But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day Part 5

What, you thought that Democrats weren't going to get suckered into cutting Social Security and Medicare during the worst economy in generations?  Just need to brand it better, as Digby explains.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Calling Social Security cuts "welfare reform" is just brilliant. Gloria Borger will have to be taken to the hospital when she hears it. What could be better than "Welfare Reform Part II: The Greedy Geezers"? And it looks like Democrats have joined the cast:

At the same time, Democrats admit their own frustration that the president has not been more forthcoming in addressing the debt issue.

For example, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us” was the headline for a weekend op-ed by White House Budget Director Jack Lew promising that Obama’s 2012 budget will “look beyond the obvious” in cutting spending. But Lew is already months behind his fellow Democrats on one of his prime examples — cuts from the Great Lakes restoration initiative.

Lew listed other more significant new cuts –totaling $650 million--from community development and community service block grants. But none of these comes close to the desperate tone of last week’s 81-17 Senate vote on the small-business amendment, in which panic-driven Democrats virtually turned over the keys to the White House to cut whatever it wanted from unobligated appropriations, as long as they met the $44 billion target.

The article goes on to discuss how Republicans are facing some of the same issues. But let's face it. It's always going to be easier for the GOP to sign on to spending cuts. If the Democrats lead the way, I suspect they'll be able to set aside their differences. Where they fall out is on tax hikes, but from what I can tell that's not on the table. So it looks like Welfare Reform for the old and sick is on.

Americans who depend on Social Security and Medicare?  Welfare.  Ergo, the solution is bipartisan, Clinton-style centrist "welfare reform"!

Today, a decade after implementation, the Clinton-Republican “bipartisan” welfare law is a failure. As unemployment has doubled since 2007 and the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 40%, the welfare caseload has risen only 10% — a clear indication that the nation’s poorest families are not receiving welfare grants due to the restrictive time limits imposed by the 1996 law.

Ask yourself: if the federal government allowed states to put time limits on food stamps, would those numbers have gone up 40%? Or would we have even more kids on the streets begging for alms?

And when that comes to Social Security and Medicare, it'll be "Obama's death panels" and Republicans will run against the President on this the day after Obama signs it into law.  Democrats will get pillaged on this because Republicans will lie and say they never wanted to cut anything but taxes.  Bush's response to reforming Medicare was the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug benefit, remember?  Republicans in 2012 will run on "restoring dignity to America's seniors" and the Dems will be left hanging out to dry.

And yes, the Democrats in Washington are this stupid.

Watch.