I'll assume President Obama would rather not have suggested the chained CPI fix for Social Security if he thought the more obvious solution would pass. I hope so, anyway. Because given the two ways to maintain solvency for that program on which so many needy Americans depend, it seems pretty obvious that the better option would have been to remove the limit on income subjected to Social Security taxes. Take the necessary money, in other words, from those who can afford it as opposed to those who most need it.
But that's not the way things work with today's Republican party. Reasonable isn't a word in their vocabulary. So what we get is a president, like an abused child who still thinks she can make daddy love her, offering compromise after compromise, pissing off his own party, raising the possibility that any Democrat who votes for his budget will get primaried, and that Rs will increase their majority in the House. Wanna bet: they'll also run against the very Social Security cuts that Obama gave them, because of their stonewalling. Rs aren't about governing; they're just about power plays and maintaining the status quo which works to the advantage of themselves and their backers.
The system no longer works. I don't know if it's because its intelligent designers never anticipated such recklessness by a major party and therefore the Constitution needs changing (which won't happen) or because the Republican party is irreparably broken (which won't change.) Either way, we're screwed. By the time things get bad enough that even teabaggers recognize their folly (a theoretical only) (the recognition part, not the bad part) it'll be far past too late.
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