Obama's budget is to be released on Wednesday, but earlier reports have suggested changes to Social Security and/or Medicare will be included in the proposal, which is two months late of the legal deadline, as will be another round of proposed increased taxes. Obama is not offering changes to SS and/or Medicare programs because they have been deemed unsustainable, he is doing it to attempt to coerce Republicans into accepting another round of tax increases.
Republicans are vowing to reject the deal because Barack Obama received massive tax revenue increases in the fiscal cliff deal, which raised tax rates on upper income Americans and allowed the payroll tax holiday to expire, which resulted in 77 percent of Americans seeing more taxes taken out of their paychecks.
Side Note- All of that increased tax revenue has already been spent, and not towards paying down the nation's massive debt as was promised.
Reports today show that progressive liberals are also against Obama's budget and are threatening Democrats with challenges from the left in their next elections, if they vote in favor of Obama's budget and the proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare.
Infighting within the Democratic Party
Via Politico:
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and MoveOn.org have released sharply worded statements putting Democrats on notice that support for President Barack Obama’s budget – which proposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security – would be tantamount to betrayal.
PCCC, a prominent liberal group, also launched a website called NoBenefitCuts.com. It asks supporters to sign a petition pledging to “support primary challenges to congressional Democrats who support benefit cuts.”
“We’re very serious,” Adam Green, PCCC’s co-founder, said in an interview. “Any Democrat who votes to cut Social Security benefits shouldn’t call themselves a Democrat … It’s not in our minds an empty threat.”
More:
“Any Democrat that votes to cut Social Security programs is going to be at the risk for a primary challenge,” added Neil Sroka, a DFA spokesman. “Progressives are not going to stand by while social safety nets are threatened.”
Progressive liberals and many Democrats refuse to consider changes to the Social Security or Medicare programs, despite the fact that both programs have been deemed unsustainable, as is, according to the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees 2012 report.
The long-run actuarial deficits of the Social Security and Medicare programs worsened in 2012, though in each case for different reasons. The actuarial deficit in the Medicare Hospital Insurance program increased primarily because the Trustees incorporated recommendations of the 2010-11 Medicare Technical Panel that long-run health cost growth rate assumptions be somewhat increased. The actuarial deficit in Social Security increased largely because of the incorporation of updated economic data and assumptions. Both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing, and legislative modifications are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.
What progressives refuse to acknowledge is the true threat to the those safety net programs, which accounted for 36 percent of federal expenditures in fiscal year 2011 and "will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth in the coming decade," is that to not act, not reform or and not make changes to the programs, will threaten those program far more than if reforms and changes are made right now.
The bottom line is that between Republicans who will not allow another round of tax increases and progressives threatening their own elected officials within the Democratic Party, there is almost no chance of Barack Obama's budget proposal being passed, nor signed into law.
Obama's budget is dead on arrival even before it is unveiled on Wednesday.
