Just as soon as they get in office.
Sounds like they might be waiting until after the election. FEMA is broken, Medicare is slowing dying, but the Iraq war is being funded without question. Priorities and all that stuff, you know.
This is a disturbing article.
Blue Dogs look beyond '08 electionCooper’s silence is understandable: Although the party that takes power next year will have to address deficit reduction and entitlement reform, those issues — especially when they involve painful changes to Social Security and Medicare — are too hot to touch during a presidential election campaign.
Instead, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are positioning themselves — quietly — to deal with the difficult choices after the election is over.
At the request of fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, House Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) will convene a hearing later this month to address some of the entitlement questions.
Now we have seen they will continue funding the war. No questions asked. They only balked at the funding for education for returning veterans.
They are now balking at the two most fundamental basics of our society, two of the senior safety nets. This scares me.
At the centerpiece of that hearing will be a proposal, authored by Cooper and Republican Rep. Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, that would kick entitlement reform to a bipartisan commission like the one that has handled military base closings. The Cooper-Wolf panel would spend a year studying the nation’s fiscal concerns before presenting Congress with a legislative package which it would be forced to vote on in its entirety.
That is what I read at the DLC....they will package it and force the Democrats to ram it through. I think they call it turning Social Security over to private companies, like they have already done with Medicare basically.
Other members, including Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and ranking Republican Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), have proposed similar commissions with more member involvement. Some lawmakers, including House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), say a bipartisan approach is the best way — maybe the only way — to give members the political cover they need to overhaul these massive federal programs.
Oh, hell, yes, fellows...you will most surely need political cover
There won't be enough people to get your backs if you do that. Stop funding the war, bring our boys home, stop letting 47 House members have total control....and leave Social Security alone.