A Real Bargain: Grand Bargain on Social Security DOA

     For years, we've had firebaggers telling us that Obama was itching to gut Social Security. It's true that he did float the idea of Chained CPI. However, I think this shows that he's won another round as he no longer has to offer such sweetners to GOPers anymore. Krugman has pointed out that the demand for austerity has really dropped out of sight this year. It seems that so have Grand Bargains. 

    "President Obama will not include cuts to Social Security and other earned-benefit programs in his upcoming budget, the White House confirmed on Thursday."

    "The cuts had been included in past proposals to lure Republicans into a so-called "grand bargain" that would raise taxes and cut spending with the goal of deficit reduction. The president faced fierce resistance to the cuts, and while Republicans liked the idea, they never agreed to pair the policy with higher taxes."

    "The withdrawal of the offer from the budget is a recognition of the reality that a grand bargain is simply too unpopular on both sides of the aisle. The death of the grand bargain, first reported by the Associated Press on Thursday, comes as annual budget deficits have fallen from more than $1 trillion to less than $500 billion next year."

    "The Social Security cut would have worked by using a stingier formula for annual benefit increases known as cost-of-living adjustments, reducing Social Security spending by $127 billion over 10 years, according an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. The difference in monthly benefits under a chained CPI would be modest at first, but the amount of missed benefits would mount for seniors the longer they live."

    "Republicans expressed disappointment at Obama's move."

   "This reaffirms what has become all too apparent: the president has no interest in doing anything, even modest, to address our looming debt crisis," Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said in an email. "The one and only idea the president has to offer is even more job-destroying tax hikes, and that non-starter won’t do anything to save the entitlement programs that are critical to so many Americans. With three years left in office, it seems the president is already throwing in the towel."

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/20/obama-social-security_n_4824915.html

      Technically, the White House does still say that Chained CPI remains on the table-but as it's off the budget pages, it would seem it's a smaller table? It's ironic if Republicans are disappointed as they've spend years opposing the President and were totally uninterested in taking the CCPI bait. 

     In more good news, in this same vein, the Senate GOP accepted the inevitable  clean debt ceiling hike.' This just shows once again that the GOP's hostage taking isn't working. They should have grabbed CCPI when they had more leverage but then they wanted it all. Now they'll get nothing just like they did with the fiscal cliff-at one point Nancy Pelosi had offered them to only end the Bush tax cuts on income over $1 million per year. They said no way and ended up eating a much lower number. Now the same thing with CCPI-they overplayed their and and now they lost their chance-not that I'm sorry about that. 

    "Liberals are celebrating, with good reason, but I think the strongest emotional response should come from reasonable conservatives who have let an inflexible anti-tax orthodoxy destroy the right’s longer-standing goal of slashing and devolving entitlements. The only way they’ll get there with Democrats in power is to pony up some tax revenue. Failing that, they’ll need to recapture the entire government and do the slashing and devolving all on their own. But there’s every reason in the world to doubt they have the chutzpah to do that. So the dream is dead. Driving that point home to the right is just as valuable as granting a reprieve to the left."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/02/20/happy-hour-roundup-296/

     This is where an inability to take yes for an answer has gotten them: nothing.