Politics

Social Security become a pawn in debt talks

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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Republican advocates are skeptical while Democrats are concerned about news reports saying the White House is willing to accept significant cuts in Social Security spending.

“It’s probably their best play under their current circumstances,” because the vague offer portrays President Barack Obama as a moderate seeking to curb out-of-control spending said Wes Anderson, a partner at OnMessage, a GOP-affiliated polling firm based in Crofton, Md.

The gambit could also help Democrats slam Republicans as anti-Social Security, Anderson said.

“This is pure political theater” intended to divide the Republican caucus, demoralize GOP voters and provide more ammunition for negative advertising during the 2012 election, he said.

“It will take a little while to determine how serious the White House is being,” said Frank Donatelli, the chairman of GOPAC, which helps train aspiring state and local GOP legislators. GOP legislators should press the president to make a detailed offer, he said. “Tell us what you’re talking about here. Are you talking about raising the retirement age, [or instituting] means testing? Give us some details.”

On the left, Eric Kingson, a co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, combined skepticism about the news report with hard-nosed advocacy against any cuts. (GOP senators move to prevent executive order on debt ceiling)

“If true, it is problematic,” Kingson said, adding “it needs to be taken seriously by those who want to protect Social Security.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney downplayed the news reports today. “There is no news here,” he said in a morning press release. “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 was more dismissive in his morning press conference. “There is an empty chair [at the press room] for the organization that produced that story,” he said.

Once the morning’s talks ended, Obama appeared in the White House’s briefing room to spin the media’s coverage of the talks.

“The parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues … all the leaders came here in the spirit of compromise and wanting to solve problems on behalf of the American people,” he said, before walking away from reporters’ shouted questions. (Limbaugh: Don’t let Obama frame debt ceiling debate)

According to the Washington Post’s report, the president was scheduled to use this morning’s White House meeting with GOP and Democratic legislators “to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.”

The Post did not describe the details of a proposal, except to say it might include a new way of calculating inflation’s impact on Social Security payments.

The proposal, however vague, helps Obama to present himself as a reasonable moderate, and to portray the GOP’s priorities as the main obstacle to the negotiations. For example, the Post’s report declared that “with Obama offering major savings from entitlement programs, Republican intransigence on taxes looms as the biggest sticking point in the debt negotiations.”

The GOP should respond to Obama’s overtures, said Anderson, by demanding a detailed proposal on Social Security reform before it begins negotiating any deal on the vast retirement program, and also by underlining the Republicans’ current compromises. “Republicans, lots of conservatives, are actually talking about raising the debt-ceiling [and] that is a huge compromise” because it defers to the Democrats’ continuing desire to continue deficit spending.

“As a Republican operative, I would certainly tell all our members that any attempt to be rational with the Democrats will only incur more wrath, more vitriol when they they attacks us on Medicare and Social Security,” said Anderson, who recently completed a poll on voters’ attitude towards deficit spending.

“That’s coming … [but] the one thing you can’t do is also disappoint a huge majority of voters by not getting spending and debt under control,” he said.

A bad deal will could split Republican legislators, demoralize the GOP base, and give Obama an advantage going into the 2012 election, he said. Republicans should insist on real, long-term cuts to government spending, because swing voters know that Obama and the Democrats “have spent us to the bring of bankruptcy and don’t want to do anything about it.”

The outcome of the debt-ceiling talks, Anderson said, “is hugely consequential to the outcome of next’s year’s election.”