Political MoJo

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President Barack Obama's budget proposal, released Wednesday, would cut Social Security benefits by slowing their growth, a concession to Republicans who demand entitlement cuts in any budget. But what if there were another way to beef up Social Security's finances? Good news: There is. It would involve extending the payroll tax—which feeds the Social Security money pot—to rich people. But according to a new report by the policy shop Remapping Debate, most Dems would rather not talk about that.

Right now, the payroll tax only applies to income up to $113,700. Any income above that is exempt. According to the Social Security Administration, eliminating the payroll tax exclusion of incomes above $250,000 would ensure the program solvency for almost 50 years. Eliminating the exclusion entirely would ensure solvency for close to 65 years.

Plus, it would be more fair. "As it currently stands, payroll taxes apply to every dollar of earnings for a janitor making the minimum wage, but a professional athlete making $1 million a year pays only payroll taxes on approximately one-tenth of their earnings," Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has introduced a bill to phase out the payroll tax cap, told Remapping Debate.

Harkin isn't alone: 12 other senators have put forth proposals in this Congress to eliminate or adjust the payroll tax cap. But as Remapping Debate found out, the other 42 Democrats in the Senate don't seem interested in getting behind the proposals.

The group reached out repeatedly to the senators' offices for a couple of weeks in March, and what they got was a lot of meh. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) were 100 percent into the idea. Others gave vague responses about "being open" to changes; four declined to comment; some said they were too busy. For the majority of Senators, there was no reply at all. Even superstar Main Street advocate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had no comment.

"For all the talk of the Social Security system running out of money," writes Samantha Cook in the report, "it is well established that raising or eliminating the cap on the wages subject to payroll taxes would guarantee a healthy Social Security system for many decades, and do so without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age." Apparently that can wait.

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Sen. minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

A day after Mother Jones published audio of a Louisville meeting in which Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his campaign staff discussed opposition research on prospective challengers, McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton has validated Godwin's law by playing the Hitler card. In an interview with NBC News, Benton compared the leaking of the recording to Nazi Germany. "This is Gestapo-kind of scare tactics, and we're not going to stand for it," Benton told Michael O'Brien.

The Gestapo, who served as Hitler's secret police from 1933 until 1945, were best known for enforcing a reign of terror typified by abductions and executions, as well as aiding and abetting genocide. That's all quite a bit different than recording 12 minutes of a political strategy session or publishing a legally-obtained tape.

And there's no evidence that the audio was the result, as the McConnell campaign has insisted, of a Watergate-style bugging operation. Still, that hasn't stopped McConnell from taking the opportunity to play the victim, blasting out a fundraising pitch accusing the "liberal media" of "illegal and underhanded tactics."

Update: Aaron Keyak, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, just released this statement calling on McConnell to repudiate the use of "gestapo":

Senator Mitch McConnell—the most powerful Republican in the Senate—must denounce his campaign manager's inappropriate use of 'Gestapo,' which comes just days after Holocaust Remembrance Day. If McConnell chooses to remain silent on this matter and tolerate this offensive rhetoric, it will disrespectful to those who were murdered and abused by the actual Gestapo.

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Following an awkward, earnest speech to an audience at Howard University, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) insisted several times that he did not oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

"I've never been against the Civil Rights Act, ever," Paul told a questioner, following what was the first speech by a Republican legislator at the historically black university in decades. "This was on tape," the questioner responded. 

That's true. It is on tape. Here it is:

In 2010, during an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal flagged by ThinkProgress, Paul made it very clear that he opposed a key part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination on the basis of race in "places of public accommodation," such as privately owned businesses that are open to the public. Here's the transcript:

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I'm all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the "but." I don't like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that's most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

If federal civil rights laws only outlawed segregation in "anything that gets any public funding," the state would still be called upon to enforce racism by enforcing the property rights of business owners who did not want to serve people on the basis of skin color (or religion, or national origin). Only by extending the ban on discrimination to all places of public accommodation, including privately owned businesses, could freedom against discrimination actually be upheld. Paul elaborated later in the interview when he said that he "became emotional" reading the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part—and this is the hard part about believing in freedom—is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example—you have to, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things and uh, we're here at the bastion of newspaperdom, I'm sure you believe in the First Amendment so you understand that people can say bad things. It's the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that, and don't belong to those groups, or don't associate with those people.

Paul expressed similar sentiments in interviews with MSNBC and NPR. 

So Paul made it quite clear in 2010 that he didn't believe in federal law banning discrimination in privately owned businesses that are open to the public. At Howard, Paul seemed to be saying he never opposed the Civil Rights Act in its entirety, but he certainly opposed a key part of it that completely reshaped American society. Supporting the right of white business owners not to serve blacks may be the "hard part of freedom" for someone, but not for anyone who looks like Rand Paul.

Paul got a warm reception from the Howard audience for some of his positions on foreign policy and the war on drugs. But in what seems like a tacit acknowledgement that his past position on a piece of historic civil rights legislation is embarrassing, Paul fibbed about what that position actually was. 

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On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave senators leading bipartisan talks on a compromise amendment for expanding background checks on gun buyers an ultimatum: Figure it out by 5 p.m. That's when Reid planned to file a motion to move to debate of his broader package of gun control legislation, which includes measures to improve school safety and crack down on gun traffickers.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) managed to strike a deal, and on Wednesday morning they held a press conference on Capitol Hill outlining their amendment, which Manchin said would be the first on the gun control bill when Reid introduces it for an initial vote on Thursday. (Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who introduced the background check provisions that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, told reporters on Tuesday that although some details needed working out, he supported the Manchin-Toomey compromise.) The amendment would require background checks on all gun sales in person and over the internet with the exception of transfers between "friends and neighbors." It's unclear how broad that exception will be in practice, but the Washington Post reported that the background check requirement "would not cover private transactions between individuals, unless there was advertising or an online service involved." Private dealers would be required to keep records of gun sales, as licensed dealers have already been doing since 1968. Gun sellers who allow prohibited people to buy firearms would face a felony charge.

Immediate reactions from gun control groups working with lawmakers on the Hill were mixed. "We like [the compromise] very much," Mark Glaze, director of Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told Mother Jones. Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, struck a more cautious tone. "We're still waiting to hear the language of the bill," he said, explaining that his group wanted more details on how record-keeping would work, and if gun transactions by, for example, people standing just outside gun shows would require checks. But Everitt commended Manchin and Toomey for standing their ground against pushback from staunch proponents of gun rights.

At the press conference, Manchin and Toomey, who both own guns, touted their support for the Second Amendment. "I don't consider criminal background checks to be gun control. It's common sense." Toomey said. "The mentally ill should not have guns. I don't know anyone who disagrees with that premise."

When asked if he worried that his support for expanded background checks would cost him his A rating with the National Rifle Association, Toomey replied, "What matters to me is doing the right thing." (Mayors Against Illegal Guns is releasing scorecards of its own to grade lawmakers on guns.)

The NRA, with which Manchin said he and Toomey have been in contact, stepped away from its opposition to expanded background checks, calling the compromise "a positive development." However, the NRA said, "no background check would have prevented the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora, or Tucson."

Manchin also said he and Toomey "agree[d] that we need a commission on mass violence" with experts on mental illness, school safety, and "video violence."

If expanded background checks are able to dodge a Senate filibuster with the help of Republicans who want to see a vote, the next challenge will be in the House, where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has the power to block the bill from getting a vote. Toomey said there are a "substantial number of House Republicans who are supportive of this general [compromise] approach." (Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), one of the House's leading gun-control advocates, told Mother Jones last week that the gun violence task force she sits on has been in talks with Republicans, but declined to name names.)

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