Compromise or betrayal?

Compromise or betrayal?

If Democrats cut Social Security, they're breaking a campaign promise and fostering cynicism about politics.

By Joan Walsh

Time magazine named President Obama its 2012 “Person of the Year,” and it makes sense. Just two years ago he came out of the 2010 shellacking battered, his chance at a second term diminished. Instead he put together an astonishing coalition of America’s future, and became the first president in 75 years to win more than 50 percent of the vote twice. Aware of historic second-term overreach, most notably when George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, Obama says he nonetheless has an ambitious agenda for the next four years.

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Such a deal makes a liar out of Vice President Joe Biden, who flat out promised on the campaign trail that there would be no Social Security cuts. Only a week ago, press secretary Jay Carney said the president wouldn’t put Social Security on the table because the program is self-funded and is not driving the deficit. Democrats, including Obama ally Sen. Dick Durbin, have been very clear on that message: keep Social Security out of deficit discussions, because it has nothing to do with the deficit. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid likewise promised Social Security would not be touched in the negotiations.

Now Carney is saying the opposite: “This is something that the Republicans have asked for and as part of an effort to find common ground with Republicans, the president has agreed to put this in his proposal,” replied Carney. “He has agreed to have this as part of a broad deficit reduction package.” So was Carney dissembling when he said it wasn’t contributing to the deficit? Why are Democrats stepping on their own message like that?

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Paul Krugman, who went from “marginally positive to marginally negative” on a potential deal, now seems to be flat-out opposed, based on reports that the White House continues to compromise on tax rates, including on dividend income. (Again, the operative word is “reports”; we know nothing concrete.) “All of a sudden it’s feeling a lot like 2011 again, with the president negotiating with himself while the other side enjoys the process,” Krugman wrote this morning. “So Obama needs to draw a line right now: no further concessions. None. He’s already given too much.

“Yes, this probably means going over the cliff,” Krugman says. “So be it: it’s less bad than the alternative.”

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http://www.salon.com/2012/12/19/compromise_or_betrayal/