Proposals Made on Background Are Not Real Proposals at All

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I buried a point in an update to my earlier post about John Boehner’s new deficit proposal, and I want to give it a short post of its own to make sure it gets a bit of attention. The point was this: every news account of Boehner’s proposal says that it includes (a) an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, and (b) a change in the way inflation is calculated, which would reduce Social Security benefits. But neither of those things is in the letter he sent to President Obama. So where did they come from?

The answer, apparently, is from anonymous GOP aides on background. And if that’s the case, it should have been clearly reported that way. Because that’s not a proposal at all, it’s a way of pretending to make a proposal that can be disavowed and denied at any time if it becomes inconvenient. If it were real, after all, Boehner would have put it in his letter. It’s not as if he didn’t have enough room.

And on a substantive note, if the inflation proposal is real, I hope that Obama rejects it unless it’s matched at least dollar-for-dollar with a proposal to increase Social Security revenues. Raising the maximum taxable income so that it once again covers 90% of earnings would just about do it. Generally speaking, I don’t mind making a deal on Social Security, but it needs to be a balanced deal that pairs up benefit cuts with tax increases. Under no circumstances should any Democrat accept a deal that includes only a benefit cut.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate