Keep an eye on New Dems

[chill_wind]

Sen. Warner to brief New Dems in House on Gang of Six plan
By Russell Berman - 07/20/11 10:48 AM ET

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) will brief members of the New Democrat Coalition on the Gang of Six deficit-reduction proposal Wednesday afternoon, a Democratic aide said, as the bipartisan Senate group begins the process of selling the House on its $3.7 trillion plan.

Warner is a member of the Gang of Six with close ties to the business-friendly House coalition, whose 43 members have sought to play a larger role in the debt-limit debate after the more conservative Blue Dog coalition was decimated in the 2010 elections.

Led by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), the New Democrats have been meeting frequently to discuss the debt-limit talks, and the group’s leadership on Tuesday issued a statement endorsing an unspecified “grand bargain” to reduce long-term deficits and raise the debt ceiling. Given the coalition’s predisposition to a comprehensive agreement, it may be among the easiest factions in the House to sell on the Gang of Six plan.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/172487-sen-warner-to-brief-new-dems-in-house-on-gang-of-six-plan

[SugarShack]

1. Don't allow Mark Warner to babysit the new dems! He voted against the jobs bill, killed it.

When Dems had the house...they wrote a jobs bill, reversing the tax code, to bring our jobs back frmo overseas. Four dems killed it in the Senate. Mark Warner, Ben Nelson, and two others.


So...Warner's going to "handle" the newbies?

[chill_wind]

4. Coalition formed in 1997.

http://ndc.crowley.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=54

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrat_Coalition#Current_senators

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=3869&kaid=103&subid=110

[patrice]

2. Roger that!! We NEED a new kind of "warriors" to guard OUR interests. nt

[chill_wind]

9. Alas.

They are "pragmatic" centrist moderates, pro-big business, much more aligned with the old DLC vanguard on many issues than traditional interest groups. They would probably be more receptive, not less, to the Chained CPI SS Cola cuts among other things.

The Progessive Policy Institute (think tank for 'pragmatic progressive' New Dems) couldn't love the idea more.

http://progressivefix.com/fix-cpi-reap-big-savings

[patrice]

12. I'm pulling for Labor to be those new warriors. nt

[chill_wind]

13. +1

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on “Gang of Six” Plan

July 20, 2011

Both parties keep telling us that deficit reduction requires “tough choices” and “shared sacrifice” and “taking on sacred cows.” But then we keep seeing bipartisan support for plans like the so-called “Gang of Six” that cut Social Security benefits, kill jobs, give tax incentives for corporations to export good jobs overseas, tax health benefits, and lower tax rates for billionaires and corporations. There’s no shared sacrifice here. The only sacred cows being gored are working people, the middle class, seniors and the poor. Though the plan is very specific when it comes to spelling out tax cuts for rich people, there are still a lot of blanks to be filled in. Even so, we’ve seen enough to know that there is nothing here for working people. We need to keep asking our leaders: “Who got us into this mess?” It wasn’t working people. The people who got us into this mess are getting off scot-free, and this Gang of Six proposal shows they have accomplices in both parties.

###

Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2011/07/20/trumka-cool-to-gang-o-6/#ixzz1Sh2DMhji

House of Labor Cool to Gang o’ 6
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

http://thepage.time.com/2011/07/20/trumka-cool-to-gang-o-6/#ixzz1Sh2W4QVe

:thumbsup:

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[chill_wind]

5. Pitching to the Center

Sen. Warner plans to pitch the plan to the majority leader and to centrist House Dems

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59477_Page2.html#ixzz1SgMoDP00


“It’s going to be difficult to draft it, score it and pass it in the House and Senate in 12 days,” Durbin said as he headed into the meeting with House Democrats. “But we need to discuss it with the leadership. So far, that path remains murky at best, and politically impossible at worse.

Reid instructed Warner on Tuesday to find which of the group’s cuts can be incorporated into the immediate plan to raise the national debt ceiling by Aug. 2. Their broader proposal includes $500 billion in immediate cuts and an elaborate process compelling Senate committees to identify $3.7 trillion in cuts over the next decade through the tax code, discretionary spending and entitlement programs.


Conrad said that the $500 billion in cuts, which would come from a range of sources including a repeal of the so-called CLASS Act for long-term care, could potentially be attached to a final plan to raise the debt ceiling.

The group of senators, which includes three Democrats and three Republicans, has been meeting for the better part of a year to piece together a package that borrows heavily from President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction commission.

Gang of Six keeps up momentum

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59477.html

[joanski0]

6. I thought that the New Dems

were what the former DLC people were calling themselves nowadays!

[chill_wind]

10. Yes. Will Marshall, founding father of DLC/New Dem/Third Way.

ProgressiveFix.com is the new face of an outfit that’s been around for two decades: the Progressive Policy Institute. Younger readers may not know that PPI was the main purveyor of policy innovations to Bill Clinton’s New Democrats — break-the-mold ideas that also migrated to Britain and other democratic countries around the world under the rubric of the “third way.”

http://progressivefix.com/about-us/who-we-are

[libmom74]

7. New Dems = Rebublicans in D clothing

[Fearless]

8. +100

[chill_wind]

11. PPI endorses the Chained CPI (SS Cola Cut) political gimmick.

that they will just call a "technical adjustment".

Fix CPI, Reap Big Savings
June 13, 2011
Shannon Leon

(snip)

According to a new paper by The Moment of Truth Project, a bipartisan effort focused on overcoming the nation’s debt problem, switching to the Chained CPI would save the government serious money — $12 billion in Social Security, $33 billion in other federal retirement plans and $23 billion in deficit reduction from other areas of the budget. Chained CPI will conserve another $87 billion in a ten-year period, because it slows the growth of tax bracket thresholds and other factors. All told, using Chained CPI to gauge inflation and index the federal budget would reduce the deficit by $300 billion total over the next decade.

No wonder the switch to the Chained CPI has been endorsed by both the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform’s and the Domenici-Rivlin deficit reduction plans. The fiscal commission’s co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, set up Moment of Truth to advocate for the Bowles-Simpson commission’s plan.

According to the authors of the Moment of Truth report, Adam Rosenberg and Marc Goldwein, Chained CPI can fully account for the substitution bias that arises from consumer behavior by using market baskets from two successive months. The combination of baskets creates a chaining effect that links price changes to shifts in consumption.

Even though it is a technical fix, Congress still needs to approve adopting Chained CPI. In today’s hyper partisan times, fixing the CPI would be a less painful way politically to reap budget savings while providing a more accurate understanding of how inflation changes consumer behavior.

http://progressivefix.com/fix-cpi-reap-big-savings

Pelosi said not everyone (other lawmakers) would be willing to calling it a "cut".

Will Marshall's shop has been hankering to "fix social security" for many years.

[mmonk]

14. I always do.

I dislike Republican ideology and framing of issues.

[chill_wind]

15. CBS, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Hill all reporting tonight

talk of a short-term deal.

Either of these links could use a few recs.

Obama Open to Short-Term Debt Increase

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1535830


Sides edging toward a short-term deal to increase the debt limit

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4928988

[slipslidingaway]

16. knr nt