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 repeatring 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 any long-term funding issues are driven primarily by wealth inequity, unemployment, and other factors, 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 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.
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