|
It started with the "bipartisan" Deficit Reduction Commission, featuring a cast of millionaires ranging from the center right to the hard right. They ignore their own rules, blew their deadlines, didn't issue a final report, but they mulled over a bunch of ideas for cutting the deficit. The ones that don't please our corporate overlords will be ignored. The others will get serious consideration because of the cover provided by the "bipartisan" Catfood Commission (It was appointed by President Obama, you libruls, what are you complaining about?).
In the name of deficit reduction, look for serious discussion of reducing social security benefits for future retirees, raising the retirement age, and means testing to make social security a "welfare" program for people who weren't smart enough to choose careers as investment bankers.
If you point out that the Catfood Commission never issued a final report, or that the recommendations it was mulling over were never legally ratified, you will be dismissed as Not Serious About Deficit Reduction, the Greatest Problem Facing the United States Today. Nitpickers like that can then be ignored as the millionaires in government talk to their millionaire friends in the popular media, and surprise of surprises, they decide that our biggest problem is a bunch of greedy geezers or soon-to-be geezers who want a free check every month from the government.
The big cudgel, though, that they're hefting behind their backs, is the payroll tax "holiday" for social security. Look for a "bipartisan" review of social security solvency to be undertaken in the next three to six months. The result? Horrors! Because collection of payroll revenue is down, social security's solvency has been ramped back from being able to pay full benefits for the next quarter century or longer to being able to pay full benefits for only 20 years or so. It's a 20% drop in social security's solvency! Something Must Be Done!
That's when the avalanche will get going in earnest.
|