Obama to Unveil Deficit-Reduction Plan Today

And, aside from the fact that its a deficit-reduction plan (Question Austerity!) at a time when the economic focus is desperately needed elsewhere (jobsjobsjobs), it's relatively good news:

President Obama will announce a proposal on Monday to tame the nation's rocketing federal debt, calling for $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of a plan to find more than $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade, senior administration officials said.

The proposal draws a sharp contrast with Republicans and amounts more to an opening play in the fall debate over the economy than another attempt to find common ground with the opposing party.

Combined with his call this month for $450 billion in new stimulus, the proposal represents a more populist approach to confronting the nation's economic travails than the compromises he advocated earlier this summer.

Obama will propose new taxes on the wealthy, a special new tax for millionaires, and eliminating or scaling back a variety of loopholes and deductions, officials say. About half of the tax savings would come from the expiration next year of the George W. Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy.

But the president won't call for any changes in Social Security, officials say, and is seeking less-aggressive changes to Medicare and Medicaid than previously considered. He will propose $320 billion in health-care savings but will not include raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, officials said.

Any reduction in Medicare benefits would not begin until 2017, they said. Other cuts in domestic spending would bring the total spending savings to $580 billion. About $1 trillion in savings is also expected from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama will pledge to veto any cut in entitlements that does not also include increases in tax revenue.

It's an indication how much of the conversation has been conceded to Republican framing since Obama took office that making changes of any kind to entitlement programs which limit benefits is now described as a failure "to find common ground with the opposing party" and "a more populist approach." Yiiiiiiiiikes.

Anyway, because Obama is reportedly going to actually suggest in his proposal that the wealthiest USians, among whom the vast majority of the nation's wealth is concentrated, start paying their fair share in tax revenue, naturally the Republicans are already accusing him of "class warfare."

I love how asking rich people to pay slightly higher taxes is class warfare, but letting 46.2 million people slide into poverty is not. Grow up, Republicans. Jesus.

Quote of the Day

"[H]ealth care was one of those areas where even conservatives used to be willing to accept government intervention in the name of compassion, given the clear evidence that covering the uninsured would not, in fact, cost very much money. ... Now, however, compassion is out of fashion—indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the GOP's base. And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we've had for the past three generations—that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the 'common hazards of life' through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid."—Paul Krugman.

A key part of the Republican Establishment's cultivation of hatred has been the subversion of empathy. Othering is the foundation of hate-based scapegoating, and Othering can only happen in a void of empathy. Compassion is not merely out of fashion; its existence is an impediment to modern conservative politics.

That makes for colossally grim prospects for the survival of a democracy with any semblance of a functional social contract.

Which, of course, is not a bug of modern conservatism but a feature.