woe betide them if a medical catastrophe strikes – especially with Medicare cuts on a $400 b scale.

Most real progressives’ jaws dropped last week when, incredibly, White House spokesman Jay Carney  told a press conference that Obama is a  "macho man". He told the reporters that President Obama is still willing to cut Social Security benefits by using the Chained CPI as the basis for the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).  Believe me, Mr. Carney, there is nothing "macho" about sending 45 million seniors into cat food diets, and  forcing them to grovel in dumpsters for remains of kibbles when their meds end up breaking the bank!

This willingness to cut the benefits of retirees is presumed to establish President Obama as a “serious person” in elite (read: NEOLIBERAL)  Washington circles. But in progressive circles it defines him as a wuss and enabler of the Repukes. Moreover, it will defame the Dem brand in perpetuity if he goes through with this BS, marking him as the destroyer of the primary principles first put forward by FDR, JFK etc. Is THAT really worth a “legacy”?


Likely most of the D.C. Neoliberal insiders (e.g. Fareed Zakaria, Bob Woodward, Joe Klein etc.) probably don't understand the Chained CPI. However, everyone else should recognize that this technical fix amounts to a serious cut, never mind the odious PR to disguise it. It reduces benefits compared with the current schedule by 0.3 percent annually. This adds up over time. After someone has been getting benefits for 10 years, the cut in annual benefits is 3 percent, or equivalent to one whole month of Social Security. After 20 years, people would be seeing a benefit that is 6 percent lower, and after 30 years their benefit would be reduced by 9 percent. (For those interested, AARP has a nice calculator that shows how much retirees can expect to lose from the Chained CPI.)

Now, one can certainly debate whether the Chained CPI should be viewed as a "large cut," but there is no debate that Chained CPI cut imposes a bigger hit to the typical retiree than the ending of the Bush tax cuts were to the typical high-end one percent earner. Social Security provides more than half of the income for almost 70 percent of retirees. This means that the 3 percent cut in Social Security benefits amounts to a reduction in their income of more than 1.5 percent.

Let us sincerely hope that Obama isn’t gaming us, and trying to disguise an underlying Neoliberal instinct with progressive rhetoric. We didn’t go “all in” with him last November just to put a Neoliberal plant into office, when voters chose him because the alternative, “Mittens”, planned to do just what Carney proclaims Obama is “macho” enough to do now.

We deserve better. It’s time for Obama to show he is a fighter and for the Middle Class, including not enabling cuts to cripple seniors in their most vulnerable years.

Mr. President, take DOWN that CPI proposal from the White House site! Do NOT, I repeat do not, seek any "grand bargain" with the Republican ratfuckers!

Elections HAVE Consequences: Time to Bring Repukes to Heel!

“So, let's get this straight: A Republican President is reelected in 2004 with 284 electoral votes and the pundits say he has the "political capital" to push an extreme right-wing mandate. A Democratic President gets reelected in 2012 with 303 electoral votes, and they're telling us he needs to "unite a divided country."


Nonsense.This election was a clear and unequivocal victory for the populist positions the president took on the campaign trail”. – Richard Eskow, www.Smirkingchimp.com blog
------

Listening to newly re-elected Prez Barack Obama a couple nights ago, one could forgive him for flighty, over-generous, fantasy rhetoric in the wake of his resounding electoral victory – which now lo0ks like it will conform with Nate Silver’s forecast of 332 electoral votes to 206 for Mittens. That is why we need to take with a grain of salt his oratory about “working with Mitt Romney” or any of the other Gooper Fiends who, if they’d won would have had THEIR way and all of us eating out of bird feeders and dumpsters. So, let’s drop the bipartisan bull shit one time. Those fuckers would not give one nanoscale crumb to us had they achieved the same result, and we owe them nothing!

While the rarefied rhetoric can be accepted – temporarily – it must not be the basis of any policy decisions, and certainly not in any pandering to the ‘pukes for any “Grand Bargain” of the odious form floated two years ago. With the Reptiles yielding maybe one fourth in revenues, with the other THREE-fourths in egregious spending cuts – including to Medicare and Social Security, i.e. the “entitlements” the ‘pukes have had a boner to cut since the year dot.

Boehner’s plea yesterday for “fiscal cliff compromise” based on yielding a wee bit of revenue in the form of closing some tax loopholes must therefore be spat upon, with large globs and laughed at – howler style. People in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere didn’t stand in line for eight hours – sometimes barely making it to the ballot casting – for the sake of bald appeasement and give away to these ass- suckers. No –they stood in those lines, wherever the lines were – despite the Repuke efforts to suppress votes- because they believed Obama’s campaign speeches were based on genuine populism - not cynical political manipulation which in the end would sacrifice the very self-interest the 60 odd million Obama supporters cast ballots for!

This is why – especially after the nasty lessons of the debt ceiling crisis of 2010, Obama must not give ONE inch to these turds! Let them sink or swim, or suck shit. That’s putting it as nicely as I can. (And, oh btw, I’m in a good mood today after seeing a hilarious video on one idiot Wingnut blogger’s website – which compensated for having to get dental work done!)

Let’s understand a few things here, which I hope Obama does: Boehner, McConnell and the rest of their Klan have nothing to stand on – no room to maneuver. THEY are the ones who most desperately want to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” because it will mean automatic repeal of all the tax cuts – including those for their millionaire beneficiaries. THEY are the ones that have the most to lose and are in the worst bargaining position, so it makes more sense to adopt Sen. Patty Murray’s “cliff diver” paradigm and go over!

If the asinine repukes don’t want that then let THEM cede the most – by which I mean at LEAST HALF in new revenues from pure marginal tax INCREASES, not just pissant loophole closings or “simplifications”. Then, Obama can reasonably consider a judicious spending cuts aspect. But…..let’s make this clear once and for all:  the ¼ tax hikes and ¾ spending cuts formula is now passé. That was last time and 'pukes passed on it. THIS time the formula changes to ½ spending cuts and ½ pure tax hikes and at the marginal rates (at least) of the Clinton years – when, btw, 20 million new jobs were created.

There can be NO other deal and if Whiny Boehner and his Tea party crew don’t like it let them all take a long long walk on short pier.

As for the sequestration coming on Jan. 2, and the fear instilled in McConnell, Boehner and the other boneheads because of the imminent $600 b in military cuts – TOUGH SHIT! They brought it on by the failure of their members on the Supercommittee to deal, or compromise with the Dems. Now they must live with the fiscal consequences, humble as they are (the $600b is actually spread over ten years and merely reduces the rate of growth for the Pentagon, not in any sense an absolute cut in funding!)

As for the “fiscal cliff” itself, as Ezra Klein of the WaPo noted, it’s more a fiscal “bump”. All this hysteria is merely fomented by the corporate blow dried bimbos and himbos to try to frighten the policy makers into taking precipitous action. Meanwhile, the Wall Street sharks are using DOW nosedives as blackmail to try to get favorable action, i.e. extending ALL Bush tax cuts.

Sorry! This we cannot afford, if debt-deficit gurus like David Walker, Ernest Bowles, Alan Simpson and others are to be taken at their word. Yes, on average, the typical American Middle class family earning $60,000 will see a net increase of $2,200 in their bills to the IRS. But this is a small sacrifice to make compared to seeing their future Medicare cut in half, with premiums raised 100% or more and Social Security sliced by using a new COLA formula – with seniors losing up to $900 a year, every ten years. This would be catastrophic given that up to 55% of seniors are already living on only $21,000 a year and this is mostly coming from Social Security.

As for the Right’s warmongers, they also will be doing a full court press for Obama to attack Iran, prodded on by bellicose Israelis, but this he cannot do. For one, it will truly wreck the economy (unlike the mythical “fiscal cliff”) sending oil prices up over $250 a barrel. For another, the Russians will not sit back passively and watch as their investments go up in smoke and flames. To give in to the warmonger punks would therefore be the most colossal stupid thing ever done.

Once more the election delivered at least massive political capital to Obama. He needs to have the cojones to use it, not squander it by pussyfooting around with his sworn enemies, trying to make nicey-nice.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Mr. Obama, but we ARE divided by Red and Blue states! (One reason that secession of the 'Reds" may be the only sane and ultimate solution.) The sooner you acknowledge that fact and accept it,  the sooner you will be the proud PARTISAN you ought to have been in your first term, and pave the way for being a genuine leader…..as opposed to a Wuss.

Robert Samuelson's Dishonest Economics

Robert Samuelson, WaPo Neoliberal PR hack, has a solution for the ongoing deficit impasse ('How to Get A Deficit Agreement', today) which begins with the proposition that the automatic spending cuts required by sequestration are unfair and unbalanced. He further insists "the whole sequestration process is something of a sham". He claims, with straight face:

"The sequester is not neutral. though defense spending represents 19 percent of the budget in 2012 it would absorb half the cuts. Moreover, many entitlements (Social Security, Medicare) were excluded from the cuts."

He goes on to bitch:

"The sequestration now scheduled for next January means about another $500 billion in military cuts over the decade. These are in addition to the $487 billion in defense reductions already in the BCA and billions of earlier cuts ordered by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates."

Now, here are the facts and aspects this reprobate PR flack hasn't mentioned, for good reason:

- The military has been the beneficiary of a bloated, obscene budget - unpaid for by any taxes - since 2001! Indeed, the Pentagon budget doubled between fiscal year 2000 and 2001 and is now so big that it dwarfs the defense budgets of all the other nations of the planet together! Unlike any time in our previous history, when the military reaped its production and weapons via paid for taxes, this post--Bush pre-emptive war lot has been on the deadbeat end for over 11 years!

- Over this same time, I repeat the past 11 years, the beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare have continued to pay in their 6.2% in FICA taxes (the only respite being the recent payroll tax cut...which may not be a good idea in the end) and whose Medicare premiums -expenses have increased 133% over that time compared to only a 31% increase in paid benefits (COLAs suspended for over 3 years) hence amounting to a pure benefits cut!

- Given the military's unfunded liabilities, including $1.1 trillion reported "missing" since 1999 (which money they've been unable to account for) according to former defense analyst Chuck Spinney in an August, 2002, PBS NOW appearance, and their free ride via no tax support, the actual numbers show they've seized 58 cents of every federal dollar since 2001. Further, they've increased their share of GDP (unpaid for via taxes btw) to nearly 4.2% or in the words of Chuck Spinney: "Ensuring a war on Medicare".

- The "cuts" being bruited about for the military, that Samuelson has his panties in a twist over, are actually not direct military-defense cuts but ancillary cuts such as to VA funding including pensions, benefits, TSA support, and other security.....but not paring back on massive Pentagon boondoggles like the F-35 (estimated at $0.3 billion each) which provide jobs in mainly repup districts.

- The same "cuts", as numerous real world economists (e.g. Paul Krugman) have noted, do NOTHING to contain the GROWTH of Defense-Pentagon spending they only SLOW it! Given a whopping $750b a year budget (plus 'supplementals' for Afghanistan etc.) then the $98.7 b a year in proposed cuts Samuelson's yelping about appears for what it really is: a gnat in a snowstorm.

What this overpaid asshole really wants is simply to gut Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that, according to the Economic Policy Inst., the average income for seniors on SOCIAL SECURITY is $12,000! Thus his yelping about "unfair defense cuts" is merely the ruse and smokescreen to try to justify it and protect the interests of the Military-Industrial complex! His "solution" then to the sequestration he maintains is exactly what we'd expect of a pro-defense establishment PR mutt (ibid.):

"Instead split the $1.2 trillion in automatic savings (to defense) between across the board tax increases and automatic across the board cuts in entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare"

In other words, this dork wants NO further cuts to his precious military, and only across the board cuts to the programs on which so many seniors depend (he has to know that any increase in taxes will NEVER be accepted by the Goopers). What is truly amazing is not so much that he could propose such an outrageous solution, but that the fucker still has a job, period! But then we know that in the modern world of pretend corporate journalism, there's always a place for public relations hacks and their hangers-on.