Obama to Pitch Higher Taxes and Means-Testing Medicare
ABC News
Obama on Monday will outline more than $2 trillion in new deficit reduction over the next decade, senior administration officials tell ABC News, including $1.5 trillion in new taxes and means-testing Medicare for wealthy recipients — both in higher fees and benefit cuts for top income brackets.
Combined with savings from the debt deal and drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the proposal will guarantee that the size of the debt — as a share of the economy and percentage of GDP — will fall, with more than $4 trillion in deficit reduction total.
The president’s purpose in laying out this detailed plan is to avoid the criticisms that have dogged him throughout this year for not putting out a more assertive deficit reduction plan, and to further illustrate his “balanced approach,” requiring “shared sacrifice.”
A senior administration official described the president’s proposal as having “very tough policies in it, and we know that that’s going to be something that our friends and our opponents alike are going to notice. But there is no way to get this job done without making tough decisions, and this is putting forward a plan that does it in a fair and a balanced way.”
The president will propose roughly $580 billion in cuts to mandatory spending programs, including $248 billion from Medicare and $72 billion from Medicaid and other health programs.
Part of this will include asking wealthier seniors who receive Medicare to pay higher premiums and accept fewer benefits — means-testing the program.
But that said, the president will not accept any cuts to Medicare if tax increases on wealthier income brackets and corporations are not part of the final package.
“He will say that he will veto any bill that takes one dime from the Medicare benefits seniors rely on without asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share,” a senior administration official said.
Obama’s remarks will push the so-called “super-committee” charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by November to undertake comprehensive tax reform guided by five principles: lowering tax rates; eliminating wasteful loopholes and tax breaks; reducing the deficit by $1.5 trillion; boosting job creation and growth; and being consistent with the “Buffett Rule.”
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Wild Thing’s commenrt……….
While the Dems are accusing Republicans of “dismantling” social security and Medicare, the Dems are the ones who are actually doing it. In the Obamacare law there are some provisions of severe cuts in Medicare also.
2012 cannot come soon enough. We’ve got to get these incompetent maggots out of the government and get the adults back in there.
The man really has lost it. The House won’t give him new taxes, half his party in the Senate won’t give him more taxes, and the majority of the American people have told him they don’t want more taxes, and his solution is…?
More Taxes.
obama’s always talking about us ‘getting some skin in the game.’ when does this dirtbag get some of his own skin in the game. He and his partner live of the fat of the land, always Million dollar vacations, the most extravagent places to visit, gifts that normal people only dream about, always the best of everything, but We the people are expected by him to sacrifice while he enjoys the spoils of our hard work. When does this mangy Son of a Bitch put some skin into the game.
New E-mail. Thought this might fit in here.
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September 19, 2011
Obama’s New Maiestas
by Victor Davis Hanson
Ricochet.com
There are a lot of disturbing — and ironic — things about the new Obama effort (AttackWatch.com) to monitor, hunt down, and attack his critics. It used to be a classically liberal idea that conservatives and liberals would debate policies, put their views out, and let the public decide the validity of their positions. Supposedly disinterested newspapers would occasionally weigh in on disingenuous or especially egregious transgressions of good manners and basic professionalism.
At certain times — so the liberal narrative went — this notion of an arena of ideas was perverted by the paranoid and vindictive right-wingers, like a Joe McCarthy shaking papers “with the names of known communists”, or Richard Nixon with his enemies lists.
Yet go onto the new (“Paid for by Obama for America”) AttackWatch.com website. It reads and looks like some sort of Stasi file (“file” is their vocabulary, not mine). It asks readers to inform them of criticism of Obama. The format is, I guess by intent, supposed to resemble a government intelligence dossier (“Attack files”), with its blaring black and red headers: “Attack”/”Attackers” (followed by names and pictures of the supposed bad guys)/”Attack Type”/(“public statements”) followed by check off boxes like “Have you seen or heard this attack?” “Yes/No”. It reminds me of of living in 1973 dictatorial Greece, when we all kept silent about the Colonels upon entering the apartment building, lest the government-paid concierge write something down not nice in her black book.
Apparently no one in the administration learned from the spooky tone of the now defunct Journolist. That obtuseness begs the question, what is it with these extra-journalistic efforts to intimidate critics, as if the 2012 campaign will be based around deterrence: e.g., as if: “Beware: if you criticize Barack Obama, your name and picture will appear on our “Attack File.” We are watching you, so you watch out!”
So creepier still is the request to snoop around and collect evidence for what the Roman emperors and French monarchs used to call maiestas/Lèse-majesté — supposed crimes against the head of state, by circulating criticism of his authority that might lessen his proper sense of majesty. Indeed, on AttackWatch.com there is a special pop-up window that is reminiscent of Crimestoppers.com that supposedly will help form some sort of a clearing house: “Your email”/”content of attack or link”/”Attack type”, “Attach” with a link “Report” that pops up yet another window.
This is yet another disturbing symptom of Obama’s current malady: Near 40% approval polls; widespread terror of 2012 Democratic candidates that Obama may bring them down in the fashion of the 2010 tsunami (cf. the wipeouts in the Nevada and New York special elections); leftwing columnists scapegoating Obama in hopes that they can blame the public rejection of their own statist agenda on a supposedly inept messenger.
I predict AttackWatch.com will fail and go the way of Journolist. It is contrary to the American tradition of unfettered free speech to post, in psychodramatic style, names and pictures as if they were criminals for speaking out against the head of state. The request for millions of spies to report such incorrect discourse will offend rather than inspire. As in the case of the 2008 Obama rejection of public campaign financing funds, it is hypocritical; and also antithetical to the supposed liberal tradition of tolerance and free expression without worry of intimidation.
I also predict in the following weeks we will see a lot of pushback from even the liberal media that will seek to disassociate itself from AttackWatch.com — lest the names and pictures of themselves start showing up on it.
©2011 Victor Davis Hanson
obama wants to replace Social Security and Medicare with obamasecurity and obamacare. They will be many times more costly and freedom restricting. obama also wants to tax the job producers(wealthy) out of existance so the state can take over all industry and jobs. His goal is to break America economically and put us on the path to Marxism. Meantime, like all good commies, he and his communist insiders will live the good life. A la N. korea.
The old can’t get health insurance because of medicare. My Folks had very good health insurance but they could not keep it after 65. So Medicare will now become a welfare program like medicaid. If they had that option to start with they would have paid a life insurance plan. They could have afforded it.
Thank you so much all of you for your input and sharing.
Avitar, thank you for sharing about your parents.