{"id":2258,"date":"2013-03-14T14:10:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T18:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=2258"},"modified":"2013-03-14T14:10:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T18:10:06","slug":"correcting-the-cpi-the-birth-of-a-talking-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2013\/03\/14\/correcting-the-cpi-the-birth-of-a-talking-point\/","title":{"rendered":"“Correcting the CPI”: The Birth of a Talking Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent yesterday morning at The Atlantic<\/em>‘s economy summit, one of the media empire’s frequent let’s-sit-around-and-discuss-ideas confabs. It was there that I saw White House economic adviser Gene Sperling birth a new talking point. James Bennet, editor of the magazine, kept pushing Sperling for details of what a White House grand bargain might look like. (Washingtonians are never not talking about this.) <\/p>\n

“The president of the United States put an offer on the table,” said Sperling. “It includes $400 billion in medicare savings. It includes, ah, ah, correcting the CPI, which is a very difficult policy decision to make.”<\/p>\n

Normally it’s cheap to include verbal stops in a quote — ah, ah — but I put ’em in because I had never heard that talking point. “Correcting the CPI?” That used to be called “chained CPI,” as someone referred<\/a> to it in a Reddit AMA with Sperling, eliciting this answer: “The President would prefer to have this adjustment in the context of a larger Social Security reform.” <\/p>\n

My colleague Matthew Yglesias has written about<\/a> “chained CPI” many times, and David Cerpner has a good, worried explanation here about what would change if benefits were tied to a revised consumer price index. It’s far less progressive than a reform progressives want, and have wanted: Raising the cap on Social Security taxes. And it’s underlined and highlighted in the White House’s playbook. <\/p>\n

via Weigel http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/weigel\/2013\/03\/14\/_correcting_the_cpi_the_birth_of_a_talking_point.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent yesterday morning at The Atlantic‘s economy summit, one of the media empire’s frequent let’s-sit-around-and-discuss-ideas confabs. It was there that I saw White House economic adviser Gene Sperling birth a new talking point. James Bennet, editor of the magazine, kept pushing Sperling for details of what a White House grand bargain might look like. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Correcting the CPI”: The Birth of a Talking Point”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[286,6,898],"class_list":["post-2258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-reader","tag-david-weigel","tag-ifttt","tag-weigel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2skW4-Aq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}