Who Does Wall Street Own In Congress?

The Grayson Takano No Cuts letter is the gold standard

The House doesn't usually stay in sessions Fridays, let alone take serious votes, but this past Friday, as we mentioned yesterday, Boehner and Cantor kept the Members in town to repay a promise they had made to their Wall Street masters to further weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. A bill Wall Street lobbyists wrote with one of their most pathetic congressional shills, Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- and co-sponsored by 23 other bankster asswipes (20 of them members of the House Financial Services Committee who brazenly take large legalistic bribes from Wall Street firms they're supposed to oversee on behalf of the American people) came up for a vote. The bill to weaken Dodd-Frank passed 235-161.

Here's a list of the House Financial Services Committee members who co-sponsored the bill (+ Boehner and Cantor) with the bribes they took from Wall Street banksters last cycle, strongly pointing to an illegal quid pro quo:

• John Boehner (R-OH)- $1,415,075
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $902,400
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $537,020
• Michele Bachmann (R-MN)- $79,024
• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $286,677
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- 0
• John Campbell (R-CA)- $79,750
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)- 0
• Stephen Fincher (R-TN)- $55,650
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-Mafia)- $209,732
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $51,800
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL)- $136,500
• Robert Hurt (R-VA)- $127,000
• Peter King (R-NY)- $128,950
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $80,000
• Gary Miller (R-CA)- $32,750
• Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)- $500
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $125,500
• Stevan Pearce (R-NM)- $19,950
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- 0
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $18,200
• Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)- $15,250
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- 0

Don't worry about the 4 Republicans with zero dollars from Wall Street. They're freshmen and weren't doing errands for the banksters in 2012, the way they are now. Next year, each will get thousands of dollars from Wall Street. As economist Dean Baker explained last week in Cutting Social Security and Not Taxing Wall Street, "Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security." Like many of us, Baker is frustrated that Obama isn't fighting the Wall Street/GOP approach... and perhaps even embracing it.

As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.

Most people are now familiar with President's Obama's proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.

Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.

While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.

If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn't. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.

The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than three centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.

There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window.

A second bill has been put forward by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio. This bill would apply a 0.03 percent tax to trades of stock and a wide range of other financial assets. According to the Joint Tax Committee, the bill would raise close to $40 billion a year or over $400 billion over a ten-year budget window once it is implemented.

Unfortunately the administration has consistently opposed both bills. It claims that it is concerned about the incidence of these taxes-- that ordinary investors would see large burdens from the tax. It also claims to be worried that the taxes will disrupt financial markets by making trading more costly.

Neither of these stories passes the laugh test. Ordinary investors don't trade much, and therefore are not going to feel much impact from the tax. If someone with $100,000 in a 401(k) (this is much larger than the typical 401(k)) turns it over at the rate of 50 percent annually, they would pay $15.00 each year as a result of the Harkin-DeFazio tax.

Furthermore research shows that investors reduce their trading as costs increase. This means that if the tax increases trading costs by 20 percent, then investors will reduce their trading by roughly the same amount (in this example, turnover would fall to 40 percent annually). That means that the net cost of turnover in a 401(k) will barely change for a typical investor as a result of the tax. Wall Street would just see much less business.

So the Obama administration wants us to believe that it is willing to cut the Social Security benefits of retiree living on $15,000 a year in Social Security by $450 but it opposes a Wall Street speculation tax because it is concerned that investors with $100,000 in a 401(k) may pay a few dollars a year in additional trading costs. Only a reporter with the Washington Post would believe a story like that.

The other part of the Obama administration's story is equally laughable. The cost of financial transactions has plummeted in the last four decades because of computers. Even the Ellison tax rate would just raise costs back to their mid-'80s level. The Harkin-DeFazio tax rate would probably still leave costs lower than they were in 2000.

The country certainly had a vibrant capital market and stock exchange in the 1980s, taking costs part of the way back to this level will not prevent Wall Street from serving its proper role of transferring capital from savers to borrowers. It will just clamp down on speculation.

The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.

David Cicilline, a co-signer of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter to Obama, proposed a congressional resolution that isn't as strong and definitive, and (therefore) has attracted more support in the House:

Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living-adjustments for Social Security Benefits

Whereas the Social Security program was established more than 77 years ago and has provided economic security to generations of Americans through benefits earned based on contributions made over a worker's lifetime;

Whereas the Social Security program continues to provide modest benefits - averaging approximately $14,000 per year-- to more than 53,000,000 individuals, including 37,000,000 retired workers in February 2013;

Whereas the Social Security program has no borrowing authority, has accumulated assets of $2,700,000,000,000, and, therefore, does not contribute to the Federal budget deficit;

Whereas the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projects that such Trust Fund an pay full benefits through 2032;

Whereas the Social Security program is designed to ensure that benefits keep pace with inflation through cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that are based upon the measured changes in prices of goods and services purchased by consumers, currently the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics;

Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a supplemental measure of inflation, the Chained Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), or "Chained CPI," which adjusts for projected changes in consumer behavior resulting from price fluctuations known as the "substitution effect," which occurs when consumers buy more goods and services whose prices are rising slower than average and less of those rising faster than average;

Whereas studies indicate typical Social Security beneficiaries spend significantly greater shares of their budget than consumers generally on health care, prices for which have increased at higher than average rates, and health care may not easily be substituted by consumers such as seniors;

Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce Social Security benefits by .25 percent per year as compared to current policy, resulting in a reduction in outlays of $112,000,000,000 over the first decade;

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits from using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would continue to compound over time, and the AARP Public Policy Institute estimates that such reductions would grow to 3 percent after 10 years and 8.5 percent after 30 years;

Whereas Social Security Works estimates that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce annual Social Security benefits of the average earner - who is making $43,518-- by $658 at age 75, $1,147 at age 85, and $1,622 at age 95; and

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits would harm some of our most vulnerable populations: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits.

So far over 90 Democrats have signed on, spanning the ideological divide inside the congressional caucus from extreme right-wingers like Ron Barber (AZ) and Kirkpatrick (AZ), who are always looking for opportunities to tell their constituents they're against Obama, to normal liberal Democrats like Jan Schakowsky (IL), Judy Chu (CA) and Donna Edwards (MD) who prefer to support Obama. Here's the list of Democrats urging Obama to untangle himself from another Republican assault on American working families:

Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)
Karen Bass (D-CA)
Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Robert Brady (D-PA)
Bruce Braley (D-IA)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
Judy Chu (D-CA)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Lacy Clay (D-MO)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Joe Courtney (New Dem-CT)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Ted Deutch (D-FL)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Bill Enyart (D-IL)
Lois Frankel (D-FL)
Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
John Garamendi (D-CA)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Gene Green (D-TX)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Janice Hahn (D-CA)
Colleen Hanabusa (New Dem-HI)
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Brian Higgins (D-NY)
Rush Holt (New Dem-NJ)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Jared Huffman (D-CA)
Shiela Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Bill Keating (D-MA)
Dan Kildee (D-MI)
Ann Kirpatrick (AZ)
Jim Langevin (D-RI)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA) Doris Matsui (D-CA)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Mike Michaud (Blue Dog-ME)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
Richard Nolan (D-MN)
Ed Pastor (D-AZ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Tim Ryan (D-OH)
John Sarbanes (D-MD)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Bobby Scott (D-VA)
José Serrano (D-NY)
Carol Shea Porter (D-NH)
Albio Sires (D-NJ)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Mark Takano (D-CA)
BennieThompson (D-MS)
Dina Titus (D-NV)
Paul Tonko (D-NY)
Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
Mark Veasey (D-TX)
Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Frederica Wilson (D-FL)

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New Dems Vs Actual Democrats-- Chained CPI

The Blue Dogs are a discredited, spent force, essentially wiped out in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010 when Democratic voters in their districts stayed away from the polls and dozens of them went down to defeat on the same day. Today the conservative Blue Dog coalition is down to a motley crew of 14: John Barrow (GA), Sanford Bishop (GA), Jim Cooper (TN), Jim Costa (CA), Henry Cuellar (TX), Pete Gallego (TX), Jim Matheson (UT), Mike McIntyre (NC), Mike Michaud (ME), Collin Peterson (MN), Loretta Sanchez (CA), Kurt Schrader (OR), David Scott (GA) and Mike Thompson (CA). The 3 co-chairs (Barrow, Cooper and Schrader) all joined the New Dems and at this point 6 of the remaining Blue Dogs are members of the New Dems, a corporately-oriented group of anti-family conservatives who aren't as reactionary as the Blue Dogs on social issues like Choice, guns, immigration and marriage equality. New Dems are like Blue Dogs without the KKK robes and hoods-- except for the Blue Dogs that have infiltrated.

But if the Blue Dogs are an irrelevant and spent force, the rising power among right-wing corporate-oriented congressional Dems is the New Democratic Coalition (the New Dems). Of the 47 Democratic freshmen in the 113th Congress, 17 are New Dems and another 9 consistently vote with the New Dems on all the crucial roll calls and work with them to undermine progressive initiatives in committees. These are the New Dem freshmen (along with their ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores) Steve Israel recruited last year and helped elect to Congress:

• Juan Vargas (CA- 82.61)
• Joaquin Castro (TX- 73.91)
• John Delaney (MD- 69.57)
• Derek Kilmer (WA- 69.57)
• Elizabeth Esty (CT- 68.18)
• Filemon Vela (TX- 65.22)
• Denny Heck (WA- 65.22)
• Suzan DelBene (WA- 60.87)
• Bill Foster (IL- 52.17)
• Joe Garcia (FL- 52.17)
• Brad Schneider (IL- 47.83)
• Ami Bera (CA- 47.83)
• Patrick Murphy (FL- 47.83)
• Dan Maffei (NY- 43.48)
• Sean Maloney (NY- 43.48)
• Scott Peters (CA- 43.48)
• Kryrsten Sinema (AZ- 43.48)

and the fellow travelers:

• Michele Lujan Grisham (NM- 56.52)
• Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA- 54.55)
• Julia Brownley (CA- 54.55)
• Pete Gallego (TX- 52.17)
• Bill Enyart (IL- 47.83)
• Cheri Bustos (IL- 43.48)
• Ann Kuster (NH- 43.48)
• Raul Ruiz (CA- 43.48)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ- 31.82)

When the Republicans and their ConservaDem allies realized that they wouldn't be able to privatize Social Security all in one shot-- that third rail of American politics thing still being very much in force-- Boehner persuaded a naive and befuddled Obama to help them take the electricity out of the third rail by taking a bite out of Social Security with a scheme called Chained CPI, which would lower the formula for calculating inflationary cost of living increases for retirees. The Republicans don't have the guts to pass Chained CPI on their own and be forever known as the slayers of Social Security, so Obama promised them he would deliver a requisite number of Democrats to make it look bipartisan. Although a few elderly Establishment hacks who were once actual progressives-- Henry Waxman and Mel Watt-- are now backing dismantling Social Security, it is the New Dems Obama and Boehner are turning to for support for their scheme. John Delaney, a multimillionaire New Dem freshman from Maryland who sent $2,370,556 of his own to buy his seat last November, wrote an OpEd for the Washington Post-- which was then pimped around DC by slimy New Dem Executive Director Adam Pase-- extolling the virtues of Chained CPI by insisting that Congress should be "reforming entitlements by adopting a form of 'chained CPI' to lower the long-term costs of these programs..." That seems to be the official New Dem position.

When you ask DCCC-recruits this cycle about Chained CPI, they clam up. Progressive running for Congress universally oppose Chained CPI. The co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison have spoken endlessly about why it would be a disaster for the most vulnerable Americans. Yesterday Alan Grayson (D-FL) explained it on John Fugelsang's Current TV show, Viewpoint (video above).

John Fugelsang: You posted... that the President's offer, essentially to cut Social Security benefits for seniors, does break a promise to America's seniors. Some Republicans, of course, seem to like that.  So, will Democrats support it, or will they support cuts to other social programs?

Congressman Alan Grayson: Well, the President specifically said in September 2008 that he would not change the formula for calculating the cost-of-living adjustment. That [would] take $1,000 a year out of the pockets of 90-year-olds. As for whether the Democrats will support it, I don't know, but I know they shouldn't. We've lined up 35 Democrats here in the House already who say, in the “Grayson-Takano Letter,” that they will vote against any cuts in Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid benefits.

John: So let me ask you, is it worth keeping the sequester cuts and foregoing any new revenues, in return for keeping Social Security as it is?

Alan: That's not a choice that we should ever have to make. Social Security is not responsible for the deficit. The Social Security Fund has $1.9 trillion in it. It's the largest sovereign wealth fund in the entire world. The Social Security Fund has been operating at a surplus now ever since the fund was founded, ever since the program was founded. We are 25 years away from anything resembling a problem of any kind with the Social Security system. In the next quarter of a century, under current law, the beneficiaries can get all that they're entitled to. I don't understand why we're fretting over what might or might not happen in the year 2037, when we have 25 million Americans who are looking for full-time jobs [right now].

John: Well as you know, here on Viewpoint, we don't like to call these programs 'entitlements'--we call them 'earned benefits'. But is there no compromise to be had for the President, unless he offers something like that up?

Alan: That's just not the way you negotiate. The President has offered something up, in return for nothing. There's no sign that the Republicans have any interest in making any sort of deal with the President, and even if they did, we're not talking about things that are commensurate with each other. You can't equate cutting Social Security benefits, cutting Medicare benefits-- breaking the promise that we Americans have made to ourselves, the covenant that we make to ourselves-- you can't equate that with having millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations finally pay their fair share of taxes.

John: With over 80% of the Bush tax cuts made permanent, I would add. So, let me ask you then, sir, for President Obama, is this an elaborate piece of political theater? Is he taking a page out of Dick Morris' playbook for Bill Clinton by triangulating against House Democrats on this issue? So he can put himself in the middle of the political spectrum, where they say most voters live?

Alan: He may think so, but he's making a terrible mistake. This is not a 'Sister Souljah' moment for the President. In fact, the President, I believe, is soon going to find through public polling that this is a terrible mistake. 90% of Democrats and 80% of the Republicans are against this specific proposal. If you're talking more generally about cuts in benefits, you find that 80% of the Democrats and 65% of the Republicans are against this kind of proposal. This doesn't make any sense, either from a policy point of view, or a moral point of view, or even a political point of view. In fact, the President is putting at risk all the progress that we've made in identifying the Republican Party as the party in favor of cuts for Medicare and Social Security benefits, and the Democratic Party as the party that will protect the public from the Republicans.

Many people voted for Obama (and the Democrats) because of this clear, simple statement below. Was he lying at the time? Henry Waxman, a supporter of Chained CPI, whose district is one of the most liberal in California, will have a primary next year if he follows through on his promise to screw with Social Security.

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How Would You Feel If Someone Wrote, "We Need Fewer Women In Congress?"

Women make up just about 51% of the population. Women hold 98, or 18.3%, of the 535 seats in the 113th US Congress-- 20, or 20.0%, of the 100 seats in the Senate and 78, or 17.9%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. So, objectively, you would have to be an idiot to not see that there is a real need to elect more women to Congress-- as well as to elect a woman president and more women throughout the government. But not bad ones. Replacing, for example, a progressive senator like Brian Schatz with a more conservative woman, Colleen Hanabusa-- who's record even on women's health issues isn't nearly as good as Schatz's-- is doing anyone any good, except making the percentages look better.

Yesterday Nancy Pelosi, who was the first female Speaker of the House-- as well as one of the best speakers in history and certainly the best Speaker in recent times-- was on Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show talking about the need for more women in Congress. I doubt she has women like Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Martha Roby (R-AL) in mind. These women work actively against policies are in the best interests of women who don't happen to be in the top 1% of income earners. I'm certain what Pelosi wants to see more women like this elected. More women like Barbara Lee (D-CA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Judy Chu (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Donna Edwards (D-IL)...

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm in the middle of reading Rana Husseini's classic book on women's activism in the Middle East, Murder in the Name of Honour. Conservatives in Jordan-- like conservatives everyone and throughout time-- have fought long and hard to keep women from achieving any sense of equality. I'll get into the psychological infirmities the conservatives suffer when I discuss Husseini's book in greater detail. But I do want to point out a Parliament Deputy Mahmoud Kharabsheh insisting that brothers have the right to murder their sisters if they suspect the sisters are bringing "dishonor" to the family-- like by being the victim of rape. He adamantly opposed an initiative to overturn a law that permits this, claiming "the control over women prevents sexual diseases and mixed paternity." He claimed he wanted women to be protected, respected and afforded dignity, but added, "Jordan is still a male-dominated society and men are more capable than women are. Women have not developed themselves yet; they are not experienced enough, having not held high positions in authority as men have." Now there's a self-fulfilling prophesy of the universal conservative mind-- even if you believe that the only thing men are more capable of them women in pleasuring their own puds.

Let's forget for a moment that Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is the chair of the House Tea Party caucus, an anti-Choice fanatic and one of the most viciously anti-LGBT Members of Congress and let's make believe she's just a normal conservative congresswoman. Can you call her desire to shred the social safety net "anti-woman?" She doesn't just want to privatize Social Security and wreck Medicaid, she wants to ween everybody off Social Security and Medicare. Lee Fang recorded her in 2010 addressing a conservative group in St. Louis using fake Glenn Beck stats as the justification for ending Social Security.

Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we’re not invincible. And we’re so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We’re $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t include the unfunded massive liabilities. That’s $107 trillion, and that’s for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we’re on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can’t let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.

Is that anti-woman? Well... not anti-rich women. This comes from the Social Security Administration:

• With longer life expectancies than men, elderly women tend to live more years in retirement and have a greater chance of exhausting other sources of income. They benefit from Social Security's cost-of-living protections because benefits are annually adjusted for inflation.
* Women reaching age 65 in 2011 are expected to live, on average, an additional 20.7 years compared with 18.7 years for men.
* Women represent 56 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and approximately 68 percent of beneficiaries age 85 and older.

• The Social Security system is progressive in that lower-wage earners receive a higher percentage benefit than higher-wage earners do. The system returns a greater percentage of pre-retirement earnings to a lower-wage worker than to a higher-wage worker. Women who are low-wage workers receive back more benefits in relation to past earnings than do high-wage earners.
* In 2011, the median earnings of working-age women who worked full-time, year-round were $36,500, compared to $48,000 for men.

• In 2011, the average annual Social Security income received by women 65 years and older was $12,188, compared to $15,795 for men. Social Security provides dependent benefits to spouses, divorced spouses, elderly widows, and widows with young children.

• In 2011, for unmarried women-- including widows-- age 65 and older, Social Security comprises 50 percent of their total income. In contrast, Social Security benefits comprise only 36 percent of unmarried elderly men's income and only 31 percent of elderly couples' income.

• In 2011, 48 percent of all elderly unmarried females receiving Social Security benefits relied on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income.

• Elderly women are less likely than elderly men to have significant family income from pensions other than Social Security. In 2010, only 22.6 percent of unmarried women aged 65 or older were receiving their own private pensions (either as a retired worker or survivor), compared to 27.3 percent of unmarried men.
* Participation in employer-sponsored retirement plans is increasing for women in today's workforce. In 2011, 55.2 percent of women employed full-time participated in an employer-sponsored public and private sector plan compared to 52.5 percent of men. Women generally receive lower pension benefits due to their relatively lower earnings.

Sure, Pelosi wants to see more women in Congress, but I bet she'll be supporting Jim Graves when he runs against Bachmann next year. Last week, Graves, a successful businessman with a clear middle-American perspective, told me he's focused on "fixing" Social Security. His plan is very different from what Bachmann says and in contrast to Bachmann's voting record. "Let’s be clear," he began, "in that Social Security is an earned benefit that hard working Americans have paid into over the life of their working careers-- they’ve earned it, it’s not an entitlement."

Here are some of the specific ways he feels we can bolster and strengthen Social Security:

1. Let’s broaden the contribution base to all income. Why should rich folks that get their incomes from “carried interest,” “preferred dividends, and all forms of unearned income not pay into the pool? Hard working folks that get their income through a payroll should not carry the entire burden.

2. Adjust the income cap from $113,700 to a sustainable level. By expanding the tax base to all personal income (earned and unearned), the income cap should be adjusted to an amount needed to keep the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for a projected 75 year period. The average folks in my district make about $50,000 per year, so they are paying in on 100% of their incomes. All the while those with massive amounts of unearned income pay little if any into the fund.

...What we do not want to do is privatize Social Security that only defeats the purpose of the program. Social Security is to protect and provide a safety net for our seniors when they get to an age that they should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Privatizing the program is great for the rich, but it destroys the program for those that most need it. The entire reason that Social Security works is that it creates a pool for the social good-- it averages the risk over a larger demographic. And we definitely do not want to move the retirement age up from 65 years like Bachmann and Ryan would like to do. If you worked your entire life laying bricks, hoisting boxes, building houses…your back is sore and body is tired.

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Being A Leader Is Not The Same As Being Led Around By A Ring In Your Nose

Tuesday at a House Financial Services Committee meeting, Arizona freshman Kyrsten Sinema, who's racked up one of the most reactionary voting records of any Democrat in Congress, might have thought no one was looking when she sold out her own constituents in favor of Wall Street banksters. She backed all the GOP's deregulation proposals and then touted it in the Democratic caucus. She wasn't who I was talking about here... but she certainly could have been.

Adam Pase, the corporate-oriented Executive Director of the corrupt New Dems sent around a "dear colleague" letter Tuesday, shilling an OpEd by John Delaney, an extremely wealthy New Dem from Maryland who thinks-- like Republicans-- that working people need to have the retirement age raised and that the Chained CPI is a swell idea.

The last time Congress played politics with the debt ceiling, in the summer of 2011, we wounded our economy. We sent a message to the markets that we were considering destructive actions, and they listened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points, and August 2011 was the worst month for private-sector job creation in the past three years. For the first time ever, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the nation’s credit rating.

Instead of making the same mistake, we should do the hard work required to reach a long-term grand bargain. This means three things: (1) reforming entitlements by adopting a form of “chained CPI” to lower the long-term costs of these programs, adjusting the retirement age for those not engaged in manual labor and raising the cap on Social Security taxes; (2) generating more revenue through a “Buffett rule” approach that makes sure high-earners pay a similar rate to that of the middle class and by closing certain corporate tax loopholes while lowering corporate tax rates; and (3) adjusting discretionary and defense spending to better reflect our country’s priorities, which are vastly different than the indiscriminate cuts imposed by the sequester. With this framework, we can manage our fiscal trajectory in the next 10 years, and beyond, while also investing in our children, caring for the less fortunate and protecting our nation.

And just when the fake progressive New Dem from Phoenix was making Wall Street crooks very, very happy, Ed Markey was taking a courageous and principled stand against the Obama/Boehner scheme to wreck Social Security-- Chained CPI.

It's a complicated-sounding name that boils down to this: Social Security benefits for seniors would be cut. You could think of "CPI" as meaning "Cutting Peoples' Income."

This is a wrong-headed move. Too many seniors -- almost two-thirds, in fact -- rely on Social Security for at least half of their income. Budgeting requires compromise, but we cannot compromise by cutting Social Security.

Democrats won huge victories in 2012. We reelected President Obama. We held the Senate and made gains in the House. We don't need to roll over to the right wing when it comes to budget choices.

There's plenty in the President's budget I agree with. But Chained CPI is just a bad idea. Investing in clean energy, education, and infrastructure should not come with the price tag of going back on America's promise to our seniors.

Tea Party Republicans may have pushed the President into making tough decisions. But that doesn't mean that this budget is right or fair for the most vulnerable among us.

Don't expect heroism from the Kyrsten Sinemas of the word. Careerism... sure, but not heroism or anything remotely resembling courageousness. Steve Israel dictates her votes; he told the "Frontline Democrats" how to vote and there are only 7 of them who have followed his orders "100% of the time," to quote one of them feeble enough to send me a note about it defending a crap record. These are the 7 freshmen with 40% ProgressivePunch scores (same as right-wing sociopath Paul Broun (R-Pit of Hell)-- who have voted as a block 60% of the time against progressive positions on crucial roll calls:

• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Bill Foster (New Dem- IL)
• Cheri Bustos (IL)
• Ann Kuster (NH)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)

The only House Members with worse voting records for the current session are

• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)- 36.84
• Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)- 35.0
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)- 35.0
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 20.0

And like we watched Sinema doing in her committee today, they do more damage behind the scenes than they do with their actual floor votes. That's why Blue America refused to back Sinema last year and why we'll never back her in the future. We're looking for independent-minded progressives with backbone and good values. Today while she was on the deregulation tip for Wall Street we were blogging with a proven progressive champion from Pennsylvania, state Senator Daylin Leach, his state's Liberal Lion, who's running for an open House seat in northeast Philly/Montgomery County. If you can't go read the entire chat (at the link in the last sentence), take a look at these two questions and answers. The first one was from me:

Will getting an "F" from the NRA hurt you at all in this district-- in either the primary or the general election? Hard to imagine Toomey actually doing the right thing-- at least on background checks. Although I noticed he reverted to form when it came to banning military assault weapons and high capacity clips. Toomey voted against them.

Daylin Leach

First, if it did hurt me, I wouldn't care. This is such a no-brainer issue with stakes so high, that I would happily lose an election before I abandoned my principles on this. That said, the people of Philadelphia know the price we pay for irrational gun policies. The carnage on our streets is something they witness first-hand every day. I can't imagine that there are very many voters out there who really believe that we should NOT KNOW if someone is a violent felon before they are permitted to buy a weapon of mass destruction, or that somebody legitimately needs a 30 round clip.

And the other question came from Lynda Benigno who I don't remember ever seeing at a Blue America chat before:

Daylin, I have noticed on social networking sites Marijuana Legalization is a hot topic. Is that, along with GMO food labeling something you are looking to pursue on the federal level?

Daylin Leach

Lynda, as Sarah Palin would say, You Betcha. Prohibition is a pernicious and cruel policy which is destroying lives and costing us billions each year. And every American has a right to know what they are feeding to their families and decide what is best after being fully informed.

See if you can ever get straight-forward unambiguous answers like that out of someone like Sinema or any DCCC careerist shill. Which is why Sinema and other DCCC careerist shills are never on this page, where you can lend some support to actual Democrats from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, as Howard Dean put it so presciently not all that long ago.

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Just Skip The First Paragraph-- This Is About Obama And Medicare, Not Obama And Syria

If we're already fighting in Syria, it happened between the time I wrote this and Blogger published it. Right now-- as I'm writing-- Israel has just bombed a little for the past few days-- and, of course, there are no boots, no U.S. boots, on the ground in Syria (or... Iran). I'll add an update below when that changes. Although maybe I should remind everyone that in year 5 of the Obama presidency, the occupation of Afghanistan is still cooking along-- albeit as pointlessly as ever. And for some, as painfully. Eight American soldiers here, sixty-four American soldiers there... Vietnam it's not. But it's another pointless all-American tragedy.

No one's accusing Obama of being a secret Republican. Why bother? Establishment Democrats aren't that different from Establishment Republicans most of the time anyway. His catastrophic corporate trade policies are virtually identical with Bush's. Wall Street? Check. Is Penny Pritzker any less of a sleazebag and corporate criminal than anyone Bush appointed? "Obamacare?" Except for the name... it was a discredited Republican proposal to avoid single-payer universal health care. How about wrecking Social Security with Chained CPI-- another Republican idea Obama has embraced-- like the Sequester. Who would have ever imagined a worse Democrat than Bill Clinton in the White House? At least Clinton was smart. Obama really is turning out to be a fool and a lightweight. (No, I didn't vote for him in November. Did you?)

Can Obama do any more damage than he already has to the Democratic brand? Well of course. He has some crappy Republican ideas to wreck Medicare he's feeling good about. No one ever knows how great Medicare is 'til they turn 65. And then it dawns on you-- this isn't a theory; this is the best thing ever! I was the president of a company that was part of a Fortune 500 corporate monster. The carefully negotiated health insurance policy they gave company presidents is the best thing available-- blue chip to the max. Guess what-- so far Social Security is at least just as good. I actually think it's better but I want to give it a year before I make a final judgment. Unless Obama manages to wreck it before the year is up.

Obama says he likes a Republican Austerity plan that combines Medicare's doctor and hospital coverage in a way that saddles beneficiaries with higher costs. The Austerity crowd, both Republicans and the conservative Democrats Obama has surrounded himself with, feel that Medicare beneficiaries need to pay more. The proposals don't attempt to save money; they just shift the costs to beneficiaries while enacting a cap on catastrophic costs. The unified deductable (for Parts A & B) that Obama says he'll go along with is meant to raise expenses by hundreds of dollars for the vast majority of Medicare beneficiaries who aren't getting hospital treatment. "It's just shifting costs," explained Henry Waxman (D-CA), just "a way to ask people to pay more for their premiums." Waxman hasn't even signed onto the Grayson-Takano No Cuts letter and you get the idea that he still hasn't lost faith in Obama yet.

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has signed onto the Grayson-Takano letter and has analyzed it and called it a "net loss" for patients that "is not going to control rising costs." Meanwhile, of course, virtually all Republican congressmembers are getting behind Cantor's devious and callous approach that he articulated for the American Enterprise Institute: "We can modernize Medicare so it isn’t so complicated for seniors or healthcare providers. We should begin by ending the arbitrary division between Part A, the hospital program, and Part B, the doctor services."

I'm looking very skeptically on any incumbents who haven't signed onto the Grayson Takano letter which just states very clearly that "we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits-- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need." Tuesday Blue America will be formally endorsing Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach, who is running for the open congressional seat in northeast Philly/Montgomery County, which Allyson Schwartz is leaving. Daylin backs the Grayson Takano No Cuts approach. "At a time when corporate profits, executive compensation, the stock market and wealth disparity are at near record highs," he told us, "it is obscene to even consider balancing our budget on the backs of seniors and veterans. I fully supported President Obama's election, but I can't support any drift towards corporatism to appease tea-party extremists. If we are really serious about ensuring the solvency of Social Security while preserving benefits well into the future, there is a simple solution. We should raise the cap on income subject to the payroll tax from $110,000 per year to $200,000 per year. This is fair, reasonable, and keeps faith with those who rely on Social Security to survive."

No need to wait 'til Tuesday, when he joins us for a Crooks and Liars live chat session, to back Daylin's campaign. You can do it here, now.

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How To Lose The Youth Vote-- In England And In America

Eric Pickles has been a Member of Parliament from Brentwood and Ongar since 1992 and once served as Chairman of the Joint Committee Against Racism and later as Chairman of the U.K.'s Conservative Party. After the drubbing the Conservatives took at the polls yesterday, Pickles told right-wing jackass Robert Woollard, who chairs Conservative Grassroots and has been stridently demanding that David Cameron forget about marriage equality for gays, that he should stop moaning and "start recruiting people slightly younger than himself."

It isn't only about social issues, like equality either. Maybe Pickles should suggest that Woollard and other old-line reactionaries in the Conservative Party, not worry so much about the protest votes the UKIP got in local elections and instead read Charlie Cook's piece in the new issue of National Journal, The Young And The Restless-- The Fight For Millennials.

President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americans... [T]he poll shows that young voters’ trust in their leaders and political institutions is low and dropping.

While millennials aren’t antigovernment per se, they are very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively deal with problems. Quite simply, in their lifetimes, they have not seen government work effectively or responsively. For the most part, they don’t expect to receive the same benefits, such as Social Security, as their parents and grandparents. Their cynicism about leaders is high and getting higher.

Having said all that, I believe there is a freshness to this generation; millennials appear unencumbered by some of the baggage that previous generations carried. People of this age group seem more open to alternative approaches to dealing with policy issues than the standard more-government-is-always-better approach that Democrats are tempted to pursue as well as the government-is-always-evil approach associated with Republicans.

As this millennial cohort becomes more engaged in the political process, gaining power as the World War II and Korean War generations-- and, soon, the Vietnam War generation-- wane, its members seem more up for grabs than many analysts imagine, provided that Republicans deemphasize social and cultural positions that the younger voters clearly do not share.

Cook's a bit of a conservative hack but his point is valid: if progressives-- or conservatives or fascists-- want the youth vote, they need to address them about their issues. Right now, what Republicans and conservative Democrats who vote with them, tell worried millennials about Social Security and Medicare is that, basically, we'll keep it around for your grandparents-- and then kill it off before you and your family can benefit. This is the standard position of the GOP-- from Boehner, McConnell, Cantor and Ryan to all their garden variety anti-Social Security "Law of the Jungle" cohorts. But it's been seeping into certain Democratic circles as well. And that's dangerous-- for Democrats.

Just over a week ago I brought up the case of sleazy opportunist and wealth-oriented Democrat, Ro Khanna, running for Congress against iconic Bay Area progressive Mike Honda. Honda is one of the signers of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter that opposes, under all circumstances, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Khanna, as well as more than a few right-of-center New Dems, uses "weasel words" right from the GOP messaging shop to describe a position that may make seniors feel less anxious but that can't help but make millennials envision a life more brutish and ugly in the near future.

We often hear Republicans-- particularly Paul Ryan and his cult followers-- saying things like “I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors." The word "current" means the speaker wants to phase out Social Security for future generations, a very standard Republican Party position. But that particular quote I just transcribed, wasn't from Paul Ryan, one of his cult followers or even a registered Republican at all. It came from a certain breed of "Democrat" ungrounded in any of the principles or values of the Democratic Party. That quote came from Ro Khanna, the right-of-center Silicon Valley fundraiser/opportunist who has launched a scorched earth campaign against longtime progressive champion Mike Honda.

...When asked where he stood on cutting social security benefits, Khanna danced around the question.

“I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors,” Khanna said.

A popular talking point, “keeping promises to current seniors” is what most Democrats say when they don’t want to be held accountable for wanting to cut social insurance benefits.

A majority of the country favors preserving social security and trusts the Democratic Party more with entitlement programs over Republicans, who want to severely privatize them at the expense of society’s most vulnerable.

If you think that the Social Security issue does not affect you because you are far from retirement, think again.  If you are a wage earner, you are paying into the system and basically putting money into a fund that will hopefully be there for you in the future.

As students, we are living in precarious times of uncertain job markets, rising costs of living and inescapable student debt, and we have to ask ourselves if there will be a social safety net should things take a turn for the worse.

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Why Should Young Voters Be Embracing Cynicism? Barack Obama

Keith Ellison is as crystal clear as one can be-- without coming out and trashing Obama completely-- that the president's willingness to compromise with America's mortal enemies (the Republican Party and the oligarchs and plutocrats who own them) is bad for American working families. Yesterday Alex Isenstadt explained the politics of this in a Politico piece for people who have been sleeping for the last several months. He explains how Obama has blurred the lines-- lines going back 100 years-- between Democrats and Republicans on protecting working families with popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Voters have backed the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Democratic political class, including sleazy characters like Obama, against the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Republican political class for one reason: the Democrats have stood up for ordinary people, not the rich. Obama is the first Democrat to shift-- Clinton may have even been worse-- but Obama has made the worst mess of it-- especially in trying to take end the valuable political concept that Social Security is the third rail of American politics.

The president’s shift came after an election year in which Democrats made the GOP’s embrace of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare a centerpiece of their campaigns. The offensive, Democrats say, helped them net eight House seats-- a respectable figure but short of the 25 they needed to seize the lower chamber.

Historically, polls have shown Democrats are the party seen as most likely to defend entitlement programs.

How large a role Medicare and Social Security play in the 2014 debate remains to be seen-- Democrats intend to highlight issues like immigration and gun control, with an eye toward driving minority and younger voters to the polls. But they also want to use entitlements as part of a broader message branding Republicans as overly ideological and uncaring about the middle class.

Driving home that theme, some Democrats say, will be tricky after the president’s controversial endorsement of chained CPI, a stingier way of calculating growth in Social Security benefits, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts.

“It is highly problematic,” said one Democratic pollster and veteran of congressional races, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as picking a fight with the White House. “There is no question the entitlement debate makes for an easy campaign ad.”

...While Obama would love for his party to win the House-- he has said he would do everything in his power to help Democrats take the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner-- his budget highlighted tensions with congressional Democrats. The president has said he wants to reach a grand bargain with Republicans to tame the nation’s $16 trillion debt. And getting there, Obama signaled with his budget, requires taking a whack at entitlements.

“The White House is more concerned about his legacy,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “It’s the classic dilemma of the second-term incumbent.”

Some Democrats say slashing Medicare and Social Security will turn off the senior voters who are traditionally among those most likely to turn out to the polls in a midterm election.

“During nonpresidential election years, the percentage of voters age 65 and older is higher, and polls consistently show that voters age 50 and older strongly oppose use of chained CPI to cut benefits,” said Chuck Loveless, director of federal government affair for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “So from our point of view, the use of chained CPI is not only bad policy, its bad politics.”

“It would suppress Democratic turnout,” he added. “It’s pretty clear people are paying attention to this.”

In the days since Obama released his budget, many of the Democrats who have been quickest to distance themselves from his blueprint are those from senior-heavy districts. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, a freshman Democrat who represents a Palm Springs-area district where seniors compose about half of all registered voters, said “putting the burden of the national deficit on the backs of our seniors is wrong.”

Democrats are even concerned that Republicans could reverse the dynamic and portray Democrats as the bad guys on entitlements.

In an interview with CNN after Obama unveiled his budget earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon called the plan “a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said.

And it isn't only the elderly who will be staying home. Yesterday, the NY Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg explained how enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in 2008 has lead to cynicism about politics (something we predicted in 2008, having already seen exactly what kind of a politician Obama was in his few years as a senator). Obama was always two things: better than a Republican alternative and an inspiring politician. It's been mostly downhill from there. And she has a survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard to back it up-- or at least to back up the perception.

The Harvard survey, of more than 3,100 voters under 30, found that faith in most major institutions-- with the notable exception of the military-- has declined over the past several years. Today, only 39 percent of young voters trust the president to do the right thing, as opposed to 44 percent in 2010. Just 18 percent of voters under 30 trust Congress, compared with 25 percent in February 2010.

“The hyperpartisanship and gridlock that has befallen Washington, D.C., is having a traumatic effect not just on our nation’s status at home and abroad, but on the political health of tens of millions of once (and hopefully future) idealistic young people,” wrote John Della Volpe, the Harvard institute’s polling director, in the study’s conclusion.

The economy is a major reason for the disillusionment of young voters, who are saddled with student debt and worried about how to find jobs, said Kristen Soltis Anderson, who tracks young voters for the Winston Group, which advises Republican candidates. Mr. Durgin is one example; part of his upset with Washington, he said, has to do with his livelihood.

“I’m losing money,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing positive that has happened to me in the last 12 months.”

Young voters seem disappointed with both political parties, although Ms. Anderson, the Republican pollster, said her party appears to be taking the brunt of millennials’ dissatisfaction. Mr. Obama had a 52 percent approval rating in the Harvard poll-- slightly better than his approval ratings in polls of older adults nationwide-- but down from his approval rating of 58 percent in a Harvard poll of millennials in 2009.

“They are disappointed with him, yet many question the motives of Republicans even more,” Ms. Anderson said.

She added: “It’s tough to be young these days-- the economic concerns are very great, and a lot of what you hear out of Washington is not addressing those concerns. There are a lot of questions: Does either party really have my best interest at heart? And I think the answer to that is, ‘No.’”

That cynicism is coupled with a deepening partisan divide. While Mr. Obama’s job performance rating would suggest that most young voters feel he is doing well in office, a deeper look at the numbers reveals a split: 86 percent of young Democrats approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance, while only 10 percent of young Republicans do.

“At no time since President Obama was elected in 2008 have we reported less trust, more cynicism and more partisanship among young voters,” Mr. Della Volpe wrote in the study. “Young voters, like older Americans, are becoming more partisan by the day.”

...Political analysts know that voters are heavily influenced by the president and the political climate in which they come of age; young voters of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, for instance, tended to stay Democratic throughout their lives, while those of the Ronald Reagan era still tilt strongly Republican.

And that brings us back to Keith Ellison and other progressives in Congress and running for Congress who may be backing Obama on marriage equality and immigration and gun safety but want nothing to do with him on his backing for the failed Republican Austerity agenda. Ezra Klein has always looked like a real Obamabot to me but Monday night on Maddow's show, if you read between the lines, he's almost saying, defensively, that Obama is... well, "better than a Republican." He may be, but he's sure not as good as a Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Jeff Merkley.

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