The hope many had that those in American politics would move forward more cohesively following the climatic debt ceiling debate over the summer, appears to be at a standstill and perhaps faltering. Congressional leaders on the deficit “super committee” charged to find at least $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction through 2021 by November 23 are yet to make a joint recommendation as their deadline quickly approaches. The Hill now reports that liberal groups are applying pressure and threatening former Democratic presidential candidate and deficit super committee member Sen. John Kerry, as well as any other Democrats who they suspect are working with Republicans to find a middle ground on entitlement reform as a part of deficit reductions.
“The Massachusetts AFL-CIO and other labor entities in the state have passed resolutions calling on Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) to publicly oppose cuts to safety-net programs,” writes The Hill. Concerns from liberal activists grew after a proposal emerged from Democrats on the super committee, which has already been rejected by the GOP, that proposed cuts to Social Security cost-of-living increases (COLA) as part of a $3 trillion deficit reduction deal that included $1.3 trillion in tax increases.
The Hill writes that since the proposal, liberal groups including the AFL-CIO and National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare are outraged with Democrats willing to work with Republicans in making any reforms to Social Security:
“Left-leaning activists noted that Democrats successfully united against changes to Social Security in 2005 during President George W. Bush’s second term. Bush’s plan never even got a vote at the committee level.
‘I am much more worried than I was [in 2005],’ said Max Richtman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Greg Jefferson of the AFL-CIO said Social Security has become the ‘low hanging fruit’ in deficit talks rather than off-limits as it used to be.” Steven Tolman, President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, specifically targeted his Senator in a statement, saying: “On behalf of all workers in our state and beyond, the Massachusetts labor movement urges Senator Kerry to capitalize on his historic role by preventing any cuts to the crucial safety net programs that support millions of Massachusetts families.”
The Hill notes that despite comments from the President and many Democratic leaders in Congress who acknowledge that to get the nation’s fiscal house in order, entitlement programs canot be off-limits, liberal activists persist in steadfast opposition and have threatened those willing to compromise with Republicans:
“Still, some activists have warned senior Democrats in private meetings to distance themselves from the party’s supercommittee proposal, or they will face voter wrath in the 2012 elections. Last week, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka threatened to withhold critical union election support from anyone supporting the reported cuts.” The L.A. Times notes that Republican congressional leaders have been holed up with their party’s super committee members in recent days to produce a proposal raising some revenue by selling assets and growing the economy while relying primarily on budget cuts to balance the books. Republicans refuse to accept a millionaires-tax that Democrats insist is wealthier households paying “their fair share” to solve the nation’s deficit problems.
Failure to reach a compromise by November 23 is expected to send shock waves through the fragile economy the way that the summer debt ceiling standoff did, ultimately leading to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. The Times notes that failure would also trigger automatic budget cuts that both parties want to avoid.
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Sun Nov 06, 2011 12:48 pm
I dont know whats going on. As long as my social security and medicaid is left alone they can all kiss off. Cut welfare and cut SS from those who never paid a cent into it.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
Posts : 15226 Join date : 2010-06-06 Age : 76 Location : Denton
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Sun Nov 06, 2011 6:51 pm
I believe this is one of the largest issues in the next political elections! What happens to the SS payouts will certainly affect the race and its outcome!!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:33 pm
Also our first and second amendments are at stake here. We have some old tired Supreme Court Judges who are old and tired and are in need of retirement. We dont need anymore libturd leaning judges in that circle.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
Posts : 15226 Join date : 2010-06-06 Age : 76 Location : Denton
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Mon Nov 07, 2011 4:54 pm
We need them to hang on until the election is over and we have some influence and control over what goes in there!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Tue Nov 08, 2011 3:52 pm
I hope they do. Now more then ever we need them to stay healthy and ready to intelligently argue their point.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
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Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Tue Nov 08, 2011 5:08 pm
If the elections come out the way I think they will, it will be fine! If not, we may have to hold on for a long time!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:03 pm
This came out in the Washington Post today.
E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion Writer The right-wing’s shellacking Text Size PrintE-mailReprintsBy E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: November 9 This week’s elections around the country were brought to you by the word “overreach,” specifically conservative overreach. Given an opportunity in 2010 to build a long-term majority, Republicans instead pursued extreme and partisan measures. On Tuesday, they reaped angry voter rebellions.
The most important was in Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly defeated Gov. John Kasich’s (R) bill to strip public-employee unions of essential bargaining rights. A year ago, who would have predicted that standing up for the interests of government workers would galvanize and mobilize voters on this scale? Anti- labor conservatives have brought class politics back to life, a major threat to a GOP that has long depended on the ballots of white working-class voters and offered them nothing in return.
.In Maine, voters exercised what that state calls a “people’s veto” to undo a Republican-passed law that would have ended same-day voter registration, which served Maine well for almost four decades.
What’s often lost is that the conservative Republicans elected in 2010 aren’t simply pushing right-wing policies. Where they can, they are also using majorities won in a single election to manipulate future elections — by making it harder for young and minority voters to cast ballots, and by trying to break the political power of unions. The votes in Maine and Ohio were a rebuke to this strategy.
In Mississippi, perhaps the most conservative state in the union, voters beat back a referendum to declare a fertilized human egg a person by a margin of roughly 3-to-2. Here was overreach by the right-to-life movement, which tried to get voters to endorse a measure that could have outlawed popular forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.
The war against overreach extended to the immigration issue, too. Russell Pearce became, as the Arizona Republic noted, the first sitting state Senate president in the nation as well as the first Arizona legislator ever to lose a recall election. Pearce, who spearheaded viciously anti-immigrant legislation, was defeated by Jerry Lewis, a conservative with a mild demeanor. Lewis correctly saw his as a victory for restoring “a civil tone to politics.” This was a case of old-fashioned conservatism beating the Tea Party variety.
And in Iowa, Democrats held their state Senate majority by winning a special election that had been engineered by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. Occupy Wall Street, notice that elections matter: A Republican victory over Democrat Liz Mathis would have opened the way for Branstad to push through a cut in corporate income taxes.
Mathis’s defeat could also have allowed conservatives to amend the Iowa Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Mathis prevailed despite robocalls from an obscure group instructing voters to ask Mathis which gay sex acts she endorsed. (It should be said, as the Des Moines Register reported, that better-known organizations opposed to gay marriage denounced the calls.)
The one potential bright spot for Republicans was not as bright as it was supposed to be. In Virginia, both sides had expected the GOP to take over the state Senate. But at best, the Republicans will achieve a 20-to-20 tie, giving Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) a decisive role. And their chance of getting even to 20 hangs on the recount of an 86-vote margin in one district.
The split means Virginia has not reverted to its earlier status as a Republican bastion. It remains a purple state. Especially significant, Democratic consultant Mo Elleithee observed, were the party’s successes in the Washington suburbs and exurbs and in Hampton Roads, precisely the areas where President Obama needs to do well if he is to carry Virginia next year, as he did in 2008. Democrats also comfortably held the New Jersey Legislature, suggesting the limits of Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) much-touted political magic.
One of the only referendum results the GOP could cheer was a strong vote in Ohio against the health-insurance mandate. While health-reform supporters argued that the ballot question was misleading, the result spoke to the truly terrible job Democrats have done in defending what they enacted. They can’t let the health-care law remain a policy stepchild.
That useful warning aside, Tuesday’s results underscored the power of unions and populist politics, the danger to conservatives of social-issue extremism and the fact that 2010 was no mandate for right-wing policies. They also mean that if Republicans don’t back away from an agenda that makes middle-class, middle-of-the-road Americans deeply uncomfortable — and in some cases angry — they will lose the rather more important fight of 2012.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
Posts : 15226 Join date : 2010-06-06 Age : 76 Location : Denton
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Thu Nov 17, 2011 10:27 am
Could not have said it better! Best take a middle of the road approach for now and get out of this extreme right wing crap! If not, kiss 2012 goodbye!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Thu Nov 17, 2011 1:31 pm
If they want to get ahead they have to stop with this BS on not wanting the millionaires to pay their fair share. THAT is the issue that willsink our ship.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
Posts : 15226 Join date : 2010-06-06 Age : 76 Location : Denton
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Thu Nov 17, 2011 4:08 pm
It is one issue that will creatae problems but there are also others that will do the same thing!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Fri Nov 18, 2011 3:44 pm
It's all give and take. All side need to step back and think about that. They need to come together as a group not 2 groups head butting each other. Leave that for the kids in the school yard.
Alley_Oop Mod/Admin Admin
Posts : 15226 Join date : 2010-06-06 Age : 76 Location : Denton
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Fri Nov 18, 2011 4:06 pm
I think they are all acting like jerks!! JMHO!!
UncleFrank Honored Armed Service Member
Posts : 11868 Join date : 2010-07-25 Age : 74 Location : Commie occupied N.J.
Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY Fri Nov 18, 2011 4:20 pm
You sir, are being too kind.
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Subject: Re: LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY
LIBERAL GROUPS THREATEN SEN. KERRY AND ANY SUPER COMMITTEE DEMOCRATS WILLING TO WORK WITH GOP ON SOCIAL SECURITY