Is Obama Preparing To Join With Republicans In Cutting Social Security?

The short answer, via Dylan Scott at TPM: Obama won't say:

When House Republicans signaled last week that they would provoke a fight over Social Security in the next two years, progressive stalwarts like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren decried the action, with Brown alleging the GOP wanted to "set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”

Who's our friend?
Neither one!

But notably silent on the Republican stance, which prevents what has been a routine transfer of revenue between the retirement and disability funds, upping the chances of a crisis for the latter in late 2016, was the Democratic official who might actually be at the table if conservatives succeed in forcing negotiations in the next Congress: President Barack Obama.

TPM asked multiple times last week for the White House's position on the House action, but never received a formal response, a stark contrast to the loud public pronouncements of Brown, Warren, and others. It also invokes the uneasy relationship between the White House and Social Security advocates, who were dismayed by Obama's willingness to accept cuts to the program during the 2011 grand bargain talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

,,,

(Bolds mine. - SB)

I live mostly on Social Security retirement benefits. Forced to retire five years early by the Baby Bush recession, I was inevitably compelled to begin using my carefully accumulated retirement savings for living expenses long before I anticipated having to retire. But I wasn't too worried: not only had I saved for the rainy day that arrived early and just kept raining, but Social Security retirement benefits had my back, so to speak. I had paid into SocSec all my working life (actually, all but the 10 years I worked for the State of Texas), supporting earlier generations in their retirement years in the good-faith understanding that younger generations would, in part, support me in my own "golden" (yeah, right) years.

But as we all are discovering, the "contract across generations" was never based on anything more substantial than good faith... and our current government officials, in both parties and at least two branches, seems ready and willing to break faith with me and everyone like me. Why? Good question; the best answer I can come up with is a combination of "because they can" and "because it better serves the exceedingly wealthy," who provide elected officials with the obscene amounts of money they need to run for office.

Fv<k them all, and fv<k the horses they rode in on. If we can disrupt this vicious cycle, we certainly should do so. And if we can't... well, there's no telling what a hungry person will do, is there?