Posted on 03/21/2011 2:05:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Breaking news: Barack Obama chooses not to lead … again. TPM DC’s Brian Beutler reports that the White House strategy on Social Security will be to wait until everyone else has decided to act before discussing its own approach to reforming what is perhaps the most straightforward of entitlement reforms. This will surprise, well … no one:
The White House will not prominently inject itself into congressional negotiations on Social Security reform until after key legislators in both the House and Senate unveil their plans to reduce projected long-term deficits, according to administration officials.
That won’t please Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, who have attacked Obama for remaining silent in this debate. And these 64 Senate Republicans and Democrats won’t be too happy either. But it’s part of a broader political and policy strategy the administration is employing to keep Obama’s powder dry while Republicans struggle to reduce deficits without increasing revenues in any meaningful way.
The White House’s reticence has been characterized by some as a symptom of a rift between Obama’s economic and political advisers. Some, like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, do in fact believe that a bipartisan deal on Social Security would result in real economic benefits, while others argue that Obama shouldn’t embrace any plan that substantially cuts benefits at all.
Can you feel the leadership coming from the White House? Obama has chosen not to lead on the FY2011 budget, not to lead on the FY2012 budget, and not to lead on the coalition imposing the no-fly zone in Libya. In fact, one doesn’t need to look to the White House but to Brazil, where the President has played soccer and done a samba chair-dance instead of taking an active role in communicating the need for American military intervention in North Africa.
Let’s go right to some direct criticism about the necessity of presidential leadership on entitlement reform, specifically on Social Security. This comes from October 2007, but it’s directly on point:
Conventional thinking in Washington says that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. It says you should hedge, dodge, and spin, but at all costs don’t answer. I reject that notion. I think that on issues as fundamental as how to protect Social Security a candidate for president owes it to the American people to tell us where they stand. Because you’re not ready to lead if you can’t tell us where you’re going.
Well, to be fair, I think that Barack Obama has shown us very clearly in the last two years — and especially over the last few weeks — that he’s not ready to lead, either as a candidate or as President.
same old same old...voting PRESENT in a Obama sort of way!
Obama’s not an Alpha male...he’s a Foxtrot male who wants to be treated like an Alpha on account of his minority status (whatever the heck that is).
That's the big problem with the drug called social security. Has the government ever stopped collecting a tax once they started? How do you still collect a tax for a service you never plan on providing? How do you cut social security while not cutting the tax you impose to fund it? How do you sell paying a social security tax while announcing it's end?
Why is this bad news? We should be thankful that he’s not planning to “reform” Social Security the way he “reformed” health care and banking. Obama’s definition of “reform” is literally re-form, i.e., break it and then restructure it according to his agenda, or I should say, according to the agenda of the puppetmasters who pull his strings. If Health Care reform was written by the big insurance companies, and banking reform was written by the big banks, who would write his SS reform? I shudder to think.
It’s probably more indicative of the mathematics behind it all; there’s no solution but to cut.
I’m with you though, he would just screw it up even worse—if that’s possible.
doesn’t want to have to deal with TWO brushfires among his leftard base I guess
Obama, a corrupt, un-American idiot cannot lead except to the disaster of our Nation.
The other professors (at Chicago Law school) hated Obama because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings...
Clean up the fraud in Medicare first before hammering Soc Sec recipients who paid into the system all of their working lives.
Clean up the fraud in Welfare-=-Section 8 Housing—Food Stamps—WIC—all the other programs for those that refuse to work.
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