This could be a problem IF obamacare isn't repealed: One major problem looming for Mack/penny will be Social Security and Medicaire. Because of the aging population social security costs can't be easily contained and because of Obamacare we are essentially putting 30 million new people into a quasi private-public insurance wonderland. Probably the only way for Mack/penny to accommodate those challenges will be means testing. The one penny per dollar rubric could be maintained by only applying that reduction rate to the richest 10% of pensioners.
I understand the first part pretty well with the exception that I believe I heard the 1% overall cut could be tailored to provide some flexibility if needed so long as the overall cut was still 1%. For instance, if a special request were to come in (ie The WH asks there be a smaller cut in one given year to Social Security in exchange for a larger, offseting cut that year to Food Stamps or the EPA or the military, or whatever, to offset the smaller social security’s reduction), that could be permitted so long as Congress agreed to the same tailored change and the overall budget reduction was 1% still). That kind of flexibility is what I am thinking would make this bill a little more palatable to some Democrats.
However, to safeguard any irresponsible change requests (ie the WH requesting all 1% of the entire federal budget cuts coming from the military’s budget), if I understand it correctly, I believe the bill requires that if no agreement by all parties on any tailored request for any given year, the across the board 1% cuts remains in effect for each agency, organization, etc. It’s a ‘fail safe’ to keep Congress and the White House from keeping things going forward with endless debates, fights, and stalling. (At least that I what I took from reading info about the bill.)
The second part RE Obamacare and its effect of putting more and more people into social security and how that could be a problem for cutting debt straight down the line is confusing to me, being math challenged. I’m open for someone helping with that!