Tell the House Ways and Means Committee NO CHAINED CPI!

[Dragonfli]

11. Yes, besides President Obama nearly all 3rd way, DLC, Centrist, "New" Democrats in the party are

Last edited Sat Aug 3, 2013, 07:35 AM - Edit history (1)

"incompetent enough"
In fact they are pushing very hard for it.

Third Way Memo sent to all Conservative Democratic politicians and talking heads:

ECONOMIC PROGRAM | MEMO
The Context and the Case for Chained CPI

by DAVID BROWN

When the president included a previously obscure inflation index in his 2014 budget proposal, he reignited the controversy over Chained CPI. The president argues Chained CPI is a reasonable way to reduce the deficit, if included in the right package. Some liberals counter that Chained CPI would cut benefits for seniors and veterans, so it must be avoided at all costs.

Chained CPI is not a radical change. It is a legitimate technical improvement...

They have a complete set of talking points prepared to get them all on message "Chained CPI good!" available at their site under the memo name

Progressive Policy Institute (Will Marshal's DLC policy mill) has this to say:

The problem with the traditional CPI is its dubious assumption that consumers continue to purchase the same basket of goods regardless of relative prices. That is where the so-called “Chained CPI” comes in. Many economists believe it more accurately measures inflation by taking into account something called “consumer substitution bias.” Simply, what this means is that when the price of food or some other good rises, people will look for a cheaper alternative.

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.

They think that cutting our earned benefits in such a dishonest way is the best way to reduce the deficit caused by:
corporate giveaways such as subsidies to billion doll profit banks and oil compnies, a lavish MIC budget focusing on a permanent world wide war on a word (terra is very, very lucrative) that also feeds it's lucrative cousin "The world wide hoover all media surveillance state", and let us not forget permanent tax breaks on capital gains and an all time low effective corporate tax rate.

At least what they take out of our hides will go to such worthy causes

Yep, the eighties Republicans...er...I mean "Centrist Democrats" Like Obama and so many others are doing a great job for us.