President Obama’s decision to include cuts to Social Security benefits in his budget is wrong policy and dumb politics.

His chained CPI plan is wrong because it hurts Americans who have worked hard their entire lives and who need the support that Social Security gives them. It is wrong because Social Security is financed separately and does not contribute to the deficit. And it is dumb politically because:

1. Republicans will now call the chained CPI Obama’s proposal – or the Democratic proposal.

2. Republicans will try to pass these cuts – because cutting Social Security has always been their goal.

3. Whether the chained CPI passes or not, Republicans will attack Democrats in the next election for trying to cut Social Security.

Furthermore, in the 2014 Congressional elections seniors will vote in larger numbers than the rest of the population – and they will punish Democrats.

The best way to lower the federal deficit is to get Americans back to work so we can pay taxes and decrease deficits as a percentage of a growing economy.

Today’s jobs numbers are proof that misguided austerity is harming the recovery. America should be investing, not cutting.

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit and should not even be part of this conversation.

Join the Campaign for America’s Future in fighting cuts to Social Security benefits. Sign the petition to President Obama: No Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid cuts in your budget.

Every American who cares about jobs and a healthy U.S. economy should pick up the phone right now, call your Congressperson’s office, and tell whoever answers, “I want my representative to vote this week for the Back to Work Budget introduced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”  [Note: The Congressional switchboard is 202 224-3121.]  Also click here to go on record as telling Democrats to vote against the job-killing Ryan budget and for the Back to Work budget.

But we can’t just stop after that.  Beyond this week’s vote, it is very important for progressives to keep building a movement to demand a plan for jobs – like the Back to Work Budget.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in the House, and they will vote almost in lock-step for Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s job-killing budget.  And after that vote, most progressives will go back to trying to soften to impact of Washington’s bipartisan fixation on reducing deficits.  This is important work. We must stop Democrats from offering to cut Social Security benefits.  And we should demonstrate that cutting tax loopholes for the rich is a better deficit-reduction strategy than cutting programs for kids.

But reducing the deficit in a more humane way will not create more jobs for the 20 million Americans who desperately need jobs.  And Democrats shouldn’t delude themselves:  We are not going to win back the House in 2014 by campaigning as the guys who have a better plan for cutting the deficit than the Paul Ryan and the Republicans.  Not while the economy is barely growing or falling backwards.

In 2010, the last midterm Congressional election, Democrats lost the House because they didn’t run on a plan to create jobs.  And they didn’t use such a plan to expose Republican jobs proposals as giveaways to the rich.

President Obama and his team felt Democrats deserved credit for having passed the 2009 stimulus bill and for preventing the economy from falling into another Great Depression.  But rather than call for more action to create jobs (which they could have blamed Republicans for opposing), President Obama’s message in the run-up to that election was “Have patience, the jobs are coming.”  But voters were still not seeing new jobs or a robust recovery, and polls, like Stan Greenberg’s post-election survey for the Campaign for America’s Future, found that a crucial percentage of voters were disappointed in Obama and the Democrats because they “failed to get the economy growing or create jobs.”  And so we lost the House.

Today, despite a presidential campaign that revolved a lot on who had the better jobs plan, the political debate in Washington, driven by the party that lost the presidency, is once again dominated by the question of which party has the best plan to cut deficits.  But Democrats should not forget that voters still care most about jobs.  After the presidential election, 95 percent of Americans told Gallup job creation should be President Obama’s top priority for his second term.

Progressives need to listen to the American majority and build a movement to demand action on jobs.  Of course we should do everything we can to mitigate the damage from Republican austerity measures.  But our more important mission is to lay out an agenda to create jobs and growth.  We should take that agenda to the American people – and we should also demand that the Democrats, who claim to be the party of the middle class and the poor, embrace that agenda (something very much like the CPC Back to Work Budget) and take it into the 2014 elections.

We can and should keep the CPC Back to Work jobs plan alive – and we should build a movement around it.   At town meetings in every district, we should ask some big questions in a very public way:

Which House candidates support creating jobs through investing in infrastructure?  Which candidates understand that, at today’s low interest rates, these long term investments are practically free?  Which Democrats or Republicans are willing to take a tour (in their districts) of eroding bridges, roads, sewer lines or nonexistent rail projects, accompanied by unemployed workers and union members who might get those jobs, if we invest in the future?

Which House candidates want to rehire teachers, police, and first responders?  Who would pledge to find federal revenue to share with the states and cities to reverse the terrible layoffs that have devastated education and public services – and worsened the economic crisis?  Let’s do a tour of school houses and fire stations that would benefit from infrastructure investments, too.

Which candidates will fight to make sure all jobs are good jobs – and all communities full-employment communities?   Candidates should not only go on record for raising the minimum wage and improving benefits like paid sick leave, but they should also be asked what they would do to put jobs into African-American and Hispanic communities.  And they should tell us where they stand on strengthening workers’ rights to bargain for better wages and better benefits.

And which House candidates would go to senior centers and nursing homes in their district?   The questions on the table:  would you force big drug companies to lower their prices – or would you rather cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits and turn Medicaid into a voucher, as Ryan proposes?

The CPC Back to Work jobs plan is just full of ideas that creative organizers could make the focus of the next election.  But in order to get that kind of organizing going, we have to force ourselves to think beyond the next horrendous budget vote in Washington (as important as that may be), and we have to think ahead.

If we frame the debate around the next election, we should be able to get the Democrats’ attention.

And if we frame the debate around the next 10 or 20 years of America’s future – and around whether the next generation (and tomorrow’s retirees) will be able to create a hopeful future of good jobs and opportunities for all – we will surely get the attention and involvement of Americans of all walks of life.  And if we do that, we can not only win back the House, we can rebuild our country.

Our month-long campaign to “disarm the austerity bomb” and repeal the sequester is gaining traction in Washington.

On Monday, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus joined our call, saying if Republicans refuse to compromise, then we should simply “eliminate the sequester.”

No replacements with job-killing austerity measures. No concessions to the Social Security/Medicare haters. Just repeal it.

Today, we’re asking you to send a message to Washington: Repeal the sequester.

Just yesterday, more than 10,000 of our supporters clicked that link to send a sequester repeal message to their members of Congress. But the rest of Washington needs to hear from more of you that repealing the sequester and staving off needless cuts is exactly what the people demand.

The polls show it: 54 percent in a recent Bloomberg poll agreed that the sequester cuts should be stopped.

The economists know it: 350 economists have signed a statement opposing these job-killing cuts. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman recently wrote, “The right policy would be to forget about the whole thing. America doesn’t face a deficit crisis, nor will it face such a crisis anytime soon.”

That’s the dirty secret Washington’s austerity posse won’t tell you. There is no debt crisis. The deficit is down 25 percent since 2009 in relation to the economy, faster than at any time since the demobilization after World War II.

We don’t have a debt crisis. We have a jobs crisis. More cutting will only make it worse.

As Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota put it in their statement: “If this [sequester] goes into effect, it will be one of the most irresponsible legislative failures in the history of the Republic. … Economic growth will slow, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and more people will have to rely on government assistance to meet their basic needs.”

Help us send a message to Congress. Tell Washington: Repeal the sequester.

How many economists does it take to make the Congress, President Obama and the media pay attention? 

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has been warning of the dangers of austerity in his New York Times column and on TV for a long time.  But the media treats him as an outlier, letting him say his piece about how another round of spending cuts aimed at deficit reduction could pitch the weak American recovery back into recession – as it has in England and Ireland and now France and maybe even Germany.  They listen to him, and then they go back to mouthing Peter G. Peterson nonsense about more deficit reduction being essential to economic revival.

Will They Pay Attention to 350 Economists?

With sequestration spending cuts due to begin on Friday, 350 prominent economists have issued an important statement warning that “the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that has infected both parties.”   The economists from universities and research groups across the U.S. are reminding politicians that the U.S. economy is still “marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages.” And they are warning that big spending cuts aimed at reducing deficits could throw the economy back into recession.

The economists’ statement, Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity, was written by Robert Borosage and myself, co-directors of the Institute for America’s Future, and by Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect.  The full statement and list of over 350 signing economists can be found at jobsnotausterity.org.

The economists point to the cautionary example of European countries that have in plunged themselves into recession as a result of misguided policies aimed at reducing deficits. The economists declare, “As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery.”

Will They Listen to 350 Economists and a Shrinking Economy?

There is no doubt that, after the 2009-2010 short burst of stimulus, America’s turn to spending cuts has already damaged a very weak recovery.  The Department of Commerce reports the economy stopped growing and actually shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012.  And plaintive emails from Walmart executives obtained in February by Bloomberg News reflect a sharp decline in retail sales, driven by the last deficit deal that allowed the payroll tax cut stimulus to expire.

On top of this slowing consumer buying power, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf told Congress that if the $1.2 trillion across-the-board sequestration spending cuts are allowed to take place in March, the U.S. economy would lose 750,000 jobs in 2013.  Other analysts have predicted sequestration would result in a loss of up to 1 million jobs.

While some corporate leaders, such as those affiliated with Fix the Debt, have urged Congress to take a hard line on deficit reduction, other corporate leaders have begun to warn that sequestration cuts – or even a “grand bargain” aimed at avoiding sequestration – could so damage the economic recovery that the U.S. could be stuck in low-growth or no-growth mode for years into the future.  The economists releasing today’s statement caution that the elements of a bad “grand bargain” could have such a contractionary impact on the still-fragile economy that the U.S. could sink like the European nations into another serious recession and a decade of high unemployment.

“To make sure the American people are not crippled by another lost decade of joblessness,” the economists call for “presidential leadership — and congressional action — to spur jobs and growth, not dangerous austerity.”

Q:  How many economists does it take to get politicians to pay attention?

A:  351 economists + millions of American citizens mobilized to demand Jobs Not Austerity

This statement is published in full below.  The statement and list of over 350 signing economists can be found at jobsnotausterity.org.

Please share it with your president, with your senators and members of Congress – and, most importantly, with everyone you know who cares about the future of our country.

Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity

The U.S. economy, once in free-fall toward a new depression, has begun to recover. But we are still mired in a prolonged slump marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages. And the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that has infected both parties.

As even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recognizes, it is long term unemployment, not excessive deficits or debt, that is now inflicting the greatest human toll and economic damage. Polls show that voters agree joblessness and a bad economy are much higher priorities than deficits.

Yet too many in Washington are fixated on cutting public spending to balance the budget, not on how to put people back to work and get our economy going. There is no theory of economics that explains how we can deflate our way to recovery. Businesses are not basing investment decisions on how much Congress cuts the debt in 2023. As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery.

In a deep recession, deficit reduction is a moving target. If you cut spending and consumer purchasing power in an already depressed economy, unemployment rises and revenues fall — and the goal of a smaller deficit keeps receding like a mirage in a desert. When private purchasing power is depressed by the aftermath of a financial collapse, only public investment can make up the gap.

The budget hawks have the sequence backwards. Public outlay for jobs and recovery come first, growth is restored, and revenues follow. Budget cuts in a deep slump lead only to a deeper slump.

The government should invest in areas vital to our economy — to repair crumbling infrastructure, to build 21st-century smart-grid, public transportation and renewable energy systems, and to create public and private sector jobs. We should also help states prevent layoffs of teachers and other public servants, make early care and higher education more affordable, and create public service jobs throughout the nation. It can do so by borrowing at record low interest rates. We can also stimulate recovery without increasing deficits by increasing taxes on the wealthy and pumping the proceeds directly into the economy.

Both bipartisan and conservative deficit reduction plans — Simpson-Bowles, Rivlin-Domenici, and the Republican budget — magically assume a recovery to “normal” levels of employment. Yet, the economy is nowhere near normal growth, and budget cutting will only retard growth. At the end of the year, we face a congressionally-created “fiscal cliff,” with automatic “sequestration” spending cuts everyone agrees should be stopped to prevent a double-dip recession. That threat has led to backroom negotiations, backed by a multimillion dollar public relations campaign, toward a “grand bargain” that would maintain tax give-aways for the rich; cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; and impose new, job-killing spending cuts. This is no bargain, and it should be rejected.

President Obama should be commended for proposing a new jobs program. But unless the balance of power in Congress changes dramatically, there is a serious danger that after the election the austerity lobby will prevail.

We need jobs first. With recovery, deficit reduction will come of its own accord thanks to increased revenues in an improving economy. That was the case in the three decades after World War II — when the debt to GDP ratio declined from over 120 percent of GDP in 1945 to under 30 percent by 1978.

In 1945, our leaders placed a priority on putting people to work, not cutting spending. So government doubled down with public investments like the GI bill, housing, and highways — and widespread collective bargaining and equal opportunity laws made sure the rewards of growth were widely shared. Today, we need the same scale of public investments that made sure the greatest generation and their children enjoyed growth, opportunity, and shared prosperity.

In the face of today’s weak economy, the Federal Reserve has vowed to sustain extraordinary measures until unemployment comes down and the economy picks up. But as Chairman Ben Bernanke observed, very low interest rates alone cannot fix this economy. To make sure the American people are not crippled by another lost decade of joblessness, we need presidential leadership — and congressional action — to spur jobs and growth, not dangerous austerity.

The statement and list of over 350 signing economists can be found at jobsnotausterity.org.

With tonight’s State of the Union address, President Obama attempted to refocus his new second term with a focus on jobs and supporting the middle class.  He clearly wants to stop talking about deficits and debt and start talking about reviving the economy for people.  His best line was a clear attempt to pivot in the right direction:

“Let’s be clear: deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. A growing economy that creates good, middle-jobs – that must be the North Star that guides our efforts.”

And yet, as Al Pacino, who longs to escape the mob, laments in The Godfather, “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in” President Obama feels like he has to assert that “a plan to reduce the deficit must be part of our agenda” and that he must keep negotiating with Republicans about cutting spending and raising taxes.  He could have declared tonight that we’ve done enough on deficit reduction – and that, as the Economic Policy Institute has recently explained, we have stabilized the debt as a percentage of GDP and we should be spending money to spur growth.  Instead, President Obama has clearly embraced the urging of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (and Republicans to the right of CBPP) that he needs to find and additional $1.5 trillion more in deficit reductions.  As a result, he’s got most of the progressive movement working earnestly that we can accomplish this conservative goal in a way that doesn’t cut important spending – and mostly by raising taxes progressively – or cuts Pentagon spending.

The President reminded his State of the Union audience that he has put forward proposals for “entitlement reform” in his quest for a “grand bargain” to achieve that $1.5 trillion target of additional deficit reduction.  The fact is that President Obama has never taken off the table his very draconian offers:  to impose the so-called “chained CPI” that would cut the benefits of current and future Social Security recipients.  (See Daniel Marans’ blog post on this at OurFuture.)  Tonight the President  talked in general terms about reforming Medicare – including some good reforms, like reducing “taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies.”  But also still on Obama’s table is his proposal to raise the eligibility age for receiving Medicare from 65 to 67.  (He hasn’t talked much about this lately, but he hasn’t repudiated it either.)  And tonight he mentioned the possibility of “asking more of the wealthiest seniors,” a phrase that is usually cover for reducing Medicare benefits that middle class retirees really need.

So what should progressives take away from tonight’s speech?

We should be overjoyed that President Obama says he wants to lead a crusade for jobs – and even if he turns out to be too distracted (or not serious) to lead that fight and make it his biggest priority, WE should lead that battle, championing an even more ambitious agenda to create millions of jobs and robust economic growth.

We should continue to say to Obama and Congress:  “Enough with the economic austerity.  Let’s declare victory on the debt and deficit front, dismantle the Congressionally-created “sequestration” cuts, and refocus on investing in jobs.

We should fight like hell to make sure that Democrats don’t support cuts in actual benefits for current and future recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – and we should make sure they don’t change to the “chained CPI.”  Take action right now to send this message to Congress.

And we should work hard to support all the other progressive initiatives in President Obama’s speech – from universal pre-k education to immigration reform to reducing gun violence.

But most of all, we should encourage Obama and Congressional Democrats to stop talking about cutting essential programs – and start talking, as the President tried to tonight, about investing in Jobs and Growth.

A report in The Hill newspaper last night suggested that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) may be floating a proposal that includes cuts to Social Security and Medicare. If Sen. Schumer’s proposal was accurately reported, the senator could not be more wrong.

Just as President Obama declared in his inauguration speech that America does not have to cut Social Security or Medicare, Sen. Schumer reportedly offers up cuts to those crucial programs in vain hope of getting Republican support for tax increases.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the Senate Democrats’ chief political strategist, sees a joint budget resolution between the Senate and House as the key to raising another $600 billion in new tax revenues. …

Just as Republican leaders have been forced to back away from threatening to crash the economy to force Democrats to accept cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Sen. Schumer capitulates to the hostage taking that Republicans appear to be abandoning.

I hope the news reports are wrong because Sen. Schumer has previously been a strong opponent of cuts to Social Security. The Campaign for America’s Future reminds him and all Democrats that the chained CPI would mean an immediate cut to current Social Security benefits. These cuts are very unpopular with all Americans, and Democrats should be leading the fight to protect Social Security and Medicare, not helping Republicans accomplish their harmful goals.

Here we go again. Republicans are very clear about their latest extortion threat to the American people: Unless you cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, within the next two months we will throw the US economy back into recession – by refusing to allow the US raise the debt ceiling and pay our bills – or by pushing the economy over another fiscal cliff of deep spending cuts and tax increases – or by shutting down the government by refusing to pass a continuing budget resolution.

But it is very important for progressives and politicians to remember that most Americans hate what the Republicans are doing here. Who but Right Wing terrorists could support pushing the economy back into recession, throwing millions of Americans out of work? That’s what Republicans are threatening. And huge majorities also hate the price Republicans are demanding to prevent their threat of manufactured chaos: the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Republicans can get their way only if Democrats fail to realize they have the American people on our side. And once Republicans are clear about their proposals, Americans turn against them.

During the election, Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher was so unpopular that candidate Mitt Romney ran away from his Vice Presidential nominee’s proposal. Democrats won the election.

Now, Tennessee Republican Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander have dared to unveil aproposal (called their “dollar-for-dollar plan”) that would only allow the debt ceiling to be raised by the amount we allow them to cut what they term “entitlements.” How many Americans would embrace these changes?:

• They would privatize Medicare by creating competing private options giving seniors greater choice of healthcare plans. Shades of the plan Mitt Romney endorsed and then ran from.
• They would also give states more flexibility to cut Medicaid programs.
• And they would gradually raise the Social Security retirement age and immediately impose the “chained CPI” formula to cost-of-living adjustments – a cut to retirement benefits of today’s seniors.

“Unfortunately for America, the next line in the sand is going to be the debt ceiling,” Corker told The Hill, laying out his leverage strategy for negotiations with Democrats. These guys couldn’t be more explicit

Over the next two months, everyone who loves our country must rise up and say NO to this Republican nihilistic extortion. We must isolate them, ridicule and shame them. And we must force the Democrats to have the backbone to stand with us and reject Republican extortion and economic terrorism.

President Obama campaigned for reelection on his pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000, but he backed down and agreed to raise taxes only on people making more than $400,000. In return, he got an extension of unemployment benefits and important low income tax provisions. But he could only get Republicans to postpone for two months the Fiscal Cliff tax increases and spending cuts known as “sequestration.” And he failed to get them to give up the threat to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States that their refusal to raise the debt limit ceiling would bring on. Their refusal to support the once-routine legislation insuring we can pay our debts is already causing the Treasury Department to juggle accounts and will reach crisis stage by the end of February.

President Obama has pledged that he will not bow to Republican extortion over the debt limit:

“I will not compromise over … whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up. If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic. The last time Congress threatened this course of action, our entire economy suffered for it. Our families and our businesses cannot afford that dangerous game again.”

But remember that President Obama did negotiate the last time Republicans threatened to crash the economy by refusing to raise the debt limit, in September 2011. Obama was willing to offer up Social Security benefit cuts (in the form of a new “chained CPI”) and a change in the Medicare eligibility age (from 65, when many people are forcibly retired, to 67). It was only because Republicans refused to accept tax increases that Obama’s dangerous offer was not accepted. Instead, in return for Republican votes to lift that last debt ceiling, the draconian fiscal cliff sequestration budget cuts scheme was created (now postponed until early March).

So while President Obama may refuse to negotiate with Republicans over their latest manufactured debt limit crisis, he could end up negotiating to avoid the threat of sequestration. And Social Security and Medicare cuts could be on that table.

A Powerful Coalition Reminding Democrats What Americans Want – And Don’t Want.

President Obama and other Democrats need to listen to the voices of the groups who helped get them elected in 2012 – unions, community organizations, groups representing women, African Americans and Hispanics, and online activist groups like MoveOn and the Campaign for America’s Future.

On November 8, many of these groups placed an ad in the Washington Post making a set of demands on the President and Congress. These demands have served as unifying principles for a powerful organizing and outreach coalition. Signed by organizations including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Center for Community Change, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Campaign for America’s Future, the ad was accompanied by an open letter to the White House and Congress signed by 146 national organizations.

If the President and the Democrats in Congress listen to these principles – and to these groups who have been communicating with them before and after the election – they will refuse to cut Medicare and Social Security in response to the Republicans’ threat reject the debt ceiling and tank the economy. And they will discover they have the vast majority of Americans on their side.

Here what the ad said, in part:

To the President and The Congress.

As you face urgent budget decisions, you must keep the election results in mind and resist budget cuts that slow our economy and hurt families. The best way to reduce the deficit is to put people back to work and get our economy going again. That’s why we are calling on national leaders from both parties to stand up for the middle class and demand that any budget agreement:

Asks all Americans to pay their fair share of taxes.

Prioritizes job creation first. It’s time to grow–not slow–the economy.

Does not cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits and does not shift costs to beneficiaries or the states. Voters loudly and clearly spoke up for these programs.

Protects the safety net and vital services for low-income people.

Stops the sequester. The scheduled automatic budget cuts threaten our fragile recovery and put huge numbers of people out of work while cutting education, child care, job training and dozens of vital services people and communities need.

The groups involved have helped the American Majority of working families communicate these demands to the President and the Congress. So far, we have kept Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the chopping block. We are redoubling our efforts to prevent Democrats from capitulating to Republican hostage-taking and extortion. And we are turning our campaign to opposing conservative austerity – and fighting for jobs and robust economic growth.

For years now, various gangs of senators – the Gang of Eight, or Six, or 14 - have declared dire deficit emergencies and called for austerity: Cut public spending and cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, they tell us.  And, bizarrely, most of these gangs also call for reduced tax cuts for the rich.

But the voters have just spoken.  And election-day polls find big majorities – even of Republican voters – calling cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits unacceptable.  And they hate the idea of giving more tax cuts to the wealthy, even if closing tax loopholes go along with those tax cuts.  Most importantly, voters place a much higher priority on creating jobs and growing the economy – and they reject spending cuts that harm the still-weak economic recovery.

And now, there’s a new gang in the U.S. Senate.  Politico reports that 15 Senators have signed a letter to President Obama much more in line with what voters said they wanted.  Written by Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, the letter stands up to the demands of the Senate austerity gangs and urges President Obama to reject any deal not guided by the following principles:

•  Deficit reduction should not kill jobs. Investment in growth should be the priority before deficits.

• Any deal must include significant revenues, ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent and closing tax loopholes benefiting wealthy Americans and corporations. We must insist on a one-to-one ratio of revenues to spending cuts, and count the $917 billion of spending cuts already enacted. 

• Any deal must protect Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security benefits from harmful cuts. We oppose changes that shift costs to states, or alter the structure of these critical programs. And any deal must reduce income inequality and protect the most vulnerable Americans. 

• A deficit deal must be struck in the light of day with plenty of time for all groups to respond.

This important new force in the budget debate is bound to grow as newly-elected (and re-elected) senators, like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, come to Washington and start playing the role in the Senate that they talked about in their successful election campaigns.

But this new Gang of 15 (and growing; Harkin and Rockefeller are seeking 15 more signers) needs the help of activist citizen groups – to help them expand the number of senators willing to take a stand against deficit hawks and to build pressure on President Obama to counter the pressure he is feeling from Republican legislators, like the leaders he met with on Friday.  To take action online, click here.

The inside-outside alliance is already working.  As reported by The Huffington Post, Senators Harkin, Sanders and Whitehouse were joined last Thursday for a rally on Capitol Hill by activists from Social Security Works, HCAN, and the National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare and many other groups.  Their message:  Hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicare.

The AFL-CIO, SEIU and MoveOn and many other groups kept their activists in the field a week after the election to publicly tell politicians they helped elect to go to Washington to fight against cuts to key programs and for taxing the rich.

The letter signed by the Harkin-Rockefeller Gang of 15 (and growing) is almost identical to the wording of a full-page ad in The Washington Post that ran on November 8 and signed by 29 groups, including the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the Campaign for America’s Future, MoveOn, the Center for Community Change, and many others.  The ad in the Post declared, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put people back to work and get our economy going again.” And we urged the President and Congress to “keep the election results in mind and resist budget cuts that slow our economy and hurt families.”  A letter circulated by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and released November 8 was signed by over 150 national and local citizen groups calling on the President and Congress to prioritize job creation, oppose benefit cuts to social insurance programs, protect the safety net and require corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share.

President Obama, building on the momentum of his remarkable election victory, has been impressively strong in insisting on rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent – in meetings with union and progressive leaders, in public statements and press conferences, and, most importantly, in meetings with House and Senate Republican leaders.  He’s also indicated he knows Social Security contributes nothing to the deficit, and shouldn’t be part of deficit talks.  But those Republicans, while barely opening the door to “revenue increases” – not higher tax rates – have insisted on “entitlement reform” as their price for a deal on revenues.  If we don’t rally the country, those key programs could be sacrificed to get revenues.

Progressives should have Obama’s back on demanding actually raising rates for the wealthy.  And we have to get to work on the rest of our agenda, reminding the President and legislators of all stripes that voters in the 2012 elections want them to protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits – and they put a much higher priority on creating jobs than deficit reduction.  And they reject imposing the kind of austerity that would put us back into recession.

On November 14, the Institute for America’s Future issued an important statement signed by 350 economists entitled “Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity.”

The statement calls for “presidential leadership — and Congressional action — to spur jobs and growth, not dangerous austerity.” The statement warns Washington leaders to heed the lessons of European countries that have tried to cut their way to growth, “inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery.”

In his first public statement after his return to Washington from the political campaign, on November 9 in the Rose Garden, President Obama opened his remarks with the crucial truth: “At a time when our economy’s still recovering from the Great Recession, our top priority has to be jobs and growth. That’s the focus of the plan that I talked about during the campaign.’  He also declared: ‘We can’t cut our way to prosperity.”

The president is right about that, and it is the job of progressives to make sure the Congress doesn’t do to the U.S. economy what the Europeans have been doing to theirs.

Election Day was a smashing victory for progressives and middle-class populism. But the deficit hysterics, budget slashers and Social Security haters refuse to heed our voices.

Within hours of the election, the austerity posse was fear-mongering around the so-called “fiscal cliff” and pressuring Washington to accept a “grand bargain” before the end of the year that would slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – and plunge us into a double-dip recession.

We spoke out on Election Day. Now we need to speak out louder than ever. We’re asking you to sign this petition to tell Congress: No deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. No deal that keeps low tax rates for the rich. No deal that kills jobs with more cuts.

As members of Congress return to Washington this week, a massive coalition has formed to tell those members there are four pillars they must adhere to for any compromise to be accepted by America’s progressive majority.

1. End the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000.
2. Invest in jobs, education and infrastructure to grow the economy.
3. Reject any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
4. Protect the social safety net.

The Campaign for America’s Future joined many of these coalition members in signing an ad that appeared in The Washington Post last week stressing these principles. As that ad, addressed to President Obama and Congress, said, “We voted for strengthening the middle class and putting people back to work—not for job-killing budget cuts and attacks on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

These four pillars are the foundation of last week’s resounding election victory for President Obama and progressive lawmakers. Congress needs to know that if it doesn’t follow the will of the people, the people will fight back.

Right now, the austerity cabal is working inside the halls of Congress. It’s time for us to pound on the doors. We must forcefully oppose any budget deal that puts working families and the economic recovery in jeopardy

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In addressing the deficit today, President Obama opened his remarks with the crucial truth: “at a time when our economy’s still recovering from the great recession, our top priority has to be jobs and growth. That’s the focus of the plan that I talked about during the campaign.” And he declared: “we can’t just cut our way to prosperity.”

Yesterday the Campaign for America’s Future joined with 28 other groups to publish an ad in the Washington Post that declared “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put people back to work and get our economy going again.” And we urged the President and Congress to “keep the election results in mind and resist budget cuts that slow our economy and hurt families.”  And today we joined 146 national organizations in calling on the President and Congress to prioritize job creation, oppose benefit cuts to social insurance programs, protect the safety net and require corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share.

We are pleased that the President is insisting on letting the Bush tax cuts expire for people making over $250,000 per year, and that in his statement he did not suggest unacceptable cuts.

In CAF’s poll by Stan Greenberg, we found that Americans who voted for the President reject cuts for the wealthy – and they strongly oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits.

Therefore we will work with our allies to make sure economic policy focuses on Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity – and on Wednesday of next week we will release a policy statement signed by 350 economists with that title.