How would that affect Democrats? When Obama and Boehner agreed on the "chained CPI" last December, CNBC ran an article headlined "How You Could Be Affected by Obama's Social Security Plan." Not "Obama and Boehner's plan" -- Obama's.
Does anybody doubt how these cuts will be presented to the public -- or how they'll be remembered?
Broken Record
We were told last month that the President "focused a lot on entitlements" while offering "concessions" to Republicans which included another offer to cut Social Security benefits with the "chained CPI." Senior White House official Gene Sperling told CNN that the President was "reaching out to Democrats who understand we need to make serious progress on long term entitlement reform."
In other words, the people who needed persuading were fellow Democrats, not Republicans. Nancy Pelosi tried to help him by reiterating her willingness to support the President's cuts, but the Senate's recent voice-vote rejection of the chained CPI shows that it's still a tough sell. Good.
In December 2012, Obama and House Speaker Boehner agreed in principle to the "chained CPI" benefit cuts, during the same negotiations when Obama caved on his popular tax increase for income above $250,000. That particular cave-in, as we noted at the time, increased the deficit by $183 billion -- much more than the estimated $122 billion the "chained CPI" cut would save (without even reducing the deficit). You could bring in more money by closing loopholes in the capital gains tax, too.
In 2011 the Washington Post reported that "As part of his (deficit-deal) pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security."
In 2010, a "very senior White House official" told a group of us that the Administration supports such cuts. Reports in 2010 also indicated that the President planned to announce Social Security cuts in his State of the Union message until he was pressured to back down.
And in 2009 the President appointed two adamant Social Security opponents to run his "Deficit Commission."
Why?
It would appear that the President supports these ideas because he thinks they're good policy, not just because he has to make a deal with the Republicans.
Some say he doesn't like them but feels compelled to propose them -- repeatedly, apparently -- in order to get a deficit deal. This theory essentially argues that the President and his team don't understand the politics of the situation, and haven't learned from experience. It's a loyal, if not very flattering, argument.
Personally, I think the "147 people" principle is a big part of the problem. Everybody the President and his advisors know thinks this is the right thing to do. It's a herd mentality. But whatever the reason, these don't look like "concessions" to me. They look like attempts to implement the policy that "very senior officials" said they supported back in 2010 -- and make it look like a concession.
N=0
Then there's something which is sometimes called the "N-dimensional chess" theory, which argues that the President is so brilliant that he's playing on more dimensions than the ordinary mind can grasp. He proposes bad things knowing that they won't be accepted, outfoxing the Republicans by showing the country how reasonable he is and how unreasonable they are.
Some people used "N-dimensional chess" to defend Obama's benefit-cut chatter in 2009 and 2010. The Republicans then ran to the Democrats' right in 2010 -- and took back the House.
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