Take that, Paul Ryan! Elizabeth Warren beats back Social Security plot

[kpete]

Take that, Paul Ryan! Elizabeth Warren beats back Social Security plot
The years-long campaign to slash Social Security benefits has finally met its match
MICHAEL LIND


The Overton Window has shifted! At least in the case of Social Security.

The Overton Window — named for the late Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — is the frame through which acceptable options for public policy are viewed at any given time. Options that are outside of the frame (or “outside the box,” to use another metaphor) are deemed unworthy of consideration or mention by the bipartisan establishment, no matter how compelling those options may actually be. The Overton Window tends to be positioned by the owners and bureaucrats of the major media, who tend to share an elite consensus with politicians and the donors who fund them.

Until recently, in discussions of the future of Social Security the Overton Window was positioned to exclude any discussion of raising, rather than cutting, Social Security benefits. For the last generation, the range of permissible opinion with respect to the program — which most Americans depend on for nearly all of their income in old age — ranged from conservatives who wanted to abolish Social Security altogether, to press-anointed “progressives” and token Democrats who merely wanted to cut Social Security benefits. The option of maintaining scheduled Social Security benefits, and paying for them with higher taxes, was considered unworthy of discussion by the guardians of Overton Orthodoxy, both in the press and in the two major parties. As for expanding Social Security benefits — why, that’s crazy talk!

It’s safe to say that, within the bipartisan oligarchy, the alleged need to cut Social Security remains the consensus. But the Overton Window has shifted just a little to the left, and the idea of expanding Social Security, hitherto invisible through the frame, is now in the public field of vision.

The movement of the idea of expanding Social Security — from lunatic fringe idea to respectable subject of discussion — has been remarkably swift. For decades there have been a few lonely voices calling for benefits to be expanded, but they were consistently ignored. In recent years, the idea of expanding Social Security benefits has been promoted by the blogger Duncan Black (“Atrios”), the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Social Security Works and others. And in 2012 Sen. Tom Harkin introduced a bill to use a different inflation measure to raise Social Security — rather than using different measurements of inflation to cut benefits for the elderly, as President Obama and some other centrist Democrats and conservative Republicans had proposed.


MORE:
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/15/take_that_paul_ryan_elizabeth_warren_beats_back_conservative_social_security_plot/

[Wilms]

1. "This is a direct affront to Hillary Clinton, who in October opened the door to Social Security cuts

http://americarising.tumblr.com/post/69708675350/left-targets-hillarys-position-on-social-security

[truebluegreen]

2. Good.

[Enthusiast]

6. Hillary Clinton would be a Third Way candidate.

Completely unacceptable.

[99Forever]

3. K&R

[bvar22]

4. We need MORE fighters to protect Social Security benefits, like THIS guy!

#t=26

Is an unambiguous statement like that too much to expect from the Democratic Party Leadership?

[Scuba]

5. Didja notice that the oligarchs have spent 30 years trying to kill Social Security ....

... and it takes one good Democrat less than a year in office to beat back their plotting?


Makes one suspect some of the other "Democrats" aren't really trying.

[Enthusiast]

7. It's obvious that the other "Democrats" aren't really trying.

They thought they could ride the Third Way train with impunity. Of course that isn't something they want you to know.