The storm over the oil spill is just now breaking in the public. There are 2 more on the horizon.

[Are_grits_groceries]

The first is the recent cutoff of more benefits to some the unemployed. These people are probably in various degrees of trouble. Those benefits may be their only lifeline. There are no jobs in most cases whether they have been hunting or not. The economy is picking up, but not in time to pick a lot of them up with it and fill in this loss.

There is a tipping point when people will stop believing that any help is coming. This move will just put more people in the category that is near it. The deficit does need to be brought down. It is skyrocketing because of the 2 wars and the money given to the DoD. This is the fact that a lot of people don't want to acknowledge. They would rather blame and cut social programs. The DoD budget is trying to be cut by President Obama and others. However, the money spent on 2 wars is an in your face fact.

The second storm is the one that will really be the one to avoid. That is the committee that is putting together a plan to change Social Security or Medicare or both. If any plan by this committee is suddenly proposed much less pushed through, the uproar will be loud and long. That committee may be doing it as part of an overall plan for the deficit, but the majority of Americans don't know boo about that group. They have been kept off the radar.

Did people not see the reaction when health care was proposed and some thought their SS would be touched? If they think that reaction will be confined to just the Teaspitters if this plan is proposed, they are badly mistaken. A direct proposal to change Social Security recommended by a group of whoevers to the general public at this precarious time will not be something I want to see the response to.

Any possible explanations and rationales will be lost when 'change Social Security' is laid out before them. Passing the health care bill was hard enough even when the general public supported that it should be done. Avoiding some of those problems may be desirable. I don't think this is the best way.

Social Security is the third rail. Trying too adjust it, especially now, is trickier than anything I can imagine doing. I know that there are attempts to cut some DoD projects. That is all well and good. However, continuing to spend billions of dollars in 2 wars while cutting SS????????????? I'm not sure if anybody can frame that message right.

I don't know if and when these two problems will grow. If they do, I don't want to be in the way.

[Fumesucker]

1. Unlike you, I *do* want to see the response to a proposal to cut SS..

I'd like to see the politicians dreaming this crap up gutted and spitted, even if only metaphorically.

[Birthmark]

2. Any attempt to change SS...

...will be the death of the party that attempts it.

[caledesi]

3. Agree. nt

[indepat]

7. Does BHO really think he can slash social security and Medicare by hand-picking

a committee hand-picked by him solely for that purpose and have any chance to be re-elected? Is BHO going to hand the RW its most exhilarating wet dream of a life time? :shrug:

[AllentownJake]

4. The financial terrorist will coordinate their attack on social security

with an attack on the dollar.

Ask the Greeks and the Europeans.

[Hannah Bell]

6. you're the second person to mention this. where are you hearing it?

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. The Pain Caucus by Paul Krugman

What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery? Dangers abound, of course. But what I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea: the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.
<snip>
The best summary I’ve seen of all this comes from Martin Wolf of The Financial Times, who describes the new conventional wisdom as being that “giving the markets what we think they may want in future — even though they show little sign of insisting on it now — should be the ruling idea in policy.”

Put that way, it sounds crazy. And it is. Yet it’s a view that’s spreading. And it’s already having ugly consequences. Last week conservative members of the House, invoking the new deficit fears, scaled back a bill extending aid to the long-term unemployed — and the Senate left town without acting on even the inadequate measures that remained. As a result, many American families are about to lose unemployment benefits, health insurance, or both — and as these families are forced to slash spending, they will endanger the jobs of many more.

And that’s just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/opinion/31krugman.html?ref=opinion

[bluestateguy]

8. The Bloomberg estimates say 500,000 jobs may have been created last month

If that ends up being true, yes, it's good news, not near enough to make up for the 8 million jobs lost since December 2007. Ironically, a positive jobs report on Friday could kill off any hope for more unemployment benefit extensions.