The Occupy Wall Street movement has succeeded in changing the focus of Washington’s economic attention from deficit and debts to questions of economic justice and jobs. The President’s pivot to jobs hasn’t gotten a single jobs bill through Congress, but the changed conversation has killed the momentum of the Super Committee and created predictions of its failure.

Recent stories note that Democratic members of the Super Committee have offered to reduce Social Security, Medicare and other benefits as part of a larger debt reduction plan. This is not surprising, since the Super Committee was created under procedural rules purposely designed to allow such benefit cuts.

Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal report that President Obama’s proposal for deficit reduction, due out Monday, will not include any changes to Social Security. The reports are less certain about increasing the Medicare eligibility age, giving a definite “maybe” about that measure.

We’re just going to get trial balloon after trial balloon until next Monday, when the President is set to announce his batch of deficit reduction ideas for the Catfood Commission II. Now the balloon has flown all the way to England, and the offices of the Financial Times.

What the President isn’t telling people is that he offered an alteration to that automatic COLA process, by going to chained CPI, that would result in a slower increase in benefits, and a de facto cut. So at the same time the President is explaining that the COLA is not in his control, he is hiding the fact that he wants to change the metric upon which it is based. In fact, he slipped and actually did mention chained CPI, in a roundabout way, at a second town hall in Alpha, Illinois. (cont.)

You thought you were paying excess FICA so there would be money when you retired. No. You were paying excess FICA so rich people and their corporations could have massive tax cuts. S&P should have limited its downgrade to the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund. Those are never going to pay off.

Both Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are making some bold predictions about the Catfood Commission II and their roles in it. Pelosi said she wouldn’t appoint anyone to the committee who didn’t oppose benefit cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And Reid tried his own dollar-for-dollar pledge by stating there must be a 1:1 ratio between tax and cut solutions on the committee.

Progressives need to send a strong message that a COLA cut is unacceptable, no matter what it is called and most especially when it is being used to show that Democrats are willing to give up their historic support for Social Security in exchange for getting Republican sign-on to a disastrous deficit-reduction deal.

Just about the only specific piece of the Gang of Six proposal, as explained well by Rep. Peter DeFazio in the video, is the move to chained CPI, a benefit cut for Social Security, veteran’s benefits and any program with a cost of living adjustment, along with a regressive tax cut. So that should give you a flavor for the biases of the Gang of Six, and where their proposal is headed.

I called Hoyer’s office this morning to ask if he considers cutting the COLA a benefit cut, but haven’t received a response.