Sen. Kerry boasts of the willingness of Supercommittee Democrats to cut “entitlements”

Photo from Kerry's website.

Speaking of entitlements, Sen. Kerry, why doesn’t the supercommittee follow Rep.  Giffords’ advice and cut the salaries of members of Congress?

That would likely be too hard to pass, unlike slashes to Medicare and Social Security that both Democrats and Republicans are so fond of debating these days.

Guess it makes our congressional leaders seem courageous and bipartisan to go after society’s most vulnerable.

In a post by Bryan Tau at Politico, Kerry boasts of the willingness of the Democratic members of the Supercommittee to cut “entitlements”- note how Kerry's use of this derogatory term avoids mentioning specific safety net programs that benefit seniors and other low income folks.

Tau’s post concludes:

Democrats made an unprecedented offer to cut entitlements, and Republicans refused, Kerry said.

"We are not a tax-cutting committee. We're a deficit-reduction committee," Kerry said. "Everybody out there has said to us 'Go big. Do $4 trillion.' We Democrats put a $4 trillion deal on the table and it included huge, hard, tough, horrible reductions on the sacred cows and things that we have been accused of not being willing to do. We put it out there."

Read the entire post:

Gabrielle Giffords’ novel cost-cutting idea for the supercommittee

While the supercommittee continues to debate slashing Social Security and Medicare programs to get the federal deficit under control, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords initiated legislation last January that would cut the salaries of lawmakers for the first time since the Great Depression.

Politico reports:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ aides, backed by 25 House members, have asked the supercommittee to cut lawmakers’ pay as the 12-member panel works to reach a deficit-reduction deal before its Thanksgiving deadline.

Giffords, who is recovering from an assassination attempt, first introduced legislation to slash congressional salaries in January. The Arizona Democrat has been in the news lately because her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, wrote a book about her ordeal.

In a letter to the supercommittee, the bipartisan group of lawmakers write that the cut should be made “both as a commonsense way to cut government spending and to send a powerful message to the American people that Congress should not be exept from the sacrifices it will take to balance the budget.”

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