Page 5 - Benefit Programs News Today

Calls, but that our position, the presidents position that we, the united states should not and the american people cannot pay a ransom in exchange for congress doing its job remains as true today as it has been throughout this period. >> when you talk about house republicans proposal, are you talking about the proposal that they presented in the meeting yesterday, or are you talking about this new proposal from them that would increase the debt ceiling short-term, also reopen the government and...

Lower than whale manure on the bottom of the ocean. democrats are sitting at 43%. and i think its pretty clear that the democrats are in a real position of strength here. they just have to realize it. i think that the koch brothers are basically saying drop this obama care thing because the big picture is the big three. this is what weve always wanted to go after the advertisements, the earned benefit programs. republicans think that having a six-week delay that they can swing public opinion aga...

Debt ceiling debate. instead they burned through defunding obama care. they burned through delaying obama care and delaying the individual mandate. now they are going to a somewhat bizarre conference strategy. they dont have any new positions to bring out and now they folded on the positions one after the other after the other in the course of a day basically to come out next week and say oh yeah we couldnt face down a shutdown but we are totally willing to do it on the debt ceiling, which is in...

Anyw anyway. >> and also on the same note, lets not forget about the voter suppression efforts he signed into law and he did sign an executive order requiring social security officers to verify applicants criminal histories and share that information with law enforcement. this -- there are statewide efforts across the country to sort of, i think, establish a veneer of criminality who depend on social security net benefit programs. texas has approved drug testing for unemployment benefits, kansas...

About the fact that this is now -- you were able to get nearly 100 republicans voting against it. and its just, frankly, i think the fact that its something the obama administration was hiding from the american public. so youre actually getting people breaking from their partisan lines i think for frankly cheap political reasons but at least its allowing us to have more of a conversation and have people, you know, the sort of libertarian wing -- >> libertarians on each side joining together. >> ...

So i actually think that democrats have been very willing to talk about those kinds of reforms and those are reforms that also drive more money into the system. >> i would say -- i would also say -- its funny because were saying we are not going to get shanghaied by this, not get drawn in to this deficit conversation and somehow i think ive led the charge of us getting drawn into a conversation about the deficit. because independent of earned benefit programs, the presidents also talking about i...

Participated in that conversation enough. because the put has put a plan forward for reforming earned benefit programs like medicare and social security on whitehouse.gov. then the complaint is hes not done enough. well, the republicans can barely agree on whether they want the government to keep functioning in september and october. it is really hard to bargain with people when theres no consensus and no one to bargain with. >> but thats not the view of the progressive caucus and thats not the ...

Dollar? and that will determine how other cities will renegotiate their pension plans. >> that is exactly right. bill: do i have it right? >> i i you nailed it. and i would add this. one of the things that has to happen in major cities around the country they have to move away from what are called defined benefit programs that define what the benefit will be to more like 401(k) plans where you actually own them. traditionally a lot of unions said we dont want the defined contribution plans becau...

Immigration because they worry about the costs of letting people with low incomes come in because they want a big government that has a fair amount of redistributive stuff. >> isnt that premised on the idea that these 11 million people are going to all come in and immediately sign up for the -- the heritage foundation studies say these are just a bunch of deadbeats -- >> the cbo analysis of the senate bill says it helps the economy. raising billions of dollars. >> it isnt just about the dull, th...

The initial polling suggests the public remains broadly supportive of this, but that doesnt mean people dont want to have the depay the. >> in a sense, there is an even broader debate in there about the whole war on trough. is it time, 12 years after the attacks of 9/11, to look at what the war on terror is costing us both financially and i think national security has become the third rail of american politics. you can never scale it back again. in terms of our freedoms. and somebody needs to si...