Tag Archives: Jay Carney

Remember the Public Option

22 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by in budget, Deficit, health care, Obama, Politics

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Shortly after the New York Times broke the story yesterday that a so-called “grand bargain” (which if reports are accurate is neither grand nor much of a bargain) had been reached between President Obama and Speaker Boehner, White House spokesmen immediately sprang into action. Press Secretary Jay Carney said “there is no deal, we’re not close to a deal” and Dan Pfeiffer tweeted:

“Anyone reporting a $3 trillion deal without revenues is incorrect. POTUS believes we need a balanced approach that includes revenues.”

The Times account may or may not be true, we shall see in the next few days I suspect, but reading a post at AMERICAblog this morning reminded me of previous occasions when the White House kinda sorta fudged a bit on the truth, to be generous.

Like when the same Dan Pfeiffer said in October of 2009 that the rumors about President Obama abandoning the public option as part of health care reform were “absolutely false” and that:

“In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition.  That continues to be the President’s position.”  

It was later revealed that in July the president had made a secret deal with hospital lobbyists that a public option would not be included in the final legislation. In March of 2010 Paul Hogarth at Huffington Post wrote:

“In other words, while Obama was still saying in September that he supports the public option (which kept us hopeful) – the President knew all along that it would never make it in the final bill. He never said he’d fight to include the public option, and repeatedly said he was “open” to other ways to achieve the same goal. But little did we know, the fix was in.”

I also recall that there was a similar situation with the pharmaceutical industry. The president continued to voice support for drug importation after another secret deal had already been cut with lobbyists that it wouldn’t be in the final legislation either.

FWIW.

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Obama Has Been Consistent on Social Security—He Wants to Cut It

08 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by in Deficit, Obama, Politics, Social Security

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After the news broke yesterday about President Obama putting Social Security cuts on the table in the debt ceiling talks, the White House immediately went into CYA mode:

“White House spokesman Jay Carney commented on the reports concerning Social Security cuts Thursday morning.

“There is no news here,” Carney said. “The President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

Carney is right about one thing, there is no news here. The president has been consistent in his plans to “strengthen” and “preserve” Social Security. Like appointing Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles co-chairs of the so-called Debt Commission, which turned much of its focus to cutting strengthening Social Security by raising the retirement age (a benefit cut) and re-figuring the COLA (another cut). Never mind that SS has nothing to do with either the debt or the deficit. Simpson has made no secret of his contempt for Social Security and its recipients:

“I’ve made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know ’em too…We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits!”

And it was Erskine Bowles who, while serving as Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff in 1997, was in the process of negotiating a deal with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich which included the partial privatization of Social Security before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke and blew (so to speak) that out of the water.

Nothing new to see here. Move along.