Depends on which Edward M. Kennedy you’d ask. Teddy Kennedy of 1978, who stood up to challenge Jimmy Carter no matter the cost, he might have one opinion of Barack Obama’s presidency. I remember that Kennedy, while I stood in gas lines in New York City and watched how helpless America looked during the Iranian [...]
Tag Archives | Medicare
Pelosi: Give me a ‘Satan Sandwich’ with ‘Satan Fries on the Side’
BREAKING… HOUSE PASSES ‘SATAN SANDWICH’ It was 1978 and Jimmy Carter was on his way down, down, down, and Donna Summers, disco and Reaganomics was on the way in and up. So, if in the 21st century we’re going to revisit Republican economics of the ’80s, we might as will bring back disco too. Democratic [...]
NBC Analysis: Democrats in ‘Retreat’
NBC’s “First Read” has a devastatingly blunt headline on the Democrats this morning: “in retreat.” But Democrats contend they will win the “longer-term war.” But when you take a step back from the hour-by-hour movements in this debate, it’s obvious how much ground the White House and Democrats have conceded. First, they retreated on their [...]
Boehner Drags Tea Party Into Reality
These aren’t the sounds of a Republican revolt. By the end of Wednesday, Republicans were totally on message about how they chose the best of three plans (the others being Harry Reid’s plan or default) and would push it through. Democrats obsessed over which conservative groups were most annoyed, and they were whipping their own [...]
Clueless in Washington
The poll showed support for Obama’s economic agenda has begun to slip in the past nine months. The percentage of people who said Obama has made the economy worse jumped six points since October to 37 percent. That creates a bigger opening for Republican attacks as the presidential campaign begins to heat up. The latest [...]
Pres. Obama, Just Raise the Debt Ceiling
**UPDATED** House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform’s coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans. The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If [...]
Progressive Notes: Citizens at Ohio Townhall Soundoff on Cuts to Big 3.
Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist. In Youngstown Ohio there was a townhall on cuts to social programs sponsored by labor unions and Senator Sherrod Brown. I see what the attendees said as a sample of what is to come across the country in the general election: “Social Security is not an [...]
Dems ‘Volcanic’ Over Obama Being Obama
Democrats reacted with outrage as word filtered to Capitol Hill, saying the emerging agreement appeared to violate their pledge not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as Obama’s promise not to make deep cuts in programs for the poor without extracting some tax concessions from the rich. When “we heard these reports [...]
Obama: Gang of 6 Offer Deal, ‘Modification’ to Entitlements ‘Include Revenue Component’
**UPDATED BELOW** While the Tea Party amateurs in the House pretend to be congressmen and women by enjoying their political theater on Cup, Cap and Balance, because Speaker Boehner is powerless to stop them. It’s a real low for Mr. Boehner, but even Pres. Obama understands he’s screwed, as our House conservatives who have proven [...]
Bill Clinton Would Use 14th Amendment Option ‘Without Hesitation’ then “Force The Courts To Stop Me’
Joe Conason, who has had more access to former Pres. Bill Clinton over the years than most, begins his new website launch The National Memo with a blockbuster on the debt ceiling debate. Former President Bill Clinton says that he would invoke the so-called constitutional option to raise the nation’s debt ceiling “without hesitation, and [...]
71% of Americans Disapprove of Republican Handling of Debt Ceiling
But guess what? Pres. Obama has more people disapproving of what he’s done on the debt ceiling negotiations than approving. That’s quite a feat in the face of such Republican fecklessness. [...] For Republicans, this plan is something close to the best of all possible worlds (sorry, but I do not consider a world in [...]
Obama: ‘If you read the Huffington Post you’d think I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street.’
Rebecca Theiss of the liberal Economic Policy Institute told The Hill she opposes the Reid-McConnell compromise since it appears to involve only spending cuts and not tax increases. – Budget experts raise concerns over McConnell debt-limit fallback plan (h/t David Dayen) It seems Huffington Post has hit a nerve. David Plouffe pulled out a video [...]
Progressive Notes: Fight to Save Medicaid, Some Good Voter Rights News and Other Doings
Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist. Here is the latest ad up from National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. It is running in the DC area to influence our pols: Progressive groups have descended upon this administration like mad over all the talk of cutting SS, Medicare and Medicaid. One [...]
Women Will Be Hit Hardest if Social Security is Cut
Listen up, sisters! Deficit hawks will eat your lunch, your kids, your jobs and your retirement. An economy without a deficit is like a fish without water. Reducing the U.S. federal deficit will make unemployment and poverty worse–way worse. And that means that women’s economic condition will deteriorate even further. – Susan F. Feiner Are [...]
Obama: Means Testing on Medicare
**UPDATED** Pres. Obama made news at the top of his news conference, while a commission on entitlements is definitely in the works, as Larry Kudlow hinted late yesterday. Greg Sargent linked to this before the news conference. The key part of the new McConnell package is a joint committee to review entitlements in a massive [...]
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