I spoke with Barney Frank today about the current debt ceiling debate. He said he would not vote for any bill that raised the debt ceiling which included cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits, including a chained CPI, which is included in the Gang of 6 deal.

Yes, switching to chained CPI changes not only the cost of living adjustment for Social Security and other benefit programs that use a COLA, like federal pensions and veteran’s benefits. It also changes the cost of living adjustment for…. tax brackets. A tax bracket that might go up, say, $100 year-over-year would only go up $50, under chained CPI. And that means that higher tax brackets would be available at lower yearly income. This sounds technical, but the point is it’s a tax increase, designed to bring in $60 billion over ten years. What’s more, it’s a regressive tax increase.

Although specifics have yet to officially emerge, there is little doubt that among the Social Security benefit cuts the President is proposing will be a reduction in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) through an obscure change in the COLA formula known as the chained CPI

Congress is in a full blown austerity mode right now and any deal that comes out of these negotiations is likely going to be really bad news for regular people. That is why I suspect any deal will just happen to be reached at the last minute, so Congress will “need” to quickly pass the bill with effectively no public debate or time for scrutiny.

Maybe you think those leading Democrats aren’t being sincere about this. I actually am fine thinking that they are. Because this has now become the dividing line in American politics: one side wants to destroy the safety net, privatize everything, kill the unions, cut taxes for the rich and drown government in the bathtub. The other side doesn’t want to end Medicare. They don’t really want to expand it, they don’t even mind cutting it, hopefully to make it more efficient. They just don’t want to end it. Clearly you see how far to the right that dividing line has moved.