JOE BIDEN'S DEMOCRAT PARTY IS FOR BOTTOMLESS SOCIALISM, WELFARE, SUBSIDIES AND BAILOUTS FOR WALL STREET.
The new aristocrats, like the lords of old, are not bound by the laws that apply to the lower orders. Voluminous reports have been issued by Congress and government panels documenting systematic fraud and law breaking carried out by the biggest banks both before and after the Wall Street crash of 2008.
Joe Biden Sought ‘Grand Bargain’ to Reduce Deficit Through Cuts to Social Security
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, worked to forge a “grand bargain” with congressional Republicans on deficit reduction during the Obama years. As part of the effort, the former vice president openly advocated for putting entitlement programs, including Social Security, on the negotiating table.
Shortly after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama and his administration were struck with a complex problem. The economy, which was still in the midst of the Great Recession, was struggling to rebound, with job losses, bankruptcies, and home foreclosures running rampant. At the same, the deficit was at an all-time, hitting 8.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product, because of the Bush-era tax cuts and recession required stimulus spending.
While on the surface the issues seemed to be separate, in reality, they were intertwined. A mounting deficit, without restrictions in the country’s money supply, could cause widespread inflation, much like it did in the late-1960s and early-1970s. Even if inflation were avoided, a continuing deficit could still hamper long-term economic growth and prevent foreign investment.
Although the considerations given to the deficit were mostly practical by Obama’s inner circle, at least some of the calculations must have also been political. As early as April 2009, only four months into Obama’s Oval Office tenure, the seeds of the Tea Party movement were already beginning to sow. For Obama to achieve many of the promises made on the 2008 campaign trail, it was vital for Democrats to keep control of Congress in the upcoming midterms. That outcome, however, could be endangered if Republicans aligned with the Tea Party succeeded in painting the president’s fiscal policies as “reckless.”
Given such concerns, Obama began signaling his desire to tackle the deficit in early 2010. In February of the year, Obama created via executive order a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The commission, which would be bipartisan, would consist of 18 members, with 12 appointed by Congress and six by the president. Its goal would be devising a long-term proposal for lowering the deficit and achieving a balanced budget by at least 2015.
To chair the commission, Obama tapped former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) and Erskine Bowles, a one-time chief of staff to ex-President Bill Clinton. The commission, simply known as Simpson-Bowles, was set to release its recommendations by December 2010 in hopes that the incoming Congress would act on them the following year.
Even though Biden was not a member of the commission, the vice president took an interest in its work because it overlapped with his official role in helping run the administration’s economic recovery efforts. Biden, who had long favored freezing all federal spending, including social security, to rein in the deficit, worked with not only Simpson and Bowles on crafting a proposal, but also the commission’s executive director, Bruce Reed. As a former Clinton administration official in the early-1990s, Reed had partnered with then-Senator Biden on authoring the 1994 crime bill.
The eventual proposal that Simpson-Bowles authored sought to reduce the deficit by more than four trillion dollars. It would have stabilized the growth of the federal debt by 2014, while reducing it by more than 60 percent by 2023. Although the goals looked good, the cost would have fallen heavily on individuals who rely on federal spending and entitlement programs, like Social Security.
Simpson-Bowles proposed to cut Social Security benefits for those in the top half of the income tax bracket, while raising the retirement age to 69. The plan also would have reduced the cost of living adjustments that are made to benefits as inflation rises.
The proposal, when it was released in December 2010, was derided by both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans, who had just won control of the United States House of Representatives, were emboldened to believe that voters, backed by Tea Party sympathy, would want larger cuts to achieve a balanced budget sooner. Democrats, on the other hand, especially those that self-identified as progressives, viewed the cuts to programs such as Social Security as draconian.
Although the Simpson-Bowles proposal was never introduced in Congress, its ideas for reducing the deficit quickly took hold among Obama administration officials, specifically Biden. Shortly after the commission wound down, the vice president announced that Reed would become his chief of staff, seeming to signal that deficit reduction would be Biden’s new priority.
Starting in early-2011, Biden and Reed began holding talks with top congressional leaders, including then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, on how to how to achieve a “grand bargain” on the deficit. Those talks, profiled in Bob Woodward’s book The Price of Politics, seem to indicate that Biden was eager to strike a deal, even offering to put Social Security and Medicare on the “table.”
By the summer of 2011, Biden had roped more members of Congress into the talks, with the group now expanded to six Democrats and six Republicans. As Woodward noted, Biden was close to hammering out a deal that would have cut federal spending by $2 trillion, including programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Food Stamps. When Republicans fretted over proposed tax increases, especially allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, Biden suggested a compromise by raising the retirement age for Social Security and also creating a mechanism to means-test the program.
As part of the compromise, Biden also pitched Republicans on a relatively obscure change to the cost of living formula in hopes of sealing a deal. Biden, in particular, sought to amend the formula that determined the cost of living adjustments for programs like Social Security. At the time, Biden suggested that such programs in the future be tied to the United States Chained Consumer Price Index (Chained CPI) rather than the current United States Consumer Price Index.
Chained CPI is predicated on the notion that when the cost of living increases because of changes in the prices of goods, consumers will adjust their purchasing patterns to make up for the rise. The theory suggests that even though cost of living might increase on paper, the impact is negligible on consumers.
Had Biden succeeded in tying Social Security and other entitlements to Chained CPI, it would have cut the expected growth in program benefits that recipients had become accustomed to over time. Attaching Social Security to Chained CPI has long been opposed by progressives and advocacy groups like the AARP on the grounds that seniors are more impacted by inflation since a significant portion of their incomes go to medical costs, which are always rising at rates higher than the rest of the economy.
Even though Biden attempted to make Chained CPI central to the deficit negotiation, the talks ultimately fell apart when congressional Republicans were unable to sell any proposed revenue increases to their members.
Despite the failure, Biden, with Obama’s backing continued trying to forge a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction in 2012 and 2013. Each time the talks included tying Chained CPI to Social Security and other entitlements programs.
The former vice president’s position on deficit reduction comes back into the spotlight as Biden has promised to not only protect, but also expand Social Security if elected in November.
Biden’s campaign did not return requests for comment on this story.
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA:
BARACK OBAMA AND HIS CRONY BANKSTERS set themselves on America’s pensions next!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/04/obamanomics-assault-on-american-middle.html
The new aristocrats, like the lords of old, are not bound by the laws that apply to the lower orders. Voluminous reports have been issued by Congress and government panels documenting systematic fraud and law breaking carried out by the biggest banks both before and after the Wall Street crash of 2008.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and every other major US bank have been implicated in a web of scandals, including the sale of toxic mortgage securities on false pretenses, the rigging of international interest rates and global foreign exchange markets, the laundering of Mexican drug money, accounting fraud and lying to bank regulators, illegally foreclosing on the homes of delinquent borrowers, credit card fraud, illegal debt-collection practices, rigging of energy markets, and complicity in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA!
This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-bankster-owned-president-citigroup.html
This is a further shift leftward by Wall Street from the last election cycle, when between 50 percent and 52 percent of the contributions through mid-year 2017 from J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America went to Republicans. Those banks sent between 37 percent and 45 percent of the contributions to Democrats.
Joe Biden Rakes in More than $50M from Wall Street, Including from Soros
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden is raking in tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street, weeks away from the November 3 election against President Trump.
In the last few months, Biden’s campaign and his fundraising committees have “benefited from big money contributions from finance leaders on Wall Street and across the country,” according to a new report by CNBC.
Wall Street donors to date have spent more than $50 million to help get Biden elected, as they view his candidacy as a return to the economic status quo, which has often spelled economic decline for Main Street.
CNBC reports:
The joint committees, which raise money for the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties, are being fueled, at least in part, by Wall Street executives. Those committees accept six-figure contributions. [Emphasis added]
…
People in the financial industry have largely favored Biden, spending more than $50 million to back his candidacy, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, compared with more than $10 million for Trump. [Emphasis added]
Some of those Wall Street donors to Biden include President Obama’s former Treasury Department secretary Tim Geithner, who contributed $150,000 to the Biden Action Fund in August. Geithner, while in the Obama administration, coordinated to slash pensions for roughly 20,000 Delphi workers in the midst of the auto bailout for General Motors (GM).
Wall Street executives Antonio Gracias and Jonathan Shulkin each delivered $300,000 to Biden’s campaign in August, while venture capitalist John Doerr donated more than $355,000 to the Biden Action Fund in the last three months.
Likewise, Wall Street investor Jonathan Soros, the son of billionaire left-wing mega-donor George Soros, gave a little less than $145,000 to Biden in the third quarter, while Wall Street venture capitalists and investors John Doerr, Stephen Mandel, and Pete Muller gave Biden nearly $1.5 million.
In the third quarter, alone, the Biden Action Fund got more than $4 million from Wall Street donors, with huge donations from executives at the Blackstone Group, JPMorgan Chase, The Carlyle Group, and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts.
Wall Street and nearly all of the nation’s biggest banks have lined up to support Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), against Trump’s economic nationalist agenda. Goldman Sachs and Moody’s Analytics each released reports to investors indicating their backing of a “blue wave” on election day as the biggest net gain for the financial industry.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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