Posts Tagged ‘dollar’
Scaring Seniors Backfires
Aug3
By John Feehery
The President turns 50 tomorrow, which is a big deal, especially to the President’s fundraisers, who are doing their best to milk it for all it is worth. Apparently, they are throwing a big bash for him in my hometown of Chicago. My invitation must have got caught up in my spam filter.
50 isn’t nearly as old as it used to be (especially if you are 47, like a blogger I know pretty well), and to many old-timers who depend on Social Security and Medicare to survive, 50 is pretty darn young.
I was talking to a neighbor of mine who happens to be a big Democratic activist, and he told me about how panicked his 84-year old mother was over the possibility that she wasn’t going to get her Social Security check.
She comes from a generation where they listen closely to their political leaders, and when the President says that Social Security checks may not be delivered because America can’t pay its debt, that generation takes those threats seriously.
Barack Obama didn’t fare well in the last election among senior citizens. It was by far his worst demographic showing. They didn’t like his “progressive positions” on social issues, they didn’t like his strange sounding name, they didn’t like his support of gay rights, and well, they just didn’t like him as much as other voters did. This, of course, is a vast overgeneralization, but the fact remains that Obama didn’t win senior citizens in 2008.
If these older voters didn’t like him then, they certainly like him a lot less now.
Just as Obamacare’s Medicare cuts were one of the drivers in the last election, I predict that the President’s rhetoric on Social Security checks will haunt him in the next campaign.
The President made this bold prediction two weeks ago in a national address: “If we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills — bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”
That is called scaring seniors.
While I haven’t been able to find the cross-tabs on why President Obama’s approval ratings have fallen to an all-time low, my guess is that the bottom has completely dropped out for him with seniors. You can’t go around threatening seniors that they won’t get their Social Security checks. Senior citizens don’t like such threats, they don’t respond well to them, and they get easily fed up with political posturing.
At the end of the day, Social Security checks went out, like they always do, as the debt crisis was averted. But that doesn’t mean that the seniors among us have forgotten what Mr. Obama said nor is it likely that they will forgive him.
Remember Charlie Stenholm
Jul28
By John Feehery
Charlie Stenholm, the former Congressman from Texas
Charlie Stenholm, the former Congressman from Texas, perennially sponsored and pushed for a balanced budget to the Constitution. Charlie was a Democrat, and sponsoring the balanced budget amendment helped him immeasurably in many, many campaigns.
Old Charlie could vote like a Democrat on most things, but sound like a fiscal hawk because he was the sponsor of the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.
Congress after Congress, the balanced budget amendment would come up for a vote, and Congress after Congress, the BBA would just barely die in the House. One year, it even passed the House and it almost passed the Senate. Ironically, it was a Republican – Mark Hatfield — who ended up killing it in the Senate when it did pass the House.
House Republicans are now pushing the Senate to take up a balanced budget amendment as part of the Cut, Cap and Balance plan. That all sounds very well and good, and as a good little Republican, I support the concept of the Cut, Cap and Balance plan.
But I have one little nagging concern about the CC and B plan.
What if some of those Democrats in the Senate who are up for re-election in states where a Balanced Budget Amendment would be popular vote for such an amendment knowing that it will never get the two/thirds vote? What if these members decide to sprinkle themselves as Charlie Stenholm Democrats, and then all of a sudden look mighty appealing to independent voters who care about fiscal responsibility?
I can think of a few who salivate over such a possibility. Claire McCaskill, for example, must be very excited to vote for a BBA. She has a little problem with misreporting her airplane income, but all could be forgiven if she were somehow able to re-brand herself as a conservative Democrat. She has already endorsed Bob Corker’s Cap Act, knowing full well that it will never get enacted into law.
Or how about Jon Tester? He has a tough race against Denny Rehberg. A vote on the BBA could give him some conservative street cred. Or how about the Nelson boys, Ben of Nebraska or Bill of Florida? I am pretty certain that if they were given the chance, they would jump to re-brand themselves as born-again fiscal hawks.
Or how about Joe Manchin, Tom Carper, Bob Casey or Kirsten Gillibrand? Nothing better than taking a big issue off the table, knowing that a Balanced Budget Amendment is a great way to look conservative.
This whole exercise reminds me of when Lucy would take away the football just as Charlie Brown would attempt to kick it. That was a running gag during the lifetime of the Peanuts Comic strip. This game that the Democrats will play on the balanced budget amendment is the same thing.
If conservatives want to cut spending, they should cut spending. What they shouldn’t do is help embattled Democrats get re-elected by giving them a vote on the balanced budget amendment as part of the debt limit deal. Why give these guys cover?
Charlie Stenholm survived for years playing the balanced budget game. Conservatives ought to remember Charlie Stenholm when they push the Cut, Cap and Balance plan.
