Oh I know Obama is again letting White House leaks do the talking as he says he is into saving (what does that word mean to Obama?) Social Security and Medicare – and Joe Biden on today’s Sunday talk says they will let the Clinton rates return for everyone if they do not get their tax increase on millionaires (an increase to levels lower than paid under the Clinton rates). But then we get the Simpson-Bowles push during the week and it shows up on Sunday Talk what is one to think?.

Well, after 4 more years of either Obama or Romney, I’m betting on the wholesale reinstatement of debtor’s prisons and poor houses. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/03/17/on-the-rise-of-debtors-prison-the-scariest-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me/ More than a third of U.S. states allow borrowers to be jailed for non payment of debts. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties – but that is for another day – back to this weeks endorsements of Simpson-Bowles as the Democratic Plan post election to avoid the Clinton Tax rates returning..

To be fair our modern reporters must repeat the Corporate/GOP/Obama lies in order to keep their jobs, so when they fail to mention that both Simpson-Bowles plan and the Ryan budget plan do not cut the deficit and are only out there to screw Social Security and Medicare, and they fail to mention that all those two plans do is say they will close unnamed tax loopholes and stop healthcare cost from rising but without saying how “cut” does not mean cutting Medicare benefits, and when indeed the reporters do not say that both plans do nothing but cut taxes for the rich and cut spending for the poor with no reduction in the debt, I forgive them – they need the job.

As reported at HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/jamie-dimon-simpson-bowles-plan_n_1478484.html, Banker Jamie Dimon supported the Simpson Bowles Plan in his speech at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, saying “the U.S. is the opposite of Europe, we know the way [to solve our crises], it’s called Bowles-Simpson.” So the pretend Grand Bargain to prevent going over the “cliff” of “the Clinton rates returning and new tax cuts that actually favor the middle-class being passed” is Obama job one, as we expect to hear post election of $4 trillion in savings over the next 10 years via cuts to Social Security by raising the retirement age and less than cost of living adjustments, with health cost cuts in some magic way (raising the age from 65?) as it lowers tax rates for individual and corporate to 29%. I did like Banker CEO Jamie Dimon saying Occupy Wall Street movement had “legitimate complaints” but tax increases on the 1% only was unfair “discrimination.”

I also “liked” the report http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/04/27/18712215.php and HufPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/nancy-pelosi-social-security-medicare_n_1453323.html?ref=tw that Nancy Pelosi says she would back the Simpson-Bowles cuts to Social Security and Medicare, repeating the support she gave the plan the day after a tougher version of the Simpson-Bowles plan was given a vote on the House floor and lost 382-38, with Pelosi and most Democrats voting against it. She just wants to vote for a bill that more closely uses the wording of the Simpson-Bowles original. Of course Pelosi said during the debt limit pretend that she’d agree to cuts much greater than Simpson-Bowles was going for (reported by the Washington Post), when Obama, after he failed to get GOP support for the “Grand Bargain”, asked Reid and Pelosi for support for the same Grand Bargain attack on Social Security/Medicare in the future. CREDO http://www.credoaction.com/ says it is “deeply troubled to hear that she has not clarified her comments in support of dangerous cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits (in addition to Social Security)” and has a bit of activist push back at their site.

Now we can pretend this is just politics – a chance to rub the GOP nose in the ground with a plan – Simpson-Bowles – that, being less evil that the GOP variation voted down in the House, stands no chance of being put on the floor in this year of the Ryan/Tea Party “no compromise” with any bill that has even pretend “tax increases.”

But as Obama has said over the last over the last 3 years, he is a “blue-dog” and when he says something conservative it can not and should not be ignored.

So once again, why should we believe left sounding sound bites from the Democrats/Obama when other Democrats/Obama sound bites make clear the plan under Obama is not that much different from the plan under Romney.