Before I get to my quibble with Ezra Klein, I first strongly recommend that everyone read his column, “Why rich guys want to raise the retirement age”. The bottom line is that it’s galling to listen to rich people like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein talk about raising the retirement age, when in no way will folks like Blankfein ever feel the pain from doing so:

They don’t want to retire at age 65, and they don’t have short life expectancies, and they’re not mainly relying on Social Security for their retirement income. They’re bravely advocating a cut they’ll never feel.

Meanwhile, as Klein correctly points out, you don’t hear the Blankfeins of the world talking about lifting the cap on Social Security taxes (currently at the first $110,000 of income, even if you make $16.1 million per year, as Blankfein does). Doing that, as Klein explains, “would do three times as much to solve Social Security’s shortfall as raising the retirement age to 70.” In fact, Klein adds, “it would, in one fell swoop, close Social Security’s solvency gap for the next 75 years.”

In other words, next time you hear a politician, of either party, talk about raising the retirement age without talking about raising the cap on Social Security taxes from $110,000, feel free to tell them to take a long stroll off a very short pier into an extremely deep lake.

So what’s my quibble with Ezra Klein on this subject? Basically, it’s the part I’ve bolded in the following sentence by Klein: “One of the things the richest society the world has ever known can buy is a decent retirement for people who don’t have jobs they love and who don’t want to work forever.”

With all due respect to Ezra Klein, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, I don’t believe this is the correct framing of the issue. Instead, my view is that for most working people, it’s not so much an issue of whether they “love” their jobs or “want to work forever,” it’s that they’re sick, in pain, physically exhausted, needing to care for sick spouses or other loved ones, etc. In many cases, that’s why they NEED – not so much “want” – to retire. And that’s exactly what they’ve earned by paying into the system for decades. Sure, if everyone had office jobs that were mentally stimulating, not physically taxing, and financially (highly) rewarding, a lot more people would “want” to keep working until they’re 65, 70 or beyond. But most people – certainly those in the lower income brackets – don’t happen to have jobs like that. Perhaps the Blankfeins of the world would care to switch for a while, walk a mile in the other man’s moccasins so to speak, and then let us know what he thinks about raising the retirement age?

Bottom line: I have a quibble with Ezra Klein’s otherwise spot-on analysis. I have a lot more than a quibble with the Lloyd Blankfeins of the world.

Senator-elect Kaine continues to talk the exact same approach we’ve heard from him for a long time: seeking common ground with Republicans; helping restore civility to Washington, DC; working for “the good of the commonwealth and the country;” fixing the fiscal situation in the country in a balanced way (e.g., addressing “both sides of the balance sheet”); arguing that we can’t “cut our way to prosperity;” etc.

We’ll see if Kaine’s approach works once he starts trying to deal with the far-right-wing national Republican Party and the “my way or the highway” attitude of people like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Other than that, Kaine says he plans to “hit the ground on January 3 very much running” on the budget, immigration reform, and other areas where “we can make progress quickly if we listen to each other.” Finally, Kaine argues that the Senate is “not on a one-way path to dysfunction.” Good luck with that, I guess, but I’ll remain highly skeptical until I start seeing signs of Republicans acting responsibly, more of them ditching Grover Norquist and absolutist “pledges,” and the nasty kind of rhetoric we’ve seen just in recent weeks from John McCain and Lindsey Graham against Susan Rice. Again, we’ll see, but I certainly wish Tim Kaine luck in dealing with this mess!

Per ThinkProgress:

When you’re $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece, and Republicans should put revenue on the table. We’re this far in debt. We don’t generate enough revenue. Capping deductions will help generate revenues. Raising tax rates will hurt job creation. I agree with Grover that we shouldn’t raise rates, but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can’t cap deductions. […] I will violate the pledge, long story short for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reforms.

What’s Grover going to do when he’s completely irrelevant, as he’s rapidly becoming? Here’s a thought: go find another country to try and screw up, and leave the United States of America alone!

In 1985, Grover Norquist founded American for Tax Reform with the goal of advocating for flatter tax rates in the United States. Since then, he's taken his crusade to ever-increasing levels of absurdity in dogmatically opposing every revenue measure to curb the federal deficit. Norquist's “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” has been influential in re-writing the Republican Party's ideology to avoid compromise and decry revenue-for-spending-cuts deals. As recently as the day before the November 2012 elections, Mr. Norquist's “Pledge” had been signed by 238 House Republicans and 41 Senate Republicans, giving his uncompromising rhetoric an outright majority in the House and the ability to filibuster in the Senate. However, it appears as though Mr. Norquist's empire is quickly collapsing in recent days as the Republican Party seems to have had a fairly significant shift in tax policy.

The incombing Congress will see less that 218 House Republicans having signed the pledge (placing Mr. Norquist finally in the minority) and the number of Senate Republicans signed onto the peldge dropped to 39. Further, GOP Senators Chambliss and Graham (the former having been a staunch Conservative in the ranks while the latter has been known to occasionally break rank with the party leadership) have come out forecfully against Norquist's “read my lips” position in the face of a fiscal cliff and economic calamity (their statements are after the “flip”.) Clearly, more than two Republican Senators will need to speak up against the Party's trot towards the extreme, yet that two prominent Republicans would publicly condemn someone who has up until now been considered the standard-bearer of Republican economic ideology is in and of itself sign of a changing wind.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), a safely-entrenched Republican from Long Island, came out Today calling Norquist's “No new taxes” pledge about as relevant to today's fiscal situation as re-attacking Japan for World War II would be. 

The list of other GOP Statesmen to have disavowed Norquist is growing. Fmr. President George H. W. Bush, fmr. Florida Governor Jeb Bush, fmr. Utah Governor and China Ambassador Jon Huntsman, Iowa Representative Steve King and numerous others have all bucked the pledge.  

Clearly, one should be fairly cautious in assuming that this implies that a Grand Bargain that equally balances spending cuts with needed tax hikes on wealthier Americans will be priority #1 for John Boehner and House Republicans, but it nonetheless is oh so sweet to see Grover Norquist's prized crusade being abandoned by his own Party. 

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on ABC's “This Week”

I would violate the Pledge for the good of the Country – if Democrats will do entitlement reform. I think Grover is wrong when it comes to capping deductions and buying down the debt… What I would say to Grover Norquist is that Sequester would destroy the United States military. It must be replaced.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) on WMAZ

I care more about my country that I do a 20-year old pledge. If we do it [Norquist]'s way, we'll continue on in debt, and I just have a disagreement about that… I don't worry about [a Primary challenge] because I care too much about my Country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist.