From Sam Stein at Huffington Post:
Jilted by Republican leadership during the deficit-reduction talks that accompanied the debt ceiling debate, the Obama administration is now pulling back an offer to put Social Security reform on the negotiating table.That's good. Though this Super Committee is still a fool's errand that risks gutting important programs, and risks sending the economy further south. The major won't begin until 2013, ostensibly to protect the fragile economy. But no one thinks the economy will be in any better shape by 2013 than it is now. And now we have Dems on the Hill, and the President himself, urging the Super Committee to make even larger cuts than its own mandate.
The president will not include changes to that program in the series of deficit reduction measures that he will offer to the congressional super committee next Monday, administration officials confirm.
The entire adventure is fraught with peril. And it's not clearly that anyone even recognizes the danger we're in. So while I appreciate that the President is taking Social Security off the table, at least in so far as the Super Committee is concerned, the Super Committee itself seems awfully ill-conceived from an economics perspective.
