According to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Thursday, baby boomers and Generation Xers are increasingly unlikely to be able to afford the costs of retirement, making critical the need for a strong Social Security program to bridge this income gap. Instead of weakening the social safety net by using the “chained CPI” to reduce Social Security cost-of-living increases, this study proves that we need to increase the protections for the elderly to make sure they can maintain their standard of living.

In order to do this, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin has put forth a bill that would strengthen Social Security, not weaken it, as President Obama’s budget have proposed. The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 (S. 567) would help place a bridge over the gap where America’s seniors are falling short. You can support this effort by signing this MoveOn petition, which is currently 12,000 signatures away from its goal of 100,000.

The Pew study’s findings are troubling. The study found that while early baby boomers may be in a better position to have a secure retirement as beneficiaries of the housing bubble and dot-com boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, those born after 1955 would have a much tougher time trying to secure their retirement. While most financial planners suggest being able to replace 70 percent of your earned income during retirement, the Pew study found that many late baby boomers will only be able to replace 60 percent of their current income, and Gen-Xers will only be able to replace half of their pre-retirement income.

The Pew study found that early baby boomers might well be the last generation to be able to afford a secure retirement, with late baby boomers and Gen-Xers accumulating too much debt from credit cards, mortgages and student loans to retire securely. Gen-Xers, who did not have the most solid financial foundation to start, took the hardest hit from the Great Recession, losing nearly half of their wealth in the crash.

With these findings, and the fact that an increasing number of seniors rely on their Social Security checks for between 50 percent and 90 percent of their income, it is easy to see that the chained CPI is going to hurt millions of seniors. The chained CPI uses the substitutions for cheaper items consumers make in response to inflation to come up with a cost-of-living increase that is a bit lower than the standard consumer price index. But the chained CPI does not take into account the items that comprise a higher share of spending for seniors, such as health care and housing, that tend to have a higher inflation rate thanconsumer goods generally. Researchers estimate that chained CPI would mean an average benefit cut of over $1,000 a year for someone who retires at age 65 and lives to be 95. Clearly, with so many people having a decreased ability to enough for retirement, now is the exact wrong time to be cutting Social Security benefits.

While the chained CPI would cut Social Security benefits to seniors, the Strengthen Social Security Act of 2013 would provide a form of relief. According to Senator Harkin’s office, the bill would:

• Strengthen Benefits by Reforming the Social Security Benefit Formula: To improve benefits for current and future Social Security beneficiaries, the Act changes the method by which the Social Security Administration calculates Social Security benefits. This change will boost benefits for all Social Security beneficiaries by approximately $70 per month, but is targeted to help those in the low and middle of the income distribution, for whom Social Security has become an ever greater share of their retirement income.
• Ensure that Cost of Living Adjustments Adequately Reflect the Living Expenses of Retirees: The Act changes the way the Social Security Administration calculates the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). To ensure that benefits better reflect cost increases facing seniors, future COLAs will be based on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). Making this change to Social Security is expected to result in higher COLAs, ensuring that seniors are able to better keep up with the rising costs of essential items, like health care.

These changes would soften the blow that many Americans’ savings took during the Great Recession, and provide a stronger program of relief when we need it the most.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after signing the Social Security Act of 1935, said, “We can never insure one-hundred percent of the population against one-hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life. But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”

Roosevelt had the foresight to see that America needed a safety net to protect its people from the excesses of the banks and Wall Street. From the Great Depression was born Social Security. Now, instead of recognizing that the wound from the Great Recession has not healed, there has been an attempt to short the American people by cutting a program that is increasingly important to seniors. Now that we know that many Americans will be unable to support themselves in retirement, we must not cut the program designed to insure the population against the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but strengthen it.

The Senate campaign in Massachusetts will be close and hard fought.  Ed Markey, the winner of the Democratic primary, knows he has to run a bare-knuckled, knock down, full bore campaign to win.  So it is notable that one of the first appeals to his supporters is to enlist them in telling the president that they oppose his proposal to cut Social Security benefits through the so-called chained CPI.   Markey clearly realizes the president’s proposal is electoral poison — and wants to get ahead of any Republican effort to link him to the president on this issue.  Democrats across the Congress would do well  to take note.  Here’s the Markey letter

African Americans in retirement or on disability would be hit particularly hard by a proposal to use the “chained CPI” to limit cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits, according to a new study released by the Center for Global Policy Solutions.

Changing the inflation adjustment from the commonly used Consumer Price Index to the chained CPI, which incorporates how consumers respond to inflation by switching to lower-priced alternatives, would cut benefits to all seniors by more than $4,600 over the first 10 years, and $28,000 over 30 years. That would hit African-American retirees, who rely more heavily on Social Security benefits than white households, especially hard. Forty-seven percent of African-American seniors rely on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income; for 40 percent of seniors, Social Security is their only source of income.

Those in the African-American community who receive Social Security benefits due to disability or death would also feel a disproportionate impact. The report pointed out that:

• While 10 percent of the U.S. workforce are African Americans, they make up 19 percent of disabled workers receiving benefits.
• African-American children are twice as likely to receive survivor benefits from Social Security as white children.
• Though 15 percent of the nation’s children are African American, they are 21 percent of the children receiving disability benefits.

The median wealth of African-American households amounts to only a nickel for every dollar of the median wealth of white households, according to the report. With a wealth gap so large, many more white households will be able to offset the cuts in Social Security than African Americans.

“As a result of racial wealth disparities, African Americans will be negatively affected by implementation of the chained CPI regardless of the non-means tested federal program from which they receive their benefits,” said Maya Rockeymoore, president and CEO of the Center for Global Policy Solutions. “With precious few other assets to help meet expenses, African Americans will experience deeper economic pain as a result of the chained CPI.”

It is troubling enough to think that those who need the protection of Social Security the most, the elderly, are going to be hurt by the switch, but knowing that many of the youth who also receive the benefits of Social Security are going to be hit should make the case against using the chained CPI as a panacea to our deficit problems. It is unfair to place the saddle of debt burden on the backs of those who need it the most.

There are other solutions that will allow America to save money as well as protect the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, Rockeymoore points out: “The President and Congress should identify reforms—like lifting Social Security’s cap on taxable wages—that strengthen the program’s solvency while providing a basis for ensuring that benefits work for those who need them most.”

All the smartest people in the executive suites just knew that the taste of Coca-Cola needed “reform.” Rival Pepsi was advertising to the “New Generation” and Coke’s executives came to believe their product wasn’t what the “cool” people wanted to drink. Everyone they talked to at the executive-level strategery seminars, and all the other executive-level geniuses they spoke with daily agreed. They were the elites, and they all knew better than their old-fashioned, uncool customers what the company needed. So they all drank the Kool-Aid and came up with “New Coke.” We all know what happened next. (Hint: it was bad.)

It couldn’t have gone better for Pepsi if Pepsi had placed those executives there themselves.

Your Brand

In business there’s this concept called “branding.” A company or product is “known for” something, and the public expects that is what the company or product will do for them. If a company or product continues to deliver on what they are “known for” the customers remain loyal. If the company or product violates the expectations of the brand, the customers go somewhere else — fast.

Democrats are “known for” fighting for working people, and fighting on We the People’s side against corporate power. They are “known for” taxing the wealthiest and giant corporations so We the People can do things to make our lives better. (By the way, doing things to make our lives better is also called “government spending.”)

Cutting Social Security?

If there is one thing that the Democratic Party is “known for” — their “brand” — it is starting, expanding and protecting Social Security. It was the New Deal and its government jobs programs for the unemployed, investment in infrastructure, heavily taxing the wealthy and corporations, but mostly Social Security that created “brand loyalty” for Democrats for generations.

Now this brand is at risk.

President Obama and some Democrats are now advocating cutting Social Security, to show they are “reasonable” and “reaching out” to Republicans, because Republicans want cuts to Social Security and other things We the People do to make our lives better. These “centrist” Democrats want to show the opinion elite and other strategerizers that they can be “bipartisan.” After decades of cuts in taxes on the wealthy and corporations and cuts in the things We the People do to make our lives better they want to “meet halfway” and show they have “the courage” to cut Social Security.

Democrats who want to protect the “brand” of the Democratic Party, and keep the loyalty of We the People need to step up right now and avoid a “New Coke” rebranding of their party.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) circulated a letter that was signed by a majority of Democrats. That letter said, “we remain deeply opposed to proposals to reduce Social Security benefits through use of chained CPI” but it doesn’t include explicit language pledging members to vote against a bill that includes chained CPI.

Another letter by Reps. Alan Grayson and Mark Takano is making the rounds and is more explicit. The Grayson-Takano letter says, “we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,” including “cutting the cost-of-living adjustments.” Currently there are only 36 signatures on the Grayson-Takano Letter.

Tell Your Representatives And Senators To Pledge No Cuts To Social Security

Tell your representatives to pledge to protect Social Security. People utterly depend on the meager benefits they get from Social Security — wealthy people do not utterly depend on a few pennies per dollar taxed from the highest incomes. (A 5% tax increase on people making $250,000 means that someone who makes $250,001 after all deductions pays an extra five cents in taxes.)

Click here and Tell Congress: Say No to Obama’s Social Security Cuts,

The President’s budget includes devastating Social Security cuts. But they will not become law if Congress rejects them. It’s up to us to speak out and let Congress know the public will punish any legislator that supports undermining Social Security. Use the form below to tell your senators and representative: Say no to Obama’s Social Security Cuts.

At our blog: Chained CPI: Wrong for Social Security

PCCC: Support The Grayson-Takano Letter

Elected Democrats, This Could Be You

Are you going to keep listening to all the “right people” who say “everyone knows entitlements have to be cut and corporate taxes have to be lowered” etc.? Or are you going to listen to We the People because democracy?

Just for fun:

February business headline: JCPenney Has Hired The ‘New Coke’ Mastermind To Help Turn Things Around

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson announced on the company’s Q4 earnings call that he has brought on former Coke marketing exec Sergio Zyman as an advisor as he tries to turn around the ailing department store.

… Johnson said on the company’s Q4 earnings call … Sergio has a unique ability to understand customers and as well as strategies that will succeed based on rapid fire test and response.”

April business headlines:

J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson is out

JCPenney fighting for survival

Three More Top JC Penney Executives Have Left

Elected Democrats, this could be you. Are you in or out — literally in this case?

—–

Follow me and CAF on Twitter:

The Congressional Progressive Caucus and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka pressed their opposition to President Obama’s proposed chained-CPI change to Social Security benefits at a Thursday afternoon news conference, denouncing it as a cut in benefits for those who need the social safety net the most.

Fifteen members of Congress, as well as around 45 supporters and members of the press, gathered on the southeast Capitol lawn. ““We are here to represent is the tens of millions of Americans who are saying that at a time we have more wealth and income inequality in this country than in any time since the 1920s, do not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“Social Security did not cause nor did it add to the deficit in any way. Chained CPI is some economist’s fancy way of weakening Social Security’s most important protections. This protects the purchasing power of seniors, it prevents seniors from losing economic ground each and every year,” said Trumka.

Among those who joined Sanders and Trumka were Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Reps. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; and the Leadership Conference on Civil Right’s Nancy Zirkin.

As I wrote on Tuesday, the chained CPI is a change in the cost-of-living allowance that would change how much Social Security recipients receive drastically. It would cut nearly $700 for a 75-year-old retiree and more than $1,600 for a 95-year-old retiree per year. While supporters of the chained CPI measure say that it is a more accurate way to determine costs of living, in actuality it is not representative of many of the items that the elderly purchase. It is also tantamount to a middle-class tax hike, with 70 percent of the increased taxes that come with the bill hitting those in the middle class.

“Working Americans and retirees shouldn’t be treated like bargaining chips or told to pick up the tab for corporate tax loopholes,” Grijalva said.

“When we are losing a hundred billion every year in taxes because corporations are stashing profits overseas, there are ways to deal with deficit reduction that are fair,” Sanders said. “I don’t know what kind of country we live in when we think we are going to balance the budget on the backs of the men and women who have lost their arms and legs and their eyesight defending this country. We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of the disabled.”

“They talk about cutting entitlement. Social Security is not an entitlement, it is an earned benefit; people pay into it their whole lives,” Harkin said. “How about cutting the tax break entitlements on corporations? That’s how we can save some real money. The people that this hurts the most are the last that ought to be hit by changes.”

“In an effort to compromise with Republicans, the President’s budget contains a wrongheaded provision that extracts revenues from middle class pocketbooks instead of wealthy corporate interests,” Zirkin said.

“Instead of supporting policies that harm seniors, let’s get back to the real problems facing this country—creating 21st century jobs in America, confronting climate change and growing income inequality, and making sure seniors have an adequate retirement on which to live,” said Ellison. “Let’s oppose the chained CPI.”

That was fast. Yesterday we suggested that the chained-CPI cut in President Obama’s budget, which was presented as a gesture to Republicans, might instead be used to rebrand Democrats as “the anti-Social Security party.”

It took them fifteen minutes.

A GOP official quickly called the chained CPI a “shocking betrayal of seniors.” That’s a replay of the Republicans’ 2010 campaign, which used a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights” to paint Democrats as the anti-Medicare party. That strategy helped them retake the House, and could be at least as effective in 2014.

This not-so-shocking “shocking” comment is further proof that it’s political suicide for Democrats to support the chained CPI, a combined tax hike and Social Security cut in Obama’s new budget.

It’s too bad more Democratic commentators aren’t fighting the good fight on this one. Even when they voice their opposition, as Rachel Maddow did last night, they seem to get the politics wrong.

The Trap

It was hard to understand why so few pundits seemed to understand that President Obama was walking into a trap. Republicans want the chained CPI. But they’ve never been reluctant to use policies they support as a club to bludgeon any opponent foolish enough to agree with them.

That’s even more true when the policy in question is as wildly unpopular as the chained CPI, which they’ve verbally supported in this year’s talks – but which only the president has included in a budget. It’s officially a Democratic proposal, not a Republican one. Whether or not the chained CPI is ever enacted, today the president gave them the perfect opportunity to attack him as an opponent of the elderly.

Obama officially released his budget at 11 a.m. in the Rose Garden. At 11:15 a Republican politician called it a “shocking attack.” That must be a new land speed record.

Walked Right Into It

Rep. Steve Israel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is joining Obama in playing right into the GOP’s hands. As noted yesterday, his campaign strategy distances Democrats from their party’s signature programs and most popular positions. That’s the perfect set-up for Rep. Greg Walden, who is Israel’s Republican counterpart.

Walden spoke to Wolf Blitzer on CNN after the President’s budget announcement and said this:

“(The Obama) budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors, if you will. And we haven’t seen all the detail yet, and we’ll look at it, but I’ll tell you, when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare, and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine, certainly, and around the country.”

In case anyone has lingering doubts about what the GOP has in mind, Walden also said this:  ”I think (Obama is) going to have a lot of push-back from some of the major senior organizations on this and Republicans, as well.” (emphasis ours)

MSNBC Missed It

To her credit, Rachel Maddow was one of the few prime-time hosts to cover a petition delivery to the White House yesterday which contained more than two million signatures opposing the chained-CPI cut. (Video here.) Maddow also commented that she’s “not in favor” of these cuts and is “very sympathetic” to the demonstrators’ cause. So far, so good.

But she didn’t explain why she opposes these cuts. And she ignored the many experts who could explain the chained CPI’s dire economic – and political – pitfalls. She didn’t interview a progressive or a nonpartisan expert. Instead she turned to … a Republican party operative.

GOP strategist Steve Schmidt spent most of his air time repeating false talking points. He said (according to my rough transcription) that we need to “strengthen these programs in the face of the demographic challenges they’re all under,” that we have to change these programs which were founded in the middle of the last century,” and that they need to be cut to “get the country on a sound fiscal footing.”

As a result, Maddow’s liberal and heavily Democratic audience was denied the opportunity to learn why the chained CPI is a very, very bad idea – one which will cut their Social Security benefits and raise taxes on the middle class.

Signal to Noise

The MSNBC audience deserved better. The only arguments they heard were ones that reinforced widely-disseminated misstatements, especially the notion that “changing demographics” are the root cause of federal debt.

The truth: Social Security is forbidden by law from contributing to the deficit, and it is long-term funding issues – driven primarily by wealth inequity, unemployment and other factors – that are depriving it of long-term revenue. Medicare and Medicaid have funding problems, caused in their entirety by our for-profit health system.

Schmidt and Maddow got the politics of the chained CPI exactly wrong, too. Schmidt said this:

“From a political perspective, what the noise on the left allows the President to do is claim the center, to claim the high ground of reasonableness …”

Maddow can be heard in the background, saying something which sounds very much like “yeah.”

That breezily-dismissed “noise on the left” is actually the sound of the real center. Schmidt’s nearly as out of touch with his party’s base as Obama is with his. As a new AARP poll shows, 70 percent of voters aged 50 and over oppose the chained CPI cut. That includes nearly two-thirds of Republican voters (63 percent), along with three-quarters of Democrats and seven out of 10 independents.

Voters were also opposed to the chained CPI’s effect as a tax increase, although the level of opposition is somewhat lower – apparently because they didn’t clearly understand that it would raise their taxes. (Trust us, that’ll change. The GOP will see to that.)

Wake-Up Call

Maddow’s Democratic viewers need to understand how badly the chained CPI will hurt their party in 2014 and beyond unless Democrats in the House and Senate reject it – quickly, before more damage is done. Democrats need to make calls and send emails voicing their opposition to this cut, and urging their elected representatives to speak out against it. (They can send emails here.)

And everybody needs to understand how the chained CPI will affect their Social Security benefits, and their taxes, in the years to come.  We’re all going to by affected by the chained CPI. Polling shows that most Americans oppose it, regardless of their political affiliation. That means Republicans and independents should make those calls and send those emails too.

The President has staked his claim on the wrong side of this issue. Other Democrats still have time to distance themselves. Let’s hope they do, for their sake as well as ours.

Opponents of President Obama’s ”chained CPI” proposal to reduce cost-of-living increases in Social Security protested in front of the White House this afternoon, bringing with them boxes of petitions bearing two million signatures urging the president to not include the proposal in the fiscal 2014 budget scheduled for release tomorrow.

“The president’s decision to include cuts to Social Security benefits in his budget is wrong policy and dumb politics“, said Roger Hickey, the co-director for the Campaign for America’s Future before the rally. “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.”

On a warm spring day, supporters and leaders from groups such as the AFL-CIO, Democracy for America, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, National Organization of Women, MoveOn.org and the Campaign for America’s Future joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Reps. Mark Takano, D-Calif., and Rick Nolan, D-Minn., to express outrage over the cuts reported to be in the president’s budget.

The chained CPI proposal would change how the cost of living expenses are calculated year by year. It is suggested that it would save the government $217 billion over ten years by cutting benefits such as Social Security and other benefits and raising revenues. The chained CPI proposal would cut the most out of Social Security. A typical cut in Social Security would be $650 a year for 75-year-olds, $1,100 a year for 85-year-olds, and more than $1,600 a year for recipients aged 95 and older.

“I would like to say thank you to the organizations representing tens of millions of workers, seniors, and disabled vets who are saying loudly and clearly, ‘We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, disabled vets, the sick, the women or the children,’” said Sanders. “When one out of four major profitable corporations pays nothing in federal income tax, we know how we can deal with deficit reduction in a way that is fair.”

“We have cut as much as we can, for millions of Americans, there is nothing left to cut. President Obama, it is morally wrong to take from our parents, our grandparents and our veterans,” said Stephanie Taylor of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

“Real Democrats do not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Period,” said Jim Dean, of Democracy for America. “For the Democrats who have not made up their minds yet, you are either with us, or you are against us,” continued Dean.

“Do you remember when Vice President Biden debated Congressman Ryan? There was one point in the debate that caught my attention where Vice President Biden responded to Paul Ryan with ‘That’s malarkey’. That’s what we say to this proposal, it’s malarkey!” said Max Richtman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“Mr. President and Members of Congress: keep the promises you made when you asked for our votes. Stop talking about cutting Social Security benefits,” said Hickey. “Stop talking about economic austerity. And get to work investing in jobs, growth, and rising incomes for working America.”

It’s time to think the unthinkable: The leader of the Democratic Party is about to submit a budget which cuts Social Security benefits. Party officials are reportedly promoting candidates with no track record on key issues and no apparent interest in politics.

And Republicans are planning another double-cross, an undertaking for which they have demonstrated both talent and enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, a petition with more than two million signatures will be presented to the White House tomorrow at a rally in Lafayette Square. And yet, despite this massive outpouring of public sentiment, and despite widespread public support for Social Security, the Democrats may be setting themselves up for a 2014 Congressional race in which they’re portrayed as the “anti-Social Security party.”

Impossible? No. Remember when Republicans re-took the House in 2010 after their losses in 2006 and 2008? Now that was impossible.

Off-Label

Democrats have long considered Social Security their signature program. They’ve repeatedly defended it from Republican attempts to gut or privatize it. Democratic activists have told me privately that, no matter what happens this year, it ‘wouldn’t be fair’ to characterize Democrats as Social Security cutters or the relentlessly hostile Republicans as its defenders.

Fair? Excuse me, I thought we were talking about politics. And if we’re being completely fair, it’s not altogether unreasonable to think of someone who voted to cut Social Security benefits as … well, as someone who voted to cut Social Security benefits.

There’s been extensive coverage of the President’s planned chained-CPI cuts. Now comes this story in the Washington Post, about the party’s plan to brand its candidates as blank slates:

“The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological ‘problem solvers’ who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.”

We’re told that party leaders want to play into what they see as the “fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas.”

Total Recall

The Post article features Kevin Strouse, hand-picked by party leaders to contest a Congressional seat in Pennsylvania. We’re told that party officials think Strouse is “exactly the kind of candidate who can help them retake the House next year.”

“He’s a smart, young former Army Ranger,” writes the Post, “good qualities for any aspiring politician. But what party leaders really like is that Strouse doesn’t have particularly strong views on the country’s hottest issues.”

Strouse told the Post that Democratic officials asked him very little about politics or policy and said they focused on his background instead. “They’ve just liked the bio,” said Strouse.  Politics may be the only profession in the world where a lack of experience, coupled with what seems to be complete disinterest in the job, is considered an asset.

The Job

As a former Army and CIA officer, we’re told, Strouse likes to describe himself as someone who can “solve problems” and who “got the job done.” But which job, exactly?

Polls do show that voters are frustrated with Washington’s ability to “get things done.” But which “things”? The polling’s equally unequivocal on that score: Voters want government to create jobs. They want government to fix the economy. And, by overwhelming majorities, they don’t want government to enact the chained CPI benefit cut to Social Security.

The President understood that. His re-election campaign focused heavily on populist themes – themes he articulated brilliantly, regardless of his intentions. Will we see the same level of talent and expertise from the party’s new neophyte politicians?

“Certainly I have a lot of research to do,” said Strouse.

This Space Available

The Post profiled other blank-slate candidates, including Gwen Graham, daughter of veteran Democratic politician Bob Graham. Her only government experience seems to have been providing legal advice to the local school district.

We’re told that Graham’s campaign presents her as a “consensus builder” with the “skills to solve complicated problems.”

That’s campaign-speak for “lacks qualifications.”

Follow the Money

Then there’s this: “Without a presidential contest to compete with,” writes the Post, “Democrats also believe liberal mega-donors will open their wallets more generously (a PAC) supporting House Democrats.”

Not if Democrats have just voted cut Social Security, they won’t.

Turning Down the Base

While Republicans mobilize their base with “conservative, ideologically driven” candidates, Democrats think they can retake the House in an off-year election by fielding colorless, ideology-free candidates. If nothing else, that would certainly amplify the disillusionment of young people, minorities, and other core Democratic voters in a post-chained-CPI world.

Seniors would already be long gone, if the polls are any indication.

Who thought of this strategy again?

Filling in the Blanks

Some Democratic leaders apparently believe that their ideal candidate is a vacuum, a cipher, a human “to let” sign who can become the repository for a voter’s – or a contributor’s – technocratic daydreams.  The architect of this strategy appears to be Rep. Steve Israel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

There’s a problem with Israel’s strategy: The President of the United States, the head of the Democratic Party, is about to formally propose cuts to Social Security – cuts which are opposed by 69 percent of senior voters, who vote disproportionately in off-year elections – and are also opposed by majorities or pluralities of voters across the political spectrum.

If Democrats in Congress back their President’s measure in significant numbers, it will make their re-election fights much tougher. It will also allow Republicans to fill in the human blank spaces Israel and the DCCC are putting up for office. How would they go about doing that?

Memories Are Made of This

We already know. In 2010 they capitalized on Obama’s budgetary wafflings over Medicare and Social Security by creating a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights” and running to Democrats’ left on these issues.  Only five years after the GOP’s wildly unpopular attempt to privatize the program, Obama was less trusted that George W. Bush on Social Security – and Democrats had squandered their 25-point lead on the issue.

Rep. Israel and his fellow party officials seem to think that they can win by presenting candidates like Strouse, Eldridge, and Graham as if they were protagonists in a political version of Total Recall, rocketed onto a political planet without known biographies or histories.

The problem is that the Republicans will write their histories for them. Party leaders won’t “like the bios” coming out of GOP Headquarters and Fox News (if those two names aren’t a redundancy). Candidates with no records, and no political convictions, will have them provided to them.

“Want to know what Strouse stands for?” they’ll ask. “Look at his party’s record on Social Security.”

“Gwen Graham can solve ‘complicated problems’,” the campaign ads will say, “like cutting your benefits.”

We’re told that Israel is modeling his approach on that of Rahm Emanuel. The Post repeats the common error of crediting Emanuel with the Democrats’ 2006 victory, which many non-partisan observers attribute instead to Howard Dean’s shrewd “50-state strategy.” But Emanuel had more powerful friends and better friends, and he emerged the victor after a bitter internecine battle with Dean.

We all know history is written by the victors.

One for the Books

Social Security can only be cut if Republicans agree to it, and they’ve wanted these cuts for years. They’d have to agree to a deal, then turn around and campaign against it. They wouldn’t be that underhanded, would they?

That was a rhetorical question.

The betrayal’s already started, before the deal’s even done. Last month Republican Senator Lamar Alexander was quoted as saying “If the history books were written today, we would remember President Obama for the sequester” – that brutal set of pre-packaged austerity cuts that were jointly agreed upon both parties.

It’s grossly unfair to blame one side for an austerity package they both accepted. It’s also smart politics.

Winning Ugly

Alexander also fulminated about “this president’s unwillingness to confront what most people believe is the single biggest issue facing our country,” which he described as “the out-of-control costs of mandatory entitlement spending in the federal budget, led by Medicare.”

Now the President’s offering Republicans what Alexander and the others exactly what they want: cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Are they actually treacherous enough to use that against him and his party?

That was another rhetorical question.

The President and his party don’t need to worry about Alexander’s threat.  They won’t be remembered for the sequester. But if the chained CPI becomes law, they may well be remembered for cutting Social Security.

If so, they’ll pay for it where it hurts most: at the polls – not to mention their consciences.

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.

Last week the Senate passed the Sanders-Harkin-Hirono Amendment which opposed the Social Security cut and tax increase known as the “chained CPI.” That’s a smart move, and a victory for the public.  It’s also very timely, since the “chained CPI” has repeatedly been raised by the White House in its attempt to forge a “Grand Bargain” with Congressional Republicans.

The Sanders amendment was introduced in order to put Senators on record as either supporting or opposing this unpopular, unwise idea. The Senate’s rejection of the “chained CPI” was a victory for common sense. But they did it by voice vote, which leaves the door open to a deal later on which includes this very bad, very unpopular idea.

Apparently Senators don’t want to be on record as supporting the “chained CPI” – but they don’t want to be on record against it, either.

The Senate, unlike the House, is controlled by Democrats. So we’re forced to conclude that the decision to hold a voice vote was made by the Democrats, not Republicans.  That makes sense, since so many Democratic Senators have been trying to help the White House get this policy into a Grand Bargain. That includes members of the so-called Gang of Six, a corporate- and billionaire-friendly “centrist” group whose members currently include Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia.

The word “centrist” is in quotes because cutting Social Security is not something the political center wants. Poll after poll has shown, in fact, that a majority of voters across the political spectrum rejects the chained CPI or any other form of benefit cut.  In fact, a recent poll showed that voters would prefer to increase Social Security benefits – and would be willing to pay more in taxed to do it.

No wonder these Senators wanted to vote in secret. If they’re keeping their powder dry for a Social Security betrayal, apparently they don’t want to have to add hypocrisy to their list of sins.

They probably won’t have to in order to lose some elections. The Democratic Party has already paid a huge price just for talking about Social Security cuts.  A Social Security Works poll showed that the party suffered a stunning 25-point plunge in public confidence between 2005 and 2010 on its ability to do a better job than its opposition to protect the program.

That probably contributed to the Democrats’ loss of the House in 2010. Imagine what actually cutting the program would do.  No wonder so many Senators don’t want to be seen supporting the chained CPI – but want to keep the door open to a deal which includes it later on.

Who are the “closet chainers” in the United States Senate? Warner and Baucus are likely “yeses.” What about Sen. Dick Durbin?  Durbin’s a supporter of the “Simpson Bowles” proposal (which includes the “chained CPI”), and his pronouncements on the topic have been less than Shermanesque.  Durbin has said that the chained-CPI cuts are “a possibility, but no decision’s been made.”

Durbin has also said that including Social Security cuts like the chained CPI in budget negotiations is “the wrong way to go.”  But even in that statement, which was billed has his declaration of opposition to it, he was less than unequivocal.  “It may be part of an overall solution,” Durbin then added.

I’d like to know where Senators like Dick Durbin stand on the chained-CPI. I think their constituents would like to know, too.  And I’d like to know where my Senators stand. A commenter on one of my earlier chained-CPI posts says she received a form letter from one of them, Dianne Feinstein, on the subject. The commenter writes:

“In response to a petition I signed, my Senator, Dianne Feinstein explains to me the ‘benefits’ of a ‘Chained-CPI’ and how it will ‘save’ Social Security over ‘112 billion’ dollars during the next ten years. She goes to say that ‘government’ will be ‘restricted’ from using these ‘savings’ for any other purpose.”

That’s nonsense, from my state’s senior Senator. I’d like to see Feinstein go on the record about the chained CPI so she has to defend those comments. But thanks to the voice vote, she doesn’t have to. Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken a more negative tone toward this middle-class tax hike and Social Security benefit cut, but I’d like to see something more definitive from her too.

Roll-call votes are an integral part of the democratic (with a small “d”) process. For too many years we’ve allowed our elected officials to evade accountability on this and other critical issues. In this case, voters who re-elected the President and the Democratic Senate did so in large part because they believed they were going to defend Social Security’s benefits.

I’d like to know if those voters were misled. In fact, one of the best reasons to support public accountability is to prevent voters from being misled. Instead we’ve seen one artificially engineered crisis after another, each of which has been designed to make it look as if these terrible and unpopular policies were unavoidable, that they were needed to avert disaster – almost an act of God.

I want to know: Who’s defending Social Security and protecting middle class tax affordability and who isn’t?

This vote is a move forward for those who want to see Social Security protected. Even its off-the-record voice vote status has an upside: It stands as mute witness to the public’s revulsion at the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans, and the disabled. It reminds our leaders that some of them are considering an option so disliked and so ill-advised that they can’t be seen doing it in the light of day.

The good news about this vote is that it tells us that the Senate leadership understand that the “chained CPI” is politically toxic. The bad news is that they’re not willing to stand up for what they know is right, or publicly resist what they know is wrong.

They won’t make a case in favor of the chained CPI. Butthey won’t rule it out, either. They act as if they’re ashamed of it – and of themselves for considering it.

They should be.