I Gave You Fair Warning

I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of days this Gaius Publius cross-post to Naked Capitalism: Like Nixon to China, It Takes a Democrat to Put the First Knife in Social Security. It makes the point that the ’emergency’ about Social Security is the need to start paying back all of the money that was looted from the trust fund to pay for Bush’s tax cuts and wars. The ‘surplus’ that Clinton left was all Social Security Trust Fund payments, and other taxes hadn’t quite been enough to cover the cost of government.

So when the Shrubbery cut taxes and got involved in two unfunded wars, he was blowing through the retirement funds of the workers. All of these games are to avoid repaying the money that the Republicans borrowed under the Hedgemony.

As Yves noted today Zero has put cuts to Social Security and Medicare in the middle of the budget debate.

I realize that there are still a few people around who haven’t figured out that these cuts are Zero’s idea. He was talking about ‘fixing’ Social Security when he was a candidate in 2007. This, together with his voting record, is the reason I rated him a moderate to conservative Republican in January of 2008. and why I have never voted for him.

If Joe Biden actually wants to run for President in 2016, he is going to have to resign when this becomes official. You have no chance of winning the Democratic nomination backing Social Security benefit cuts. Democrats running in the 2014 election are going to be facing a massive negative campaign based on these recommendations. It could cost them the Senate, and give the Republicans a bigger majority in the House.

Someone needs to sit Zero down and explain to him that no ‘Grand Bargain’ is going to last more than two years because every two years there is a new Congress that has no obligation to go along with anything done in the previous Congress.

You should check out Class War Kitteh, especially this one [via Lambert at Corrente].