Then there is this...

[Beearewhyain]

8. I Don't Think I Agree

Especially with the comparison with the health care overhaul. For many of us liberals the public option was our compromise but we would have much preferred some form of single payer. It struck us that the President should have started from a single payer position and then bargained down to the public option. However, he started at public option and then promptly dropped it giving us what was eventually passed. The impression was that of a poor negotiator and someone who may not be as dedicated to some ideals as we would prefer. But all in all, I'll take what was passed because it is still an improvement on what existed previously.

Which brings me to my second point. Health care and SS are vastly different from our perspective in that health care was an attempt at an improvement while SS is a fundamental EXISTING program necessary for even the most basic of social safety nets to be present. What the President has proposed is not a compromised policy for a new program but is tampering and weakening a foundational liberal program. For liberals like myself this is unacceptable.

Considering that SS has not increased the deficit and that, from a Keynesian perspective, austerity measures are counterproductive in this economy, you end up with what I would consider an ill timed and misguided proposal regardless of how much is cut. Not to mention a proposal that is counter to my and his professed ideological leanings.

Just my 2 cents.

B