... Social Security affects our larger budget problem. Annual benefits already exceed payroll taxes. The gap will grow. The trust fund holds Treasury bonds; when these are redeemed, the needed cash can be raised only by borrowing, taxing, or cutting other programs.
It was national policy not to reduce the debt and later redeem S.S. Treasury bonds fairly easily through a commensurate raising of the debt to "normal" levels. Now that that policy was followed, Samuelson is saying there will be a negative budgetary impact and hints strongly that the bonds should be defaulted (at least partially).
Of interest, while Social Security was building a surplus, making the misleading "unified budget" look good, hiding the reality of the General Fund deficit, and making it easier to advocate cutting taxes, Samuelson was silent.
... some encouraging new jobs numbers show the economy is moving in the right direction, but is it fast enough? Where are the American jobs? Could buying more American-made products be part of the solution? As part of a special ABC News series of reports, "This Week" looks at "Made in America" with special guests ABC News anchors Diane Sawyer, David Muir and Sharyn Alfonsi.
Fox News: It's all about promoting the interests of the rich...
... and crushing those at the bottom.
I don't think I've seen a more vivid example of a double standard on Fox. In the clips shown by Jon Stewart, teachers and bankers are both getting taxpayer money. Watch who Fox supports and who Fox attacks.
As a two-week spending bill sailed through Congress, the White House hardly made a move. That must change ...
Obama has got to step up his game. Maybe he's been biding his time, waiting for the right moment -- when the GOP goes after programs sure to stir up a public ruckus. But the ease with which Republicans have moved the first round of cuts through Congress seems bound to increase the GOP's appetite for deeper gouging. There are too many moderate Democratic senators facing tough 2012 election fights to count on sustained resistance from that corner, without some help from the White House.
When is it going to arrive?
UPDATE: The Hill reports Obama springing into action after the Senate vote. The president called on congressional leaders to meet immediately with Vice President Biden, White House chief of staff Bill Daley and budget director Jack Lew to start hammering out a longer-term budget plan.
Briefing reporters at the White House while negotiators made their way to the VP's office on the Hill, top administration officials said they had agreed to cut another $6 billion from the measure (and would be willing to go even further) in an attempt to bridge the party divide.
Minutes before lawmakers and Vice President Joseph Biden met to discuss a funding measure to keep the government operational through the fiscal year, the Obama administration offered the first formal compromise.
Briefing reporters at the White House while negotiators made their way to the VP's office on the Hill, top administration officials said they had agreed to cut another $6 billion from the measure (and would be willing to go even further) in an attempt to bridge the party divide.
We have made it "clear that we can meet them halfway," said top economic adviser Gene Sperling at an off-camera briefing for reporters, "[W]e have made it clear we are committed to doing that and we are willing to cut further if we can find common ground on the budget with reducing spending in the right way while protecting our investments in education, innovation and research."
Yesterday's New York Times poll showed that the public, by a 60-33% margin, opposes taking away collective bargaining rights from public employees. Conservatives pronounced the poll hopelessly biased. Fred Barnes -- last seen here calling for poll results designed to produce support for the Republican agenda -- declared, under the headline "Skewed Public Sector Union Poll Ignores Reality":
A New York Times/CBS News poll never lets you down. Today’s survey features a skewed sample (36 percent Democratic, 26 percent Republican), tricky questions, and an emphasis on results likely to thrill liberals and Democrats.
Commentary ("A Shoddy New York Times Poll"), Ira Stoll ("A Slanted New York Times Poll"), the Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, the Heritage Foundation, two different NewsBusters posts all chimed in making the same point.
And now, the Wall Street Journal has a new poll out asking this question. Finally, a chance to correct the record -- Right, freedom-loving champions of accurate public opinion data?
Uh oh:
Eliminating collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers over health care, pensions or other benefits would be either “mostly unacceptable” or “totally unacceptable,” 62% of those surveyed said. Only 33% support such limits.
It looks like the conspiracy to slant the news runs deep.
My favorite post of all of the criticisms comes from Commentary's John Steele Gordon, who sneers at the Times poll:
How do you square these figures with the results of last November’s elections, in which anti-tax, anti-deficit, anti-public-union forces swept to historic victories in federal and state elections across the country? Well, you can’t, of course. The Times doesn’t even ask this blindingly obvious question, let alone try to answer it.
Although less than 12 percent of the workforce is unionized today, 20 percent of the households in the survey had a union member. Although government workers are 17 percent of the workforce, 25 percent of the households surveyed had one living there. In other words, the sample was wildly skewed toward the very people most likely to give the answers the Times was hoping to hear.
This John Steele Gordon person at Commentary is either a knave or a fool. Hard to say which. In any event, it's obvious that households, containing one or more workers, would have a higher percentage of having at least one unionized or government worker. Gordon's stupid analysis allows him to decry the Times survey as "skewed".
Half the population is male. In a (hypothetical) survey, 75% of the households had a male. Ergo, the survey is skewed. That's John Steele Gordon thinking.
