From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

First, the White House has been saying the president supports 'progressive indexing' for months. So I'm not sure it counts either as dramatic, let alone a move. Second, let's state specifically what this to-some-sexy-sounding proposal offers: steep benefit cuts for all but the lowest income Americans and meager increases in benefits for them. It's hard to see how there's anything particularly progressive about gutting Social Security for the entire middle class. And how this comes off as a politically attractive proposal once anyone understands it is hard to figure.

So 1) It's nothing new, and 2) It's going to really hurt the middle class.

I've noticed this trend before, that Democrats are supposedly the champions of either the poor or the middle class depending on which program their talking about. Bush said at least once last night that the details would be hammered out in Congress, but that he supports this general proposal, so talking talking about "steep" cuts for the middle and upper income workers, "meager" increases for lower income ones, and "gutting" Social Security for the middle class seems like, oh premature, hyperbolic invective?

Why can't Democrats get behind this philosophically? Seems right up their alley, doesn't it? Because they're so blindly fucking partisan that they can't acknowledge when the President makes a good proposal? Hmm? Could that be it?

Let's say in practice that lower income workers got 30% higher benefits, middle income got a 10% cut in benefits, and high income workers got a 70% cut. Just as a hypothetical. If you're a liberal, would you support this idea?