Keeps getting better and better: (h/t Michelle Malkin)
President Obama on Wednesday attempted to preempt the announcement that Social Security recipients will not get an increase in their benefit checks for the first time in three decades, encouraging Congress to provide a one-time payment of $250 to help seniors and disabled Americans weather the recession.
~~~An increase in benefit checks each January has been a yearly ritual since the mid-1970s, when the government moved to ensure that its subsidies to retirees, pension recipients and others who receive Social Security benefits kept pace with inflation. Thursday’s announcement by the Labor Department will mark the first time that the federal formula used since then, which is tied to the consumer price index, will translate into no increase at all. That is because consumer prices have remained stagnant in the weak economy — a sharp reversal from this past year, when Social Security checks grew by 5.8 percent, an unusually large amount.
13 billion is the price tag to bribe the senior lobby by wealth redistribution while the ObamaCare debate is going on.
“We generally think proposals should be paid for, but in this case, we’re providing temporary essential help to people as an extension to the Recovery Act,” the official said. “We plan to work with Congress to discuss financing, but the President is not going to go into those discussions insisting that this be paid for.”
See author page
It’s politics, by the most skilled political White House of my lifetime. Lest anyone have missed it, the debate over Obamacare is no longer whether or not it will happen (it will happen); it’s about which constituencies come out winners and losers in the zero sum game.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-healthcongress-1014-10oct15,0,4446233.story
And the economy will come back faster and stronger than predicted, foreclosures and unemployment notwithstanding. The latter are lag indicators; the lead indicators are increasingly difficult to ignore.
The GOP has handed Obama the economy on a platter. The GOP has handed Obama health care on a platter. America will be very happy with both. That’s why Olympia Snowe jumped on board. Did anyone else catch Bill Frist on Bill Maher’s show Friday?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
What a clueless moron! What part of WE ARE BROKE doesn’t this economic genius understand? Just what in the hell does he think a one-time $250 check is going to do for seniors on a fixed income? How about he send that to all the federal employees instead of their COLA this year?
The stupidity and hypocrisy of this unprepared president defies belief. And, on a different note – to let Russia visit our nuke sites just boggles the mind!
I WANT BUSH BACK!
Larry, you are truly mentally ill. Either that or you are trolling.
Obama and friends haven’t done anything right, and that means they are skilled politically?
Hard Right said: Obama and friends haven’t done anything right, and that means they are skilled politically?
He won the election….are you saying that McCain and “Saint” Sarah the Wealth redistributor (even to herself!)
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/10/welfare-socialism-redistributi.html
(Alaska Permanent Fund)
are even worse?
As for elderly folks on a fixed income getting a few extra bucks in their pockets, if the Conservatives want to go on record against this, then I reckon those Elderly folks on a fixed income will know who is trying to help them and who isn’t in a real world way that they can understand…in their pocket books. Larry is right, politics, but smart politics.
Larry..
What “leading indicators” are you talking about?
Hmmmm. We are already running 1.6 TRILLION dollars in the red this year alone. Why not add another 13 Billion. After all, vote buying is expensive.
@Larry – The US dollar is at an all-time low against other world currencies, and heading south. Industrial output is stagnate. I’m in the engineering field, and with no construction plans being engineered right now, there will not be any construction happening 6 months from now. Please take off the rose-colored glasses, you know, the ones you borrowed from Obama. Their doing you no good.
Moose poo, I can always count on you to say something stupid. I thought it was clear to all that we were talking about the obama admin/ White House. You know, the group that came together for the most part AFTER they won the election. Do try to keep up.
Now since obama was elected, he and his administration have been lurching to one disaster of their own making to another.
Larry, Dr. Sanity would say you suffer from pathological denial of reality and it’s clear you do.
Biggest deficit in American history
Poised to destroy the healthcare system
Poised to destroy the economy
Poised to destroy the middle class financially
Coddling terrorists/tyrants
Undermining freedom abroad and at home
Picking radicals for Czar positions etc.
Governing from the far left
Yeah, how skilled. You really need help larry.
Do you remember those old film clips of people with wheelbarrels full of money in Germany before “Der Fuerer” took over? Their currency had been devalued to the point that it was cheaper to throw it in the furnace rather than try to buy a lump of coal to keep warm. Their approach to the economic crisis is, “Hey, we still got paper and ink so we can print more money to throw at the problem”. Like the idiot who says, ” I still got checks, how can I be broke?”
This smuck worked with ACORN, an organization that had been on the government teat since its’ inception. He can’t think any other way. Nobody can explain it to him, they’d get more understanding out of his dog.
Paranoia would make one think he’s doing it deliberately to drive the economy into a ditch, so he can turn around and show everyone what a great and strong leader he is by stepping in and “taking charge” of the situation. If a few folks have their lives ruined, it’s just back to that old eggs and omelet adage.
But, of course, paranoia is an unreasonable fear with no basis in fact. I think the facts are saying,” be afraid “.
http://www.purchasing.com/article/358118-Smart_Sourcing_Summit_Expect_solid_recovery.php
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703298004574459403222100882.html
Even housing is going to start coming back, foreclosures notwithstanding. Happening here, in Orange County, CA, already. My particular county, perhaps the most famously GOP county in the nation, is the canary in the coal mine, as I wrote last winter. Back then, the first indicator was the number of days a house was on the market until it was sold. This went down, in Orange County, last winter. Now, all the indicators are up and the price of the average home sold is even up, close to 6%, compared to a year ago.
And I wasn’t so much praising Obama as noting how politically inept the GOP has been on the economy and on health care. The GOP bet the ranch on the economy tanking and staying tanked. Then handed ownership of the economy to Obama, thereby ensuring that he’d get all the credit, when the inevitable recovery occurred.
You guys grossly exaggerate the extra debt attributable to Obama. There has been only a modest upward blip in debt:GDP ratio and the total fiscal ’09 spending attributable to Obama (beyond that already budgeted by Bush) is practically a rounding error, as I discussed elsewhere. And, as stated by Krugman, there is a whole lot of “running room” for debt:GDP to rise precipitously further, should a second “stimulus” be deemed “necessary,” which it certainly won’t.
Health care is similar. Yes, Americans are against it, largely because of the drum beating of the GOP against it. That’s been effective. But it’s going to pass anyway. It’s political calculus to do it this way. Once it passes, it’s going to be liked by the American people, the way that every single increase in govt involvement in health care has always been liked, by Americans and by people all over the world. As I pointed out earlier, the most popular Canadian Prime Minister in history is Lester Pearson, who is credited with being the father of the Canadian national health care system, just because he was in office at the time. So the GOP has ensured that Obama will get 100% of the credit, and they’ve ensured that everyone knows that it shall have been passed over their dead bodies, the same way that Medicare was passed over the dead bodies of the GOP, circa 1960s.
Anyone see Bill Frist on Bill Maher Friday night?
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I’ve read both opinion-pieces. Neither are very gung-ho, and your insinuation that the GOP “bet the ranch” is rather….stupid, for lack of a better term.
The WSJ piece had this as it’s last paragragh:
Whether or not this recovery continues depends on the course of government policy. If the U.S. passes a costly bill to nationalize the health-care system, a new tax system to reduce carbon emissions, and higher marginal income tax rates, a European sclerosis will settle in with permanently higher unemployment rates. This will not happen because capitalism failed, but because government gave up on it prematurely.
..which basically throws out the rest of your point.
And for the last freakin time, NONE of us here are “aganst the healthcare bill” because the Repubs told us what to think. We are against it, because it sucks, and won’t help anyone but the government.
@Patvann:
The WSJ article has two components: Firstly, an analysis of what is currently happening in the economy, most of which is positive.. Second, an OPINION of what might be the future result of different government policies — an opinion which would be by no means generally accepted among leading economists.
I posted this as an answer to your query about what “indicators” were trending positive. The WSJ article was helpful in this regard.
With regard to the various health care bills, they will get reconciled and a final bill will be passed and signed into law.
My point is this: the GOP has, indeed, bet the ranch on both the economy staying in the toilet and health care reform being perceived, down the road, as a disaster. The last time the GOP went down this road, in opposing Medicare, they lost electoral credibility for a generation. I think that the stakes are just as high, this time around.
If the economy recovers, which it will (despite returning marginal tax rates to what they were under Ronald Reagan and well below where they were for decades before that), then the GOP has ensured that Obama gets the credit.
If health care reform is ultimately judged to be a success, which it will (despite your protestations that it “sucks” — I again ask — did anyone see [cardiothoracic surgeon and former GOP Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist on Bill Maher on Friday?), then the GOP has ensured, also, that Obama gets the credit.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
How much did the Demos claim Medical was going to cost?. Oh yea, they were off by a factor of 20.
And it was Nixon that lost the GOP “credibility” for 4 years, not a “generation”.
LBJ, Nixon, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush. etc.
-Seems to me, the liberal fallacies of Carter lost the DEM’s credibility for 12 years.
Read aloud the FIRST sentence of the Purchasing piece.
BOTH of these were published less than 3 days ago. I’ll wait for some real info. In fact YOU didn’t bother looking into it, before I had asked. The pieces you chose prove it.
I’ve managed so far to be ahead of every damn turn in the economy for the past 20 years, and I’m not about to fall into what you or anyone else claims is going to happen.
I’ve done well enough that I am retired at 48, without playing any tricks or games, and my debt is zero. I did this by being a conservative, and by NOT depending on government.
@Patvann:
You are advancing the same fallacy that Aye has tried to advance, time and again. The implication is that the Medicare cost overruns were because of graft, bureaucratic inefficiency, etc. In fact, health care costs have exploded even more in the totally privately funded and administered health care sector than they have in Medicare. Medicare has been, by all reasonable metrics, an astonishing success. It has provided universal health coverage of the highest quality to its target population. Medicare has a higher “consumer satisfaction” rating than private health insurance, does less “rationing” of care, costs less (age and disease adjusted), and has unsurpassed quality of care. In the absence of Medicare, we’d all have gone broke, trying to provide health care for our parents.
You are talking purely Presidential politics. That’s not where the GOP lost credibility. The GOP lost control of congress for a generation, as stated.
Congratulations on your personal success, but you are preaching to the choir. With all due respect, your own personal microeconomics doesn’t apply to health care, which doesn’t come close to following the rules of traditional economics. I’ve discussed this, in depth, elsehwere on this blog.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
my reply to #12 went to spam. – larry w
Add a P.S. to the post which went to spam:
>>BOTH of these were published less than 3 days ago. I’ll wait for some real info. In fact YOU didn’t bother looking into it, before I had asked. The pieces you chose prove it.<<
This is an unfair charge. Like you, I've been closely following the state of the economy. The basis for my own opinions are the sum total of what I've read, heard, and watched, on the various media. But I don't/can't carry in my head precise citations, which is what you were asking for. Plus, I'm at work (unlike you, I plan on never retiring, or at least not until people no longer want me to do what it is that I do) and have little time to gather references. So I came up with the citations I did, which do offer support for my personal opinions, which, were, again, based on what I've read, heard, and viewed.
– Larry W/HB
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
OT just curious, love to hear you explain this one.
Tell us, why in the world would a moderate pragmatist put someone like this, Anita Dunn, much in the news lately, in his administrationas a communications director?
http://www.washingtonmemo.com/2009/10/15/breaking-white-houses-dunn-admires-chairman-mao/
In the filter. P&T
Remember when MEchelle mocked the Bush tax refund of $600 as only enough to buy a pair of earrings? What will this paltry $250 buy for granny and pawpaw? It’s a pretty steep price for a ring through the nose, especially since its real purpose is to make it easier to lead them to the death panels.
@LastWordLarry
Since you still have a post in the “Q”, I’ll close by ageeing that a few indices are NOT as bad as they were predicted to have been, for this period of reporting.
-I have LOTS of time on my hands, and have been reading/absorbing it all, including my paid-for reports.
I hope to God the economy improves for the sake of all affected. There is simply too little time between today, and 15 days ago to claim the following:
“And the economy will come back faster and stronger than predicted, foreclosures and unemployment notwithstanding. The latter are lag indicators; the lead indicators are increasingly difficult to ignore.”
I will ALWAYS ignore 2 weeks of data, and THAT was my whole point in a nutshell…It is too early to tell, and there is still downward pressure.
@Missy: I have no insights into that appointment. – Larry W/HB
@Patvann: You’ve had the last word. Thanks for the thoughtful comments.