Food stamps hit record 80 billion in fiscal year 2012.....where is the job growth coming from ? And as far as spending , battlegroun isues coming into view as well as divergence of both party approaches.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-08/americas-phds-foodstamps

America's PhDs On Foodstamps

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2013 20:19 -0500

When job hunting in one's field turns tough, college graduates may return to school for another degree (even in economics). But for some Americans, multiple degrees won't guarantee a job in their field (or even at the Fed) - or even keep them above the poverty level... Over the past few years, more and more highly educated people have turned to food stamps and other forms of welfare for help...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/eric-zuesse-understanding-president-obamas-strategy-to-force-cutting-social-security-medicare-and-medicaid.html

( tying together all of the increases - food stamps , social security claims , medicare costs - and observing  Obama wants to cut these just as the GOP does.... the Left seems as worried about Obama as they are the  House GOP  )

SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2013

Eric Zuesse: Understanding President Obama’s Strategy to Force Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

By Eric Zuesse, an investigative historian and the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

In order to be able to understand the current debt-limit battle in Washington, here is the essential historical background:

Although the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment states very clearly that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, … shall not be questioned,” the so-called “debt limit,” as it’s currently known – which violates that Amendment boldly, by raising serious questions about “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law” – was instituted only in recent times. It was instituted in 1995, by the Republican-majority U.S. Congress, when Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to coerce President Bill Clinton to slash “entitlements”: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He especially wanted to slash Medicare. The solid-Republican Congressional votes against increasing the debt-limit in order to pay “the public debt of the United States, authorized by law” did actually shut down the Federal Government, for the first time in history, starting on 14 November 1995 for five days, and then yet again on 16 December 1995 for 21 days.

During those two periods, “non-essential” government services were suspended, while the “public debt of the United States, authorized by law” continued to be honored. The second federal shut-down ended on 6 January 1996, when the Republicans finally passed and the President signed “Public Law 104-94,” a Joint Resolution to raise the debt-limit. This action – which until then had always been treated in Congress as routine – enabled the U.S. Government to resume and continue to function, and the federal debt to continue to be paid.

Between that time and this, Congressional Republicans have insisted on their right to violate this provision of the 14th Amendment, and Democratic Presidents have not challenged that right. While Republicans have been determined to force cutting “entitlements,” Democratic Presidents have been ambivalent about it. That is: Presidents Clinton and Obama have shown by their actions that they didn’t/don’t want to use the force of Constitutional law to counter Republicans’ force of this new congressional precedent, of eliminating the previously routine nature of increasing the federal debt-limit. Clinton and Obama have accepted Republicans’ option to violate the Constitution’s provision that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, … shall not be questioned.”

During an early-December White House “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 12/06/2012,” the President’s Press Secretary was asked “whether the President would invoke executive power and the 14th Amendment,” and Mr. Carney responded: “This administration does not believe that the 14th Amendment gives the President the power to ignore the debt ceiling – period.” In other words: Barack Obama was now officially on record as removing that weapon from the available arsenal in his negotiations with Congressional Republicans about the debt limit. They could now quote him as agreeing with them, that the change in Congressional custom that had taken place on this matter in 1995 was simply Congress’s assumption of a power that Congresses had always had – nothing violating the Constitution at all.

Barack Obama had previously caved to the Republicans without fighting, concerning his elimination of the public option from his “Obamacare,” and more recently breaking his long-made promise never to compromise on increasing taxes on the top 2%, $250,000+, and he had also chosen not to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire on the fiscal cliff; but now, the only thing that realistically remained in his arsenal of weaponry against Republicans’ forcing slashes in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, regulatory enforcement, and many other vital government programs, was simply handed away by him, even well before the fiscal cliff came on January 1st. Clearly, therefore, Mr. Obama is determined to give Republicans much of what they want on these matters. He evidently wants to find a way to allow that to happen. He wants House Republicans to be able to block the Federal Government from paying its previously contracted debts, so as to force him to cut “entitlements.”
On all prior occasions in which Obama has caved on vital details before even negotiating with Republicans about them, he had the public on his side but caved by his own choice. Polls showed about a 2-to-1 support for the availability of a public option; polls showed about a 2-to-1 support for the $250,000 benchmark for increasing tax-rates. But Obama conceded on those matters because he had lied to Democrats – and even to many moderate Republicans – about those claimed goals of his, and his actions showed that he actually agreed more with the goals of congressional Republicans on these issues than he did with Democrats and others who, in poll-after-poll on them, showed that they agreed with his stated (and even promised) positions on them.
Now he is repeating this same behavior, regarding cuts to “entitlements.” Yet again, polls show that the public rejects raising the retirement age, reducing the inflation-measure in calculating benefits, and the other Republican-pushed measures; but Obama is doing all he can to help Congressional Republicans get what they want on these issues.
Barack Obama had, even earlier, driven Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to fits with his back-door efforts to gut such “entitlements,” as when he had appointed the conservative Democrat Erskine Bowles to serve opposite the extremely conservative Republican Alan Simpson as being the two co-chairs on the White House’s “bi-partisan” federal debt commission concerning entitlement “reform.” (The Commission produced recommendations that Congressional Democrats roundly repudiated for slashing entitlements, and that Republicans condemned for increasing taxes.) Obama had set this Commission up to deal with the soaring federal deficits that had been caused by Bush’s 2008 economic collapse, by their using those federal deficits as an excuse to slash entitlements and thus produce even more suffering for the poor, at the same time as Wall Street was being bailed out. (Bowles was supported by the very Wall Street banks that were being bailed out by taxpayers. Simpson was a born conservative who followed in his father’s footsteps as Wyoming’s Republican U.S. Senator. His father had been quite extreme: “one of six Republican senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”) So, that was a wolf-in-charge-of-chicken-coop type of operation, which Congressional Democrats opposed. Republicans opposed it because it would have meant increasing taxes – it wasn’t conservative enough for them. Thus, on the very same day, 28 March 2012, when Bowles-Simpson was finally dashed in the House, the House passed instead the Paul Ryan budget, which Mitt Romney ended up running on, against Obama. The 2012 “election” was thus between two conservatives, one of whom pretended not to be.

Yet again, Pelosi and Reid are tearing their hair out about Obama’s deceits and his preemptory caves on vital issues. On January 4th, Pelosi in her weekly press briefing was asked about using the 14th Amendment to annihilate the Republicans’ threats to violate the 14th Amendment, and Pelosi said, “I’ve made my view very clear on that subject. But I’m not the president of the United States.” On the same day, Ryan Grim at Huffington Post bannered “Harry Reid Would Back Obama If He Bucks GOP On Debt Ceiling: Source.” Reid “has privately told other Democrats, including President Obama, that if the administration used its constitutional and executive authority to continue paying its debts in the face of House Republican opposition, he would support the approach.”
The way this would work is: Republicans would repeat the 1995 shut-down cliff-hanger, and President Obama would cite the 14th Amendment, and possibly also the trillion-dollar-coin tactic, to continue paying the U.S. Government’s debts; and the matter would then go to the Supreme Court to be adjudicated. But Obama has already, through his Press spokesperson, said that he won’t use the 14th Amendment. That will leave only the coin-tactic, which is less likely to succeed. He has already publicly trashed his biggest weapon.
Democrats in Congress cannot publicly say that they despise a Democrat in the White House, but the signs indicate that they do. On the other hand, what will be their response if the President continues along this path? Pursuing this trajectory would be far worse than anything that happened during the Clinton years. There is no way of knowing, ahead of time, what would happen if he does that.

and......

SUN JAN 06, 2013 AT 01:00 PM PST

Lives of the party: Looking past Obama for a progressive Democratic coalition

bybillmonFollowforDaily Kos

 
 
• 68 Comments / 68 New

I think it’s fair to say that the outcome of the latest battle in America’s endless fiscal war hasn’t done anything to improve President Obama’s image with what Paul Wellstone used to call the Democratic Party wing of the Democratic Party.

Progressives of all stripes have roundly condemned the POTUS for signing a deal thatpreserves 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts (even though Obama said, all along, that he wanted to extend something like 75 percent of them).

Depending on who’s talking, this amounts to either a total surrender of the hard-fought progressive gains of Clinton’s first term in office, or the bid of a sociopath (yes, the word was used) to overthrow what remains of the New Deal.

Now I have to admit: Up until now I had not realized that the Clinton years were the Progressive Golden Age. Nor was I aware that the president who pushed through, at great political cost, national health care coverage (an admittedly half-assed version, but still), expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, and gave us the largest peacetime Keynesian stimulus package in U.S. history, was actually Paul Ryan in drag.

But if I’m not here to bury Obama, I’m also not here to praise him. I’ve got my own alphabetical list of betrayals—beginning with drone strikes, continuing through extraordinary renditions (i.e. kidnapping), Gitmo, and Palestine, and ending with warrantless wiretapping. As far as the dirty war (a.k.a. the war on terror) is concerned, the Obama presidency looks to me to be basically Bush’s third and fourth terms—albeit with less torture and more competency.

Given how bad the Bush years were, maybe I should be thankful for that much.

However, despite the round-the-clock Twitter agonizing, I’m finding it hard to feel the burn over the tax deal. Call me a running dog reactionary (these days, it’s probably true) or maybe I just expected to be sold out, but this just doesn’t strike me as worth all the progressive anguish.

What’s a Few Hundred Billion Between Friends?

As Krugman points out, the amount of revenue forgone by lifting the top bracket from $250k to $450k is practically a rounding error, at least in budget terms. And while tax rates on investment income (capital gains, dividends) are still too low, at a time when the Fed is trying to use asset inflation as a backdoor out of the liquidity trap, should fiscal policy really be pushing in precisely the opposite direction?

More to the point, it escapes me why people who claim to understand that the primary economic risk right now is austerity, not a lack of it, are howling for tax increases—on anybody.

If you need to have something in the deal to be indignant about, how about the payroll tax hike? Not only will it put more than million people out of work, the tax itself is about the most regressive and destructive one imaginable. In a sane society we’d be talking about how to replace it, not raise it. But I digress.

Look, I understand the argument for raising the mortality rate on the Bush tax cuts: Over the long run, the federal government needs that money to safeguard the social safety net and keep the deficit boogey monster at bay.

Leaving aside the fact that the deficit monster (even the king-sized version allegedly lurking in the out years) might be a lot less scary than our indoctrinated media portends, the bottom line is I’m with Keynes: In the long run, we’re all dead. That being the case, I don’t think we should sacrifice the economically vulnerable to our fears for the future, including our fear that taxes might be hard to raise in that future.

The idea that the remaining Bush tax cuts are now “permanent” may be clever GOP marketing spin, but that doesn’t make it true. Does anything about the fiscal history of the United States, or even the post-Reagan era, suggest marginal tax rates are immutably carved in stone? Nothing is permanent—“nothing is written,” to quote Lawrence of Arabia (or actually, Peter O’Toole playing Lawrence of Arabia).

Recreating a Party of the Left

In that sense, I guess maybe I don’t stand with Keynes: I plan on sticking around for awhile, and I suspect most of you do, too. And, like you, I intend to go on fighting for the society I want my children—and their children, if I’m lucky—to live in.

That being the case, how you feel about this deal—or the debt limit deal to come, which almost certainly will smell even ranker—logically should depend on how immediate you think the harm will be, and what the chances are for fixing the bad stuff before it seriously damages the social safety net.

That, in turn, should depend on where you think we stand in the political cycle that more or less began with the election of Ronald Reagan almost a third of a century ago.

The point I’m getting to, at last, is that this is about much more than Obama and his alleged sociopathology. This is about the future of the Democratic Party, and, for that matter, about what we dare to call the progressive movement—which, let’s be honest, to past generations of progressives, wouldn’t look very progressive at all.

Conservative apostate Bruce Bartlett (last seen in this space getting his hide ripped off by Markos for daring to compare the modern Democratic Party to the segregationist Dixiecrat party of old) puts it this way:

the nation no longer has a party of the left, but one of the center-right [i.e. the Democrats] that is akin to what were liberal Republicans in the past—there is no longer any such thing as a liberal Republican—and a party of the far right.

Can anyone deny this? It’s not even new: Readers of Bob Woodward’s book about the Clinton economic plan, The Agenda, may recall the scene where Bob Rubin informs the president that the plan is for him to kneel down and suck Wall Street’s dick (instead of the other way around), and an exasperated Clinton shouts: “I hope you're all aware we’re the Eisenhower Republicans here!”

Truer words never spoken. And it took a bunch of guys like Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay to make us all fully appreciate the enlightened liberalism of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But I’m here to argue that the “liberal Republicanization” of the Democratic Party, currently on full display in the ongoing fiscal talks, is actually evidence of success, not failure. It is a success that could—not certainly, not probably, but just possibly—lead to a more progressive future. But getting from here to there obviously isn’t going to be easy.

Obama’s Not the One

My analysis starts with the observation that there are some striking similarities between the current political cycle (the Age of Reagan) and the previous one (the Age of Roosevelt).

A short-hand way of explaining those similarities—and their significance—would be to say that I look at Obama as the Democratic Nixon.

I realize that probably doesn’t go down well with the Obama fans out there, so let me add immediately that it isn’t meant to be taken literally. Nixon really was a sociopath, if not a psychopath—a criminal of monstrous dimensions (See: Hanoi, 1972 Christmas bombing of). And that’s not even bringing Watergate into the discussion.

Unless Michelle Bachmann’s paranoid fantasies about Solyndra are actually true, or the drone program is much worse than we now know, Obama isn’t even close to being in Nixon’s league. He actually seems to be a pretty good guy, for an Emperor.

But in the current political cycle, Obama sits right there in Tricky Dick’s spot—after the Democratic Eisenhower (Clinton) but before the Democratic Reagan, i.e. the one who will free the Matrix and bring balance to the force.

A long time ago, back at my old blog, I wrote a couple of long posts about the dialectics of American politics—the back-and-forth flow of power between the two major parties—and how the parties themselves are constantly being changed thereby.

This reflects the reality is that in a democratic (well, quasi-democratic) system, victories and defeats, even big ones, are never final. Rather, they set in motion the partisan changes that eventually drive the next cycle.

In the American system, this process can be very deceptive, since it usually (but not always—just ask the Whigs) results in the transformation of the two existing parties, rather than their replacement by new ones.

So it has been both in the Age of Roosevelt and the Age of Reagan.

The coming of the New Deal hived off big chunks of the old Republican coalition (Midwestern farmers, small business owners, blacks), turning the Democrats into the majority party. To survive, the GOP was forced to adapt, and did so by becoming the “New Deal Lite” party, much to the fury of its own conservative base. The moderates—i.e. the Eisenhower Republicans—prevailed because they knew how to win elections in a typically hostile environment.

But majorities are inherently fractious and hard to manage—and even harder to reform. Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, the competing demands of old and new Democratic constituencies first undermined and then shattered the New Deal coalition.

The GOP, meanwhile, grew increasingly receptive both to conservative ideas (in an era of New Deal failures, being the New Deal Lite party was no longer advantageous) and to disaffected Democrats, especially those who could be persuaded to overlook their economic interests with cultural and/or racial appeals.

Once Reagan had consolidated these forces, the way was clear for the GOP to demolish the Democrats in the 1980 and 1984 elections and emerge as the new majority party.

The Nixon Transition

But between Eisenhower and Reagan there was Nixon: By political pedigree, an Eisenhower Republican (Ike’s veep), but by personal style a conservative—not least in the way he drove the liberals of the time absolutely ape shit.

A transitional figure, in other words, not a transformative one—acceptable to both wings of his party at key moments (like the 1968 primaries), but not really trusted by either of them.

In terms of domestic policy, economic policy in particular, Nixon was also something of an enigma—in part because he didn’t care much about it, but also because he and his political team were wary of alienating the Democratic crossovers who had put him in the White House. This meant he lacked the political strength to challenge an orthodox Democratic Congress, as Reagan would and could do a decade later.

On the other hand, Nixon’s rhetoric very much prefigured Reagan in its contempt for Ivy Leaguers, liberal bureaucrats, and welfare queens—the Satanic trinity of the conservative imagination. And he wasn’t entirely impotent when it came to policy: He was able to kill or cripple the more progressive, activist elements of LBJ’s Great Society program—but only because conservative Democrats helped him do it.

If you flip that story over, so that you’re looking at the reverse image, you can see the Democratic Party, and its leader, as they stand today.

It definitely isn’t the party of my childhood, which rested on a four-legged stool of industrial unions, minorities, Southern whites, and a smattering of liberal professionals. The first leg has been whittled to a toothpick by globalization and white flight, the second is now painted in rainbow colors, not basic black, the third detached and joined itself to the GOP's stool, while the fourth has grown by leaps and bounds—almost to the point where the party now looks more like a leg of the stool that educated and affluent liberals sit on, rather than the other way around.

On the other hand, those changes also put the Democrats in a position once again to credibly claim to be the nation’s majority party—on cultural and demographic grounds, at least.

Between Past and Future: Obama in the Middle

But the process isn’t complete, and the Democrats still bear the scars of their years in the minority, just as the GOP did in Nixon’s time. The formerly GOP-leaning suburbs that voted for Obama twice are still largely Republican in their local politics, and battlegrounds at the congressional level. To a certain extent, Democrats are still looking over their shoulder, nervous that their new suburban supporters will abandon them.

These are the political realities that have shaped Obama’s presidency, and his economic positions. The Democratic Party has always had a fiscally conservative wing, sympathetic with (if not wholly owned by) Wall Street. The influx of affluent professionals into the party, and the parallel collapse in labor power, have greatly empowered that wing.

Where we stand now isn’t exactly the inverse of the positions of the two parties in Nixon’s day (history may rhyme; it never repeats) but it’s close enough for government work, so to speak.

This is why it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Obama, the transitional leader of a coalition in transition, is governing from the center or even the center right, his progressive campaign rhetoric notwithstanding—just as Nixon often appeared to be governing from the center or center left, his conservative rhetoric notwithstanding.

But it’s also important to recognize that Obama, for all his policy centeredness, still represents a break with the “Eisenhower Republican” phase of the Democratic Party revival.

Whatever you think of Obamacare, it marked a shift to the left from the Clinton program (or at least the Clinton accomplishments). So did the stimulus, Dodd-Frank, the auto bailout, and the Obama NLRB.*

*It's funny how almost all of the recent coverage of the NLRB that I can find on Google is from the right-wing press. Don't progressives care about this stuff any more?

These weren't just products of the financial meltdown (after all, the Democratic Congress that approved them was elected two years before the crisis hit). They were early signs that the political cycle has turned.

Emphasis here on the word "early." Every political trend has its counterfactuals. The 1974 post-Watergate blowout election, for example, looked like a GOP death blow at the time, but merely postponed the party’s triumph for a few years. It’s a lesson the teabaggers of 2010 are now chewing over in the wake of 2012—although I don’t expect them to digest it any time soon.

Looking for Hope Without the Proles

But while the Democratic tide seems to be rising again, we’ve no way of knowing if it will turn into a progressive flood that eventually washes away the remnants of the Reagan coalition and changes the “center right” party that Obama inherited into a center left (or just plain left) party that a Democratic Reagan might lead.

Certainly, there are plenty of reasons why it won’t, and can’t. One is the enduring power of the corporatist wing of the party, and the corresponding weakness of organized labor: the traditional powerhouse of progressive economic policy.

God knows I don’t want to be accused of being an optimist here—I have a reputation to protect. It’s laughably easy to imagine a majority party that staunchly backs a woman’s right to choose, supports gay marriage, appeals to African Americans and Hispanics with a carefully selected set of valence issues—and quietly cooperates in dismantling the social safety net under the guise of “reforming” it.

It’s easy to imagine such a party because we already have one.

On the other hand, the economic trends don’t appear very friendly to such a party. Prospects seem dim for a growth resurgence that would take the edge off high unemployment, stagnant wages, and rising income inequality. At some point, being the pro-choice, pro-immigrant, pro-racial sensitivity party might not be good enough.

If there is hope, Orwell said, it lies with the proles. I’m not that naïve.(In any case, in globalized economy, the old industrial proletariat mostly lives in China, and doesn’t get to vote, here or there.) But I can think of two specific reasons to think a more progressive Democratic Party might be possible to build:

• The Democrats (or at least the Obama machine) has re-learned how to organize, and taken it high tech. If those tools could be applied successfully at the local level, and/or by allied forces (unions, nonprofits, etc.) maybe the party itself could develop the grassroots muscle the unions once provided—which in turn could be used to advance an economic agenda, not just win elections.
• The white-collar professionals and paraprofessionals who have defected to the Democrats on cultural grounds are also now in danger of being proletarianized. Technology is rendering their skills (e.g. medical diagnostics, legal research, engineering design, etc.) obsolete. This might make them amenable to a more progressive economic approach.

Don’t Mourn, Organize

We all know the obstacles: A sluggish, corporate-controlled media that likes the status quo just fine, thanks; billionaire donors with money to burn (almost literally, in Sheldon Adelson’s case); a largely de-unionized white working class that clings to the GOP even more tenaciously than it does to its guns and religion.

Modern technology notwithstanding, there are no magic wands, just updated versions of the same old democratic (small d) tools: organize, agitate, contribute, vote. But it might not hurt to remember that the original progressives, the people who built the unions and fought for the New Deal, did what they did with those same tools.

In any case, we have to try. Sooner or later, the Republicans are going to learn how to adapt, and will find their own tools for chipping away at the Democratic coalition. The GOP won’t always be held hostage by the teabaggers.

Or, even worse, an economic crisis—one that corporate Democrats have no answers for—will drive otherwise sane and rational voters into the arms of the teabaggers, fueling a resurgence of angry right-wing populism. And if you’re not worried about where that could lead, you haven’t been paying attention.

Either way, if progressives just bitch about Obama, instead of trying to shape his Democratic Party to their own ends, we may wind up looking back on his presidency, and his crummy budget deals, as the progressive Golden Age—or as close as we ever came to one.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/275791-mcconnell-punts-on-hitting-debt-ceiling

McConnell: Tax issue ‘finished completely,’ focus now on spending

By Sam Baker - 01/06/13 09:12 AM ET

  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said Republicans will demand steep spending cuts during the next round of budget negotiations.

McConnell, in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” said President Obama had won all he’s going to get on taxes in last week’s agreement to extend the Bush-era tax rates for most taxpayers.

“The tax issue is over, finished completely. That’s behind us now. The question is: what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting us and our future,” McConnell said.

McConnell said next round of negotiations over a deal to raise the debt-ceiling would need to include Democratic concessions on spending.

President Obama in his weekly address Saturday warned Republicans that a protracted fight over the debt-limit could have disastrous effects on the economy and said he wanted the borrowing limit raised and issues on spending and entitlements resolved separately. 

Republicans, though, believe the debt-limit debate gives them leverage to force Democrats to accept greater cuts and entitlement reform. Some conservatives have suggested allowing the U.S. to hit the debt ceiling if President Obama refuses to concede on further budget cuts, but others fear failing to raise the ceiling would likely cripple the U.S. economy.

The Senate GOP leader, though, disclosed little about his negotiating strategy, declining to say whether he’s willing to let the U.S. hit its debt limit without further cuts. 

“It’s not even necessary to get to that point. Why aren’t we trying to settle the problem?” he said. “We don’t need to use the deadline. We could go through regular order.”

McConnell also punted on whether he would back a partial shutdown of the federal government in the spending battle, a threat his leadership colleague Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) made last week.

McConnell, though, said he expected lawmakers’ focus to be on spending and that other issues including gun control, will likely see no action for the first few months of the year.

“None of these issues are going to have the priority that spending and debt are going to have,” McConnell said. “That’s going to dominate the discussion in Congress for the next two or three months at least.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/275759-obama-will-draw-on-public-support-in-negotiating-with-gop

Obama to draw on public support in new round of economic battles

By Niall Stanage and Amie Parnes - 01/06/13 06:00 AM ET

  

President Obama intends to take a confrontational approach with Republicans in future economic battles by using the same campaign-style events the White House saw as effective in the “fiscal-cliff” fight.

Many in Obama’s party believe that he got the upper hand in the recent deal to avoid the mixture of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts, and that the aggressive approach helped build his public case.

Sources close to Obama say he can fend off Republicans for several reasons: his successful reelection; polling suggesting public support for many of his positions; and division among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Jen Psaki, who served as a press secretary during both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, said that the biggest lesson the president learned from his first term was “the power of the American people” and “the importance of having the will of the American people behind you.”

In practical terms, “that means taking the argument on the road, taking the time, as he did before the fiscal-cliff deal, to explain the stakes... and to use real-world examples of how certain fights impact the middle class,” she added.

Yet there are risks to the approach as well. A Jan. 31 rally Obama held at the White House during which supporters cheered the president on as he scolded Republicans angered the GOP just as sensitive talks with senators were taking place. Republican senators warned it could cost the president votes, though in the end it appeared it did not.

Obama’s supporters want him to press his case forcefully. The left criticized the president during his first term, saying the prodigious organization that had been built up during his 2008 campaign was harnessed only sporadically, if at all, when it came to governing.

Team Obama’s desire to keep the campaign infrastructure alive and vibrant was evident last week, when 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an email blast to supporters with a video of the president talking about the merits of the fiscal-cliff deal.

But any sense of triumphalism over Republicans could spark a backlash in Congress and erode Obama’s image among centrist voters as someone committed to forging bipartisan consensus.

Republicans have long argued that the idea of Obama-as-conciliator is a self-serving fiction put forth by the White House. In recent days, The Wall Street Journal has run two op-eds by prominent conservatives — Fred Barnes and Peggy Noonan— insisting that Obama talks the talk but does not walk the walk when it comes to bipartisanship.

“At Mr. Obama’s campfire, he gets to sing ‘Kumbaya’ solo while others nod to the beat,” Noonan wrote.

The president’s aides firmly deny the characterization.

“The president has demonstrated repeatedly his willingness to find common ground,” one senior administration official said. “He’ll continue to do that, I’m sure. The negotiating positions he takes are in the best interests of the middle class. That will continue to be his North Star.”

Obama aides justify his refusal to negotiate over raising the debt ceiling in a similar fashion. The president has twice in the last week issued unambiguous statements asserting that Congress needs to do what is required to increase the national debt limit, without any quid pro quo attached.

At a brief White House press conference after the fiscal-cliff accord was reached, Obama said: “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed. Let me repeat: We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.”

In his weekly address, recorded in Hawaii and released on Saturday, he made a similar statement, warning against the “dangerous game” of Congress declining to raise the ceiling until the last moment, as happened in the summer of 2011.

“The last time Congress threatened this course of action, our entire economy suffered for it,” he said.

Obama aides insist that this is not political posturing. One administration official said the president will “definitely not” come to the negotiating table. “Full stop,” the official emphasized.

Republicans argue that the president might have little choice, however, lest the public blame him for intransigence.

They also argue that other Obama priorities, notably immigration reform, are achievable, but only if Republicans can be persuaded of their merits.

Asked if the most recent negotiations had poisoned the well around the Capitol, GOP strategist Dan Judy replied, “I think the well was poisoned long before the fiscal-cliff fight. There has been a lot of poison dumped in that well, most notably Obamacare.”

“I think that is really too bad, because there is an opportunity for bipartisan consensus on a lot of these things, especially immigration reform,” Judy added. “If the president really wants to bring along some Republicans on immigration reform, he can do it. But it is incumbent upon him to go to them wanting their help, not offering the kind of ‘my way or the highway’ approach we’ve seen before.”

Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, however, made light of the idea that sharp, campaign-style rhetoric could by counter-productive.

“This ain’t nursery,” he said with a laugh. “The Republicans have been known to use fairly heated rhetoric themselves. When the Tea Party was out in front of the Capitol or turning up at Democrats’ town halls, the Republican Party was not upset by that level of political activity. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

In terms of legislative realities, Simmons also noted that last week’s deal set a potentially useful precedent for Obama. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) jettisoned his usual insistence that he would only bring forth legislation that could win the approval of most of his own conference.

“Boehner did not have to live by the rule of getting the majority of Republicans,” Simmons said. “Some of these big bills are things that are good for the country and he can get them passed with Democratic votes. This is a precedent for bills to be passed by a majority of the House rather than a majority of the majority.”

Still, the question about Obama’s willingness to make concessions is hotly disputed across the political divide.

Psaki insisted that the president had expressed an openness to reforming programs cherished by Democrats, including Social Security.

“He has reached out an olive branch and he’s shown he’s willing to make tough choices,” she said. But she added, “He’s also not going to cut programs that have a dramatic impact on the middle class.”

To Judy, the Republican strategist, Obama’s olive branches have always looked illusory, part of a sleight-of-hand in pursuit of political gain.

“I think his press conferences and campaign events are symptomatic of a larger disease, which is his unwillingness to strike a deal. If you talk to Republicans, it’s his inability to negotiate with them in good faith that is really what upsets them,” he said.

“The fundamental problem is that he’s not willing to make a deal.”

http://www.scherandbassett.com/blog/2013/01/social-security-disability-backlog-ensnares-californians-applicants-across-us.shtml

On behalf of Scher,Bassett & Hames posted in Social Security Disability on Saturday, January 5, 2013

In several posts now, we have told California readers about the Social Security Disability backlog and how difficult it can be for people who need benefits to get their applications approved.

We have given you the numbers -- an estimated 750,000 people across the country are waiting for a hearing -- but now, we want to take a look at the human element of this story.

By "human element," we mean people like the mother of two who had to stop working after her breast cancer spread to other parts of her body. She has said she would have liked to keep working, but the sheer number of medical appointments, to say nothing of the toll the treatments took on her, made that impossible.

The woman said she thought Social Security Disability would cover her basic needs, but her claim was denied without explanation. She has been waiting about a year now, with neither a paycheck nor disability payments to help support her.

We are not relating this story to make anyone sad. Rather, we are relating it is because it shows that the Social Security Disability backlog is not just a long waiting list of faceless applications -- it's a long list of people who need help and are not getting it, or are not getting it fast enough. Hopefully, that is a fact known to our elected officials and those who have the power to address the issue.

Source: The Arizona Republic, "Social Security disability applications backlogged," Ryan Randazzo, Dec. 2, 2012

• In our Santa Clara County law office, we often help clients file for Social Security Disability benefits. We invite you to visit the Social Security Disability benefits portion of our website if you are interested in gathering more information.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/federal-food-stamp-program-spent-record-804b-fy-2012

Federal Food Stamp Program Spent Record $80.4B in FY 2012

By Patrick Burke

January 4, 2013

Subscribe to Patrick Burke's posts

    

(AP Image)

(CNSNews.com) -- During fiscal year 2012, the U.S. government spent a record $80.4 billion on food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a $2.7 billion increase from FY 2011.  (Fiscal year 2012 ran from Oct. 1, 2011 through Sept. 30, 2012.)

According to the Monthly Treasury Statement that summarizes the receipts and outlays of the federal government, $80,401,000,000 went towards SNAP during FY 2012, which was a $2.7 billion increase from $77,637,000,000 in FY 2011.

The SNAP program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which also runs other food assistance programs under the auspices of the Food and Nutrition Service Agency.

In total, nearly $106 billion was spent on food assistance in 2012, with $18.3 billion that went to “Child Nutrition Programs.”

Total federal spending on SNAP has increased each year during President Obama’s first term in office. In FY 2009 -- when SNAP was still known as the “Food Stamp” program -- the government spent approximately $55.6 billion.

By FY 2010, SNAP spending increased to nearly $70.5 billion. Between FY 2009 and FY 2012, SNAP’s budget jumped by approximately $24.8 billion.

According to an April 2012 report from the Congressional Budget Office, SNAP outlays increased by $42 billion between 2007 and 2011, and the number of SNAP participants increased by 70 percent.

During FY 2012, the U.S. government ran a $1.089 trillion dollar deficit, down from nearly $1.3 trillion in FY 2011.