Chained CPI deal near done? So says Ezra Klein. And Open Thread

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From 3:13 p.m. this afternoon.

A ‘fiscal cliff’ deal is near: Here are the details

All at once, a “fiscal cliff” deal seems to be coming together. Speaker John Boehner’s latest offer doesn’t go quite far enough for the White House to agree, but it goes far enough that many think they can see the agreement taking shape.

[...]

On the spending side, the Democrats’ headline concession will be accepting chained-CPI, which is to say, accepting a cut to Social Security benefits. Beyond that, the negotiators will agree to targets for spending cuts. Expect the final number here, too, to be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, but also expect it to lack many specifics. Whether the cuts come from Medicare or Medicaid, whether they include raising the Medicare age, and many of the other contentious issues in the talks will be left up to Congress.

While this doesn't surprise me, it surprises me.  And shame on Obama and any Democrat who agree to this deal.  They're "supposed" to be the good guys, or so I used to think.

And would Ezra Klein post this is it weren't true?  I don't know his track record, so I can't say what the odds are.

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It's true Ezra was told this, I'm sure.

tom allen's picture

He's a White-House-friendly trial-balloon floater.  And it sounds a lot like the shit sandwich we expected -- cuts to Social Security, and probably Medicare, Medicaid, and plenty of other necessary programs.  Democrats abandoning the New Deal.  But hey, rich people pay a bit more pocket change -- so the shit sandwich comes with Gray Poupon.

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If I were an optimist, which a lot of times I am, I would

Glinda's picture

be happy to read, " White-House-friendly trial-balloon floater," which would give me some hope that we can squash this deal, if it's truly a trial balloon.

But with 14 days until the end of the year, not a lot of time to mobilize and hit back, especially since people are doing the holiday thing, not to mention minds are elsewhere still trying to come to grips with the massacre in Sandy Hook, and past experience during the end of the year of continuing the Bush tax cuts for the uber wealthy, I don't have a lot of hope we can do anything about this.

And we will lose the hyperpartisans in this fight with the same old tired pom pom excuses, Obama didn't have a choice, we need 60 votes in the Senate, So you want tax increases for the middle class if you fight this,? Obama doesn't have a magic wand, yet all the while if George W. Bush was president and he agreed to this deal, ALL the Democrats, including the politicians in Congress, would be PUSHING BACK at this with all their might.

Nothing to see here, folks, move along, enjoy your holiday.

Obama was quite clear where he stood on this in 2011, and most recently in his debates with Romney.  It's shameful.

 

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This is definitely not good.

Glinda's picture

The GOP's Electoral College Scheme

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party's majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

 

Already, two states -- Maine and Nebraska -- award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.

[...]

Any changes to the allocation of Electoral College votes would have a major impact on each party's path to the White House. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have given Democrats their collective 246 electoral votes in each of the last six elections. That virtually forces Republicans to run the swing-state table.

 

But rewriting the rules would dramatically shrink or eliminate the Democratic advantage, because of the way House districts are drawn. The decennial redistricting process has dumped huge percentages of Democratic voters into some urban districts, while Republican voters are spread over a wider number of districts, giving the party an advantage. This year, Democratic House candidates won more than 1 million more votes than Republican candidates, but Republicans won 33 more seats.

And here's just one state, Pennsylvania, where the redistricting corrupted the small d democratic process.  Now they want to do that to the Electoral College. 
 

Pennsylvanians also voted to re-elect Mr. Obama, elected Democrats to several statewide offices and cast about 83,000 more votes for Democratic Congressional candidates than for Republicans. But new maps drawn by Republicans — including for the Seventh District outside Philadelphia, a Rorschach-test inkblot of a district snaking through five counties that helped Representative Patrick Meehan win re-election by adding Republican voters — helped ensure that Republicans will have a 13-to-5 majority in the Congressional delegation that the state will send to Washington next month.

 

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