It's official, folks. The Grand Bargain is here.

Time to take action. If we don't unleash holy hell, this will go through.

Even though we've been warning you for a long time, it's still hard to believe that a Democratic president is offering up the crown jewels of Democratic policy -- and for a mere pittance. We need to fight back. You can call or write your congressperson or the White House if you want, but it's most useful to start with your senators. Tell them you're not willing to starve Granny to make the Republicans happy.

We're going to concentrate on the Senate, because they'll probably send a bipartisan bill to the House in order to bypass Boehner's Hastert rule. Even if you called last week, call today. Be prepared to call every day for the next week. (Here's the link.) Please leave a note in comments telling us how your call went.

President Obama will release a budget next week that proposes significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security and fewer tax hikes than in the past, a conciliatory approach that he hopes will convince Republicans to sign onto a grand bargain that would curb government borrowing and replace deep spending cuts that took effect March 1.

Obama will break with the tradition of providing a sweeping vision of his ideal spending priorities, untethered from political realities. Instead, the document will incorporate the compromise offer Obama made to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) last December in the discussions over the “fiscal cliff” – which included $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction through spending cuts and tax increases.

(Editor's note: Krugman calls it "desperately seeking approval from the Serious People." He's right. Dean Baker says Obama is asking for a bigger hit to seniors than to the rich.)

“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficit,” a senior administration official said, “but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth.”

The Huffington Post has more

The specifics are as follows:

• The budget would reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over ten years -- $600 billion of this reduction would come from revenue raisers, and $1.2 trillion would come from spending reductions and entitlement reforms;
• It would change the benefit structure of Social Security (chained-CPI);
• It would means test additional programs in Medicare;
• All told, it would include $400 billion in health care savings (or cuts);
• It would cut $200 billion from other areas, identified by The New York Times as “farm subsidies, federal employee retirement programs, the Postal Services and the unemployment compensation system;”
• It would pay for expanded access to pre-K (an Obama priority) by increasing the tobacco tax;
• It would set limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for the wealthy, prohibiting individuals from putting more than $3 million in IRAs and other tax-preferred retirement accounts;
• And it would stop people from collecting full disability benefits and unemployment benefits that cover the same period of time.

The signs are everywhere, and it won't really depend on which party wins, now that Nancy Pelosi's drinking the Catfood Commissioners' Kool-Aid: They're going after their Grand Bargain. They want to cut Social Security and Medicare in the lame duck session of Congress. They'll do it with what sounds like "reasonable" adjustments like chaining payments to the Consumer Price Index, claiming it more accurately reflects the cost of living. (It doesn't. For one thing, it doesn't include the cost of heat. Grandma ice pops!) Economist Dean Baker says of course it's not more accurate, and calls the proposed switch a very big deal:

First of all, when all the inside Washington types agree on something, it is a good idea to hang on to your pocket books. Remember, these are the folks who thought it was great that everyone was becoming a homeowner in the middle of a housing bubble and that Alan Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all-time. In other words, inside Washington types are a group of people that mindlessly repeat the conventional wisdom and are largely incapable of original thought.

At the most simple level, the switch to a chained CPI is a way to reduce the annual COLA in Social Security by roughly 0.3 percentage points. That may sound trivial, but it is important to remember that this sum adds up over time. After ten years, this lower annual cost-of-living adjustment would imply a reduction in benefits of roughly 3 percent, after 20 years the reduction would be 6 percent, and after 30 years close to 9 percent. So this is real money.

This plan to lower the COLA raises two obvious questions. First would the new measure actually be more accurate, and second is a cut in Social Security benefits good policy?

There are some complex philosophical issues raised by a cost-of-living index but at the most basic level, the question is to what extent Social Security beneficiaries substitute between items to offset price increases. The proponents of switching to a chained index for the COLA are arguing based on research that examines the consumption patterns of the population as a whole.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has done research indicating that the Social Security population has qualitatively different consumption patterns than the rest of the population. This research suggests that a consumer pirce index based on the consumption patterns of the elderly would show a higher rate of inflation.

The BLS research would imply that someone who is concerned about the accuracy of the Social Security COLA might want a higher annual cost-of-living adjustment, not a lower one. Of course the BLS research is not conclusive, since BLS did not directly monitor the actual purchasing patterns of the elderly, examining the specific items they buy and the outlets where they shop.

However, BLS could do this and construct a full elderly CPI. This would cost in the neighborhood of $10-20 million. While that may seem expensive, this index is being used to determine a COLA for $700 billion in annual spending. If the full elderly index turned out to show the same rate of inflation as the overall CPI, then there would be no need to continue to do it. However, if the rates differ, then we would continue to maintain the elderly CPI, if the interest is accuracy.

This is a simple way to distinguish between people who want an accurate COLA and people who just want to cut benefits. Those who want an accurate COLA advocate having BLS construct a full elderly CPI. People who just want to switch the indexation to a chained CPI simply want to cut benefits.

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